Fizzy Brushstrokes: The Art of Knights and Bikes

[Music] start wow it's like an echo in here I don't really have the voice for a big echo but you know I'll try and be like Thor like or something thanks for coming everyone I really appreciate you taking half an hour out of your super busy GDC to come and hang out hang out here you probably know all the sort of housekeeping stuff already but I think you need to like turn off your phones and get something scanned and and write some answer some emails later so do those things and everyone will love you kidding me so hello I'm Rex I am a game maker I've done a bunch of stuff in TV and animation as well but it's mostly been in games a little bit of background I started out I started out as a sheep

farmer and I gradually raised a large flock of sheep and then one day I sold them and I took the money and I bought my first computer and there is well despite what you might actually think that's not actually me but you know I'm flattered and it was an Amiga 500 the best computer ever designed unfortunately for my sheep and here's Andy Warhol using one to paint Debbie Harry and I kind of wanted to get in on this you know I was so so inspired by what what was like the the use of digital the digital device to create art and it just seems so much quicker and easier so I I got myself an Amiga and I used this terrible this incredible technology to make some very bad games

that's one there I'm not showing you the main screen you can only see the UI because you know it doesn't get better as you go up and you know despite this image I think I probably had some skills this is an artist but ultimately I was just kind of a fanboy for the for the technology I didn't really have anything to say with it at the time so like many people I went off to art college discovered life luckily forgot all about games for several years and started to find a bit of a voice I studied graphic design although I was much more of an illustrator because I wanted to learn about the wider context of how my artwork would and could be used and that's something that stayed with me when I'm trying to choose an art style with meaning behind it and the other thing I learned was Oh twin screens okay

this way right sorry you can go home now okay tell you anything good it's it's kind of a harsh lesson but it was a really important one for me to learn that there'll always be artists better than me at drawing hands better at drawing feet and particularly better artists at drawing horses but but learning this like really freed me up to make work that was like less about the rendering skill and more about finding the best way to convey a particular message or to create a certain emotion and the other thing I was learning at the same time was like teaching myself the software flash and I really loved this software as you could quickly pull in all kinds of media add audio draw over it and then start making

interactive and it was a very different process from those early attempts of like making games where you know had to pre-plan everything using flash was far closer to my own creative process and much more like playing so I made little interactive experiments which became quite game-like and that was kind of enough for me to accidentally be hired into the games industry initially at lionhead studios and then with a closed bunch of friends at their new company called Media Molecule where I worked on defining the company's house style which I guess you could sum up as make it pink but also working on the the look and atmosphere of the games as well as posing for really awkward photos and together we made it's a big planet and my niche on that was mainly bringing in elements of pop culture and street art and much of this was to try

and show that the game is constantly evolving and being added to and if we think of the game as a graffiti wall or a mixtape that's saying that it's there's never a perfect conclusion it's just an ongoing process of you know creators inspiring each other to create the next stage which makes it more approachable everyone is able to play their part in this or a never-ending process of creation and then after five years of making this big planets we wanted to do something different I was given the opportunity to creatively lead a team for the first time and that's when we made tearaway and tearaway unfolded and this kind of built on what I'd learnt on LittleBigPlanet of trying to take an abstract idea and make it tangible through its art and its sound and its gameplay so this was go be a handheld game with lots of touchscreen

interactions and we wanted a word that would be very reactive and tactile so you know we took the approach to build the entire world out of paper because that felt the most successful way that we could do that you know and it and what was interesting about that is that it especially allowed both our team and players themselves to successfully contribute artwork to the game you know the paper style like you not eat it unified whatever people made in it so it always looked part of this this papery world and making tearaway has been the the biggest influence on on what I'm actually here to talk about which is the the game nights and bikes which is what I'm working on at the moment so now this particular project was dreamt up as a smaller scale collaboration between me

and my friend mu who was down there I move as a way of taking a little bit of time out really get hands-on again I was worried that I hadn't really been drawing and painting that much recently and I just wanted to get a little bit more input into my life take a few more walks and get some more influences from outside of kind of outside of my bubble also meant I could spend a bit more quality time with these two oh I miss them so much so we set up a little company called foam sword contrast and and so that we could make this game called Knights and bikes now on the surface this game is inspired by coming-of-age movies 1980s nostalgia and

some classic video games I've right I just have to call out this bike here that's called a rally vector and that came out like in the 80s and I was probably you know pretty young and that bike has a built-in computer that talks to you why you cycle I mean incredible let's make a video game about that so all of these things they're all they're all cultural shortcuts really they're there to bring players on board which is very important because we were going to be crowdfunding the game so we needed people to like you know have things that they could understand and you know welcome them into this into this game but really a lot of that is just the sort of the fanboy bit you know what what going on under the surface of the game to make it its own thing you know how can it really stand apart from its influences well firstly it's influenced

