The Art of Child of Light

[Music] good afternoon everybody and welcome to this session about the art of child of light so to make sure that everybody you know knows what the game looks like let me take two minutes to play to you our reveal trailer child tuck yourself in bed let me tell a story as a more a kingdom asked and a girl born for glory [Music] loves from our world came she treachery gave close chase she raised her sword

or she feared not to race [Music] last place to see Quinn to defeat the journey may transform it does [Music] tragic and faint be aware the night child of light so in this talk I'm going to talk about first what inspired me at the start of a

project so you know it's been a couple of months just looking at pretty pictures to get inspired so we're going to talk about what were those and why did I you know why did we inspire me then after that the various iteration that we add on the art direction to reach the final product so it's been a it's been a bumpy road a little bit but you have to be able to find our identity and finally also talk about how we the the tribulation or a trial and tribulations you create a main character and is that a badass Space Marine so yeah okay so in terms of inspiration in in 2007 personally I like to visit museums when I'm on vacation or like that's what I like to do so and and especially every time I could travel on

different cities for maybe press tours or stuff like that I have to you know drop by some museum and and watch some art and in 2007 in Montreal there was a show an exposition on the wall Disney is this you know the source of his inspiration and that's where I know because Disney in you know the the 1920s went across Europe and he collected art and books to build the Disney library and in those art piece there was a lot of illustration from the period called the Golden Age of illustration so that's like a 40 year period at the end of the 19th century beginning of the 20th where books are really popular and the quality of books the of printing really increased and so there and for children books specially there was a need to do a lot

of drawings because you know it's a bit like books today for children there's like an image or two page or an image per page so the quality bar really raised and it and some are some of those artists really brought the the art of illustration and watercolor to you know really high level you know we can think about Arthur Rackham for example he did a situation for Alice in Wonderland or illustrated the back in our Cappetta on a cycle of the ring and one slack yuri add that sense of romanticism in in his art there is the one with the Cape for me there is a sense of there's a promise of adventure I was really allowed to on on that style K Nelson interesting fact on him he actually worked at this Nate on the

concept for the backgrounds on the movie Sleeping Beauty so if you look at sleeping you're going to see that art being on display now of course Disney what he did is that he collected those pieces and he created its own like this nazar wait for me that was really something inspiring john bauer artist from sweden and from here that was my the one I liked the most if you like this little creature here you see no dwarfs and trolls are really different than what you see SC from your traditional tolkien-esque dwarfs and fro so for me that was kind of like a reinvention but it's returning to older era era to rediscover those those that type of fantasy especially if you look at the main character Obama's talked about it a little bit later but you can you can already see some some of the things I'm going to talk later and finally it's it's you know more

contemporary artists but yes Turkish and I know especially is fairy book made a book where illustrated fairytales one it was one painting or fairy tale and for me I really like I really loved being able to be I was drawn to that those universe in one image and reading the text of the poems you would you know be completely enveloped by by that universe and that's basically what we're making on American games or creating universe and we're in the fight but you know inviting players in and for me too you know that's exactly the vibe I want to touch and at the back of the fairies book there's a quote that would for me was like it really crystallized my decision to make this game which is you cannot paint fairies without entering their world and believing in them and that's really what I want to do I wanted to create something it would be a little

bit like a flower precious delicate and and to do that I wanted to do that without any irony because you know at the end of the day you can be the little fairy game and people you know ever work in this mess oh it's the fairy game and if it's not done with like something or it's really sincere yes I think it's open for criticism but I think you can feel it when you're at least sorry I really wanted to know believe in it believe in magic Billy that this world is is real that it creates something of value so this quote really for me was something where it's like yes I believe in fairies and let let's make it happen on screen and let people see that world that will exist and the thing is for you know fairy tales what I like about them is the use of symbols there's enough symbols in fairy tales and that's why

the snow story really captured Lea managed well went through the age nobody knows who you know who came up with Cinderella for example it's a you know hundreds are old tale that has been told from generation to generation and most of them are symbols about the passage from being a child to an adult now I'm telling you how it is going to be a little bit later you're going to go through a dark forest and at the end it's going to be okay or not because sometimes the world is really true and you can be eaten by that big bad wolf be careful of those big bad wolf and at the same time RPGs and I am a huge fan of their console type or Japanese type RPG and they're about drawing stats so you were small and you're weak and you become strong and in a fairy tale you would you know start as