by our own childhoods and experiences and its setting is directly each probably shouldn't look too closely at that map there's really bad stuff on there it's it is based on an exaggerated version of where I grew up in rural Cornwall which is the oh let's help you out there we go the the pointy tip of the UK which is where I raised and sold my sheep to get that sweet computer so it's it's actually a very very rural area with little fishing villages or hanging onto the rocks as the next storm blows through it's very beautiful place but it's also yeah it's a place that a lot of people want to come and visit but it's economically one of the poorest areas in Europe which has a big impact on the look and the the atmosphere and themes of the game and that sketch on the right is the the very first page of

my first sketchbook in the game and that's how it looks in game it's a 3d world made up of thousands of little paintings and they're all hand painted and then layered up to create a believable 1980s rural setting lots of caravan parks and fishing villages and and plenty of countryside to explore in between the game itself as you playing as a couple of a couple of tough little girls on their bikes and they're seeking adventures they want to find treasure and they're just generally learning about the adult world around them but all done with like that that was just almost explosion of creativity and infectious energy that that kids have one thing to say is that although it's set in the 1980s it's a deliberate

choice not to go like super eighties because I think there's a lot of nostalgia culture out there that kind of makes out that you know when the when the clock struck twelve on the first day of nineteen eighty everyone got a DeLorean and like you know changed into like a neon t-shirt and wear and looks at unicorns and you know it's it's a lot more nuanced than that you know you have to you have to have money to keep up with trends and and because it's set in a economically challenged area you know we wanted to make sure that the eighties influence was a lot more a lot more nuanced and there was a reason that some characters will be more kind of like pop culture than others so how do we get started well as I was saying it's quite a personal project and the aim was to make a game that could be tinkered on and iterated on as a very small collaboration between me and mu so it

needed to be like generally easy to make the assets you know because there was a lot of them you know that I was gonna have to paint and animate and assemble and previously I'd had the luxury as well of working in custom engines that were created to like fully simulate a certain look you know to make a world out of paper or make all the craft materials of LittleBigPlanet so it didn't really didn't really have you know that was that was that would be a little bit crazy to try and do a new engine for a team of two I wasn't going to put move through that so you know we we needed to use off-the-shelf tools so we use unity and needed to come up with an art style that kind of a just paint paint final artwork and then just bring it into unity as pngs and start building thematically like I was saying it was going to be built on pop culture touchstones such as The Goonies but also

you know wanting to make it its own thing with some autumn biographical twists and this is that this is the important one this kind of suggested that it would be a game about a fairly everyday world but one explored by kids with lots of energy wild imaginations so it's a question of like what's it what's that world girl looked like through their eyes and this really was the key to represent the visual style is there to represent how the kids in the game would try and depict it themselves so as you play you feel like you're seeing the world through their eyes or at least with their imagination energy having some effect on it so in other words it's all a little bit fuzzy a little bit scribbly it's all painted with two brushes we've got this softer one for natural elements and then a harder edged one for highlights and sticking to these two brushes has been really important to the visual style of the game because it you know unifies

everything it's kind of like the decision to make the whole world of tearaway out of paper you know it's a self-imposed limitation to tie everything together is a an exciting bit of live eyeball painting I mean I could just leave that running if you like but you know maybe I'll move onto some more slides there's a his use of the the softer brush for a little bit of shading and then the the harder one for the double edge chin double H double chin so in the early stages many elements you know the characters and whatnot were designed in vectors because it's you know it's much quicker and easier to get the bold shapes and silhouettes but then I'd repaint them in the two brushes to unify these the style and just make it less clean like you know make it more human and then there's a final version

on the right just put the word final under final dot final final final dot PSD and you know that's just been a little bit more refined and added a little bit more of detail added a little bit of animation so moving onto animation you know the key here was that everything needs to really convey this energy of childhood and the way that kids are constantly shifting attention so wherever possible I we draw everything three times to give it a stop-motion line boil look it really helps you know keeps everything moving on screen and hopefully excites your eyes and really tries to suggest that there's no one particular way to look at any one thing so on the characters themselves I can't go quite as wild as I might like due to the range of animations to create but I still try and use the stop motion technique wherever possible such as on demelza's

hair here you know you can see how it sort of it's trying to convey her in a wildness you know like all that sort of ideas that are fizzing out of their head and you know and it sort of beds are into this stormy Cornish setting that they're in and the art style also means that we can add on elements where the kids are like they're their imagination who's getting carried away and like adding elements the games they sort of seeing this wall and imagining it as a castle wall with arrows coming down this greasy old car crusher kind of takes on a new role as a dragon you know still all painted with with one of those two brushes so it looks part of the overall style but it's very clear that it's it's something that they're projecting onto the the environment and a big influence on this stop-motion look was the work of God but there Bob Godfrey that's quite hard to say the animated rhubarb and custard and I

think having lots of on-screen movement is very important to the atmosphere of a game that movement really creates an energy that translates to players you know it really sort of spurs them through the game becomes like a contagious energy so that they'll run around and explore so that was the kind of a weird phrase to leave on-screen at home but that was the animation without audio but I think we should just hear it again with the audio because that's kind of a big deal as well [Music] all right I just have to cut it off there but audio is a really big deal to me while I'm working a lot of influences for me come from audio and it's great to investigate other visual styles and techniques but it can be overwhelming sometimes so when I'm really knuckling down on a project you know often I'll

have the radio on in the background listening to that so I'll have you know want to listen to people talking like being out in a you know working in a cafe or something so that you you hear that or create like custom playlet music playlists so that they're influencing you while you're working on particular areas there's one area the harbor area of the game this this particular audio Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood is like really really important for me it is spring moonless night in the small towns starless and bible black the cobble streets silent and the hunched quarters and rabbits would limping invisible down to the slow black slow black crow black fishing boat bobbing see the houses are blind as moles the moles see fine tonight in the snow ting velvet tingles or blind as captain cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock the shops in mourning the welfare

hall in widow's weeds and all the people of the lulled and dumbfound down are sleeping now that's not that so good though right there's so much stuff in there I could just draw that forever you know and so audio is a really big deal and obviously like you know these other audio influences are all part of what influences the look along with the audio design that's actually happening in the game and that's such an important relationship to have you know a really good relationship with your audio designer and you know having an old friend Kenny young on the project has just gives me so much to respond to all that all the time so moving on yes so if you're making a game with it's like 2d 3d you have to have one of these gifts it's the law and this is our one so you know that

was just a little diversion into how audio has inspired the overall atmosphere and tone but how are the individual elements all created well a big influence on those was the the art of Alfred Wallace who was a Cornish painter who had no formal training and often painted with boat paint or on scraps of cardboard and because he was you know from the same graphical geographical location as where the game is set there's a strong thematic link but looking at these compositions like really made me more confident confident to to play with the fakery of making 3d environment with 2d assets so started off very conservative you know everything was very flat as if I was like just get a text straight on to boxes rather than really going as wild as you can with like 2d artwork I started to subvert it more and you know this started to get closer to the way that kids will draw try and show all the

interesting details which matter to them even if like technically half of those details are actually on the other side you know it's kind of you just trying you're just too excited to like draw a thing so you just try and fit everything on and this felt like a much more accurate way of representing the little fishing villages and what-have-you in nights and bikes where the architecture is so individual as a few more examples of assets and it really helps like you know painting all of these in the same two brushes all the way through the game you know and it means that that you know they've all got their own sort of angles and perspectives but you know painting them all in the same way has like really unified them but nobody's going to see assets like that in isolation apart from all of you just then you know you might want to just you know add like loads of cool details but I find it it's so important to make all of these

assets like in situ like this there's a treasure chest in the leveler on the screen above and then I'm painting it on the one below and I just have to make sure that all the time I'm not trying to add too much detail and and and look at the game as a screen as a scene rather than as you know individual assets so I think if I was going to summarize his style I'd put it like this that it's like an eight-year-old is telling me what to paint and I'm struggling to keep up with all their ideas and stories it's definitely something that I learnt on tear away and although although you might have chosen to use quite a naive steam simple style he still wants it to look beautiful and aspirational you know I still want to show off a little bit so it's more fun to try and achieve that but I kind of trying to create this like this collaboration between the gaming characters and you trying to like you know depict their their stories so once

I've done my wide research conducted some thoughtful investigations into the style and strive to integrate it with the game's themes and overall ethos I like to cut every corner possible because all of that stuff takes a long time and it's terrible really but you know I just just need to stay true to the the project's goals so I try not to worry too much about the the details that don't matter this tweet perfectly sums up my style of art production [Laughter] so sometimes just by deleting or hiding the worst thing you make everything else better you know I'd like to do it all properly but you know sometimes it's just not possible and it's great you know if you do this that you can win back some time to really work on the characters or work on the the atmosphere of the game and I try