a child and finish as an adult so for me it was really interested into the parallel between between don't boat so I knew I could make a game that would make sense narratively and with gameplay so so so you know for me never have sense and in a vibe where for media the importance was to create a playable plan so maybe you know sounds ambitious or but let's make something that would be delicate that's the that's the goal so you know let's let's let's go there I want to make and that angle really forged everything about the choice of music the art style and even the story which had in the end we had the whole game written in verse even and I knew I would be able to use the UB art framework so I had some friends in Montpellier like send them a couple of email sandhya the the the engine and and it's like okay this

is what this is what I'm going to use and the thing that's interesting with the engine is that we could finally want go from instead of going with pixelized version of concept art we could actually display the concept part straight end game so one of the first thing and I pitched at people it's like what if we make Final Fantasy 6 but with a man''ôs concept art instead of the pixel version so then people could really start you know creates a sense of what that game could be and I even made a creative director concept using your John Bowers painting it's like oh you know what it's going to look like a side-scroller it don't feel like a little bit like this and that's like the initial at that point basically I was alone with no PowerPoint pitch and trying to lure people to come join my project so then you know we went to

conception that's when I started to have some people joining in especially one guy that is extremely talented he's right now in Montreal we're finishing for any final days of of diffraction thomopolis are our director just to tell you like the skill level before that is the guy that created the the art style for just dance we went from just dance to trial of light so his palette is really wide sway he's just is a nice room so so he joined the project and I started to build the pillars or the art direction so first one fluidity a sense of illustration you wanted to make something that is contemporary and to use the kind of inversion of convention to create a feeling of a magical world fluidity is you know for something really important because I wanted the example air is by using kind of the logic of your the

sense of kostik that you had underwater and recreate that using the trees so then you're not underwater but you have that sense that you know what this place is ethereal same thing with fluid so then we really you know talked about how could we create a sense of fluidity in the game once again feeling like we're underwater to create that sense of a magical place and so we started to do some concept art and yet it was to use those concepts are directly in game so whether that's one of the first one and out are in a forest then you know giant trees we could go inside the rear of a cavern part of the forest so and finally I wanted to like here that thing was like a giant we're in level design we'll be able to walk walk on him so

that that idea for me was really interesting so what we use those to create our target render so it's like so to show to upper management what the game the final game would look like really orally so it gives us a good milestone for for for moving in production and test it so I'm going to show it to you what we shown to that's in February 2013 so a little bit more than a year ago way way way back when I was very young long before you were born there was a magical kingdom called Lemuria [Music]

[Applause] [Music]

so so how is really part of of that video and so we saw we went to Paris to talk about like the receive some feedback and a few feedback we received is the game is you know it's going to be beautiful but at this point it would need a clearer sense of visual identity right now the feedback was we can only say oh it's it's beautiful but and the example

was in limbo it's clear its back and like so if you have two people that you know talk about a beautiful game yesterday where is it oh it's the black and white game and you know it's it's limbo so so so divided us to continue push and to find a style that would be unique and be able to be told in like one word and I said that limbo is black and white it's three word but anyway [Laughter] and the second feedback is to there's a sense of the need to create a stronger main character and I think especially because it's you know were far away from having the the badass Space Marine there then it's like okay so yes it's the you know it's not going to be a badass Space Marine but can you find a main character it could be an icon for the game I think

so so that's the the feedback we took and and really like for long for me so it's time to return back to research and to just dig to see where we can go with it first case we were just going to continue with our art style but can we push can we use that as a challenge to push ourself to reach you know and I air quality for the art in the game so return for all the art research that was like a tense period because you don't want to arrive and go like okay we start from the beginning everybody because you know I really start panicking it's like no let's let's do some research for a couple of weeks we took like it you know month and we just went into any direction possible to make sure we would be able to capture the the right mode so that's one of the example using trees that would look a little bit more like a you know Chinese ink is another one that's one for more our director so his

personal style is a little bit more graphic so he wanted to edit that's let me try something a little bit more graphic with it and agent G one of our artists she drew this I was like I liked it except that I felt like it was you know lacking a little bit of drama so I asked her and and they sat down and Andy iterated on it and I also I wanted to make sure if we had a character and it's let me felt I could feel that the character would belong in that world so this is what they come up with and this is what I you know instantly fell in love with the art style and we integrated one character from John Bower illustration in and that's when I really knew that going with a watercolor art style you know would be the style we need to push and then the thing it was just to make sure that we could reproduce that art style

multiple time on multiple environments so that's what we did the next month so that's the example for a village that we'll meet in the game after that you know a bridge with a strange creature behind the forest another you know bridge and finally I don't know why I love hot-air balloons from your kind of magical so can we have like a hot-air balloons floating over the forest so so with that mean I knew we could reproduce that style and use it use those assets in Game four for child of light and that would be our identity the water that will be the watercolor game so in terms so I'm going to take a couple of minutes to talk about like what's the process between when I say we use the concept very directly in game what's the process in terms of production to achieve that result