and do a bunch of things to like keep myself inspired while I'm working one of my main things is to go on plenty of walks yes there we go this this I mean some walks are like very project focused this is going on hikes around the actual real life you know environments that Knights and bikes is based on but the most useful walks to be honest are the ones where there you're just taking a break from your everyday you know yeah when you're making a game you're just creating this this carefully constructed sealed world around you and I think it's really good to just get out and like hear the weird stuff people say and you know it just experience you know things that you haven't liked carefully designed yourself and then you can jot all of those experiences down in sketchbooks and use them on future projects also like to try and use all my

sketchbooks to plan everything out you know a lot of stuff that will never be in the game but it's you know it's just working out how it all fits together and I find being slightly removed from the game like a really good a really good way of just you know figuring all out on paper and a lot of this actually kind of puts me back in that mindset of when you're eight years old and you're just you know you used to like make up little maps on pieces of paper for places that don't exist but now I have the power to make them exist that's great and also a way that you can I like to try and spend spend some of this time that I'm sort of claiming back by like painting or all eyeballs like trying not to use the flood fill tool you know that was the tool that like inspire you know that was the thing that drew me to computers in the first place

because I was like oh my god it's amazing you just click a button and everything's colored in but you've actually lost that time where you're just sitting there and like thinking about the next job you'll go do so I try you'll probably they'll probably be a cat in a minute and we'll see it and see me use the flood fail and I'll be like ashamed but you know it's kind of I think it's really good to just spend some time with the canvas you know just painting and thinking about what you're working on so it's kind of nearly done which is just as well how does it like speed up a bit we're getting there this is kind of a hopefully a bit of an insight into trying to take nights and bytes beyond the pop culture wrapper in the artwork so here's over we'll have a little summary it's quite a big summary actually so I should just read these really so visual influences can come from the right soundtrack voice piece of literature and it's good to reach outside your bubble for new influences going for walks is a good way to do that

and you can control what you're and yet because you can't control what you're going to see tight restrictions like painting a game into brushes or making it all from paper can really unify everything and give you more scope for wildness try and have a think about how your characters would depict that what happens to you in the game to you the Creator there's more of a collaboration be autobiographical where you can to actually add some extra flavor create asset since it's you so they maps the style and level of detail cut corners on the world building so that you can spend it on atmosphere and characters emotions uniqueness etc it will only look as good as the worst thing on screen so maybe you just delete that worst thing and spend some time on those quiet simple jobs because you'll be spending more time in the world directly touching it and considering what you'll be working on next and I'm

just going to finish up by showing you an actual poster for a death metal fest of and all the bands and their logos and I've got to say I love you party cannon so I'm going to say to you all be yourself make interesting choices enjoy what you do soak up the world and subvert what's being overused and be the party cannon of this industry thank you very much I don't know if there's any time for questions or not yes wonderful one of the things that I struggle with is getting your level of like cohesion which I may never achieve before I die but that's another thing and I always

encounter a point where I'm drawing inspiration from a whole bunch of different sources but the style that I've built is sort of like filled with internal contradictions and I don't know how to quite squeeze hard enough to get all the impurities out I'm wondering if you can provide any insight about how to do that because I come a lot of my background is making videos I used to make all the trailers for LittleBigPlanet games and what-have-you and I've I've always found like making making videos or ways of representing my work or the work of my team back to myself like really useful because you just you see it slightly differently uh-huh so it's like you know you make a little there I would say sizzle reel for your project you know so that you're just like you know you really distill it down into its most well into its like its best points really and I

find that a really good way to it might it might just show you like where the holes are but also it's it's a good way of you know pushing it pushing in a new direction that's wonderful thank you thank you hi hi there thank you for the talk I am an instructor over at Purdue University with our game dev program and every semester when projects come around I'm kind of surprised by how many students won't take up a 2d project unless it's like pixel art and I'm assuming it's because they think that like hand-drawn animation or that kind of like digital painting is really time consuming and potentially like a tripping point for the project they have say like 10 weeks do you think it would be viable for them to get their foot in the door with the art style and create at least like a decent vertical slice of a 2d project like this or would it be too cramped for them to sort of or when they get like overloaded with yeah so I

know I think it's totally possible to to do a 2d project in a short amount of time I think what can help is to maybe take some influences from you know short films there's some really interesting stuff where you know I'm always inspired when I see how how simple and focused some short films are where it might be just a character and an object on screen and they haven't I think sometimes when we take things into the into the interactive world we feel that we have to put like 'inna everything has to be an object but as soon as you start adding a few objects and you have to add more and more and more and it's kind of interesting to just you know make a game about a chicken and a worm and the worm just keeps popping up and going down and you know that's that's all you need so I think just being very focused on the actual setup of the game so that all of the assets can be like really worked up

and be the best that they can be thank you so much I think oh well done okay well thanks everyone for coming have a great GDC [Applause]