so basically Tama well you did is just dead mood boards so basic at that point with the story was already written so we knew you know everything that's with all the environments needed to produce so for example that's the forest at the beginning so it creates like those mood boards a little doodle of what you know if the forest could be or some assets and then you let the artist create the concept art so we would you know spend some time you know make some beautiful paintings and and and that would actually inspired level design in their work because then and that's that's a screenshot from from theatre so the level designers would just basically make their level and it could use the key art the the concept art behind to help you know give a sense of where we are where where that that place is and use that in in there to inspire

themselves in in level design so for example the outdoor the bridge the tree and when we pick up the sword inside the the magical tree and after that what Emma did is he was it took it took that's that screenshot put it in Photoshop and he directly painted it over to make it I can help if a quick paint over to give to the artist so that they will be able to fill the whole environment and to get the final result and it would integrate the the concept art so you could see the the tree with light the tree bridge there so you could get a sense that suddenly all those concept art would be well integrated and create a cohesive environment so once again I'm going to give you another example for another second second region the plains so that's the point of reference that we have in terms of visual that the art is the color palette you want it to have and in terms of

concept art then you know we painted some entails and we could see a giant in a distance some win wheels that we could you know do some level design in it then level designers would sketch out a rough map and us and get that one especially first time I said in-game I was like ok where is it going I don't know you're playing in it and it's like it's really abstract but then as soon as Tamara did this paint over and it's like oh this is going to be a really awesome place to play to play in and finally that's the look in game that we had to achieve for this region so that's the process that we went through for production and basically we could use the concept art you know even to inspire level design but also you could use those assets directly in game so that's for me the art style the watercolor art style that one was relatively easy to

nail down specially in terms of it was following the original inspiration for the main character it was more a way difficult for for us at least for fermion tamo so in terms of first iteration you saw you saw her in the fake footage or a target footage so at the beginning you know the we had that name of a-ha because you know it's the you know the beginning of the day the Sun comes and for me the in terms of sorry I'm not English as my first language but it you know in terms of meaning it's you know she will bring up from the darkest of night then old the old girl would bring up to a magical world so that's that's that's where the name come from and then we looked up and all rise also a butterfly you know it's the beginning of a today so for me there was a sense of like the redhead red air girl it was

no soft and delicate for me that was somebody that would be appropriate for there for a game so we started to sketch out some characters at the same time you could see that it's difficult to create kind of like a clear image of who those characters are but we still manage to make like one key art that would be our main character really I like to know she was a soft dreamy up fall so wrong form for me that no she was great except for one thing well we couldn't have long hair with the 2d character and we were talking about fluidity and the fact that would float and be magical but in 2d they really look like carlo cardboards err so so it didn't work so we went with ok let's let's make some first sacrifice let's go with a shorter air version and we really

looked at various how can we bring that character what's the right type of haircut and you don't want at the bottom like my lead programmer is not going to like it because when artists remover for for inspiration but that's no she looks great so so that's the that's the design we proposed at the ad for the target footage so I still take you know so it's a great character but the feedback was to go a bit further to create something that would be even more iconic so we went with it and started to look for you know second iteration and that second iteration it was difficult because one of his feedback is like a she's not badass so then suddenly you have that thing in the Arab she needs to be badass and then you have your people it goes like oh but look at all those characters female characters they're all badass it's all great but it's like no no no I

don't want so so that was that thing where it was difficult to balance between children so then we looked at something a little bit more with you know a little bit a attitude and then even with some armor but then it was really difficult to balance between the little doll and shine back so at least like either she was a warrior or she was that that that princess that's one one of the latest one in terms of like those those face that I like but an in-game didn't work she was just looking like a little Barbie with a sword and it wasn't necessarily what even though in those pictures I really liked the attitude and you keep and if you know this ear should initiate the long hair and those concept because there's a point where it's like I don't care or we're going to make it I want long hair and and especially because we started to look at business princess and it's like I had some Ariel

and Vee it's like I want the hair from air from Little Mermaid it's so beautiful you don't you don't hear that probably when you make call of duty but but you get the idea there was super well I've made it and it's like it's magical it's like can we make this and it's like I don't care if we'll find a way but first let's go back with long hair oh that that's that's the direction I want and we'll find a solution so at the same time Jeffrey or a limb by the writer on the project he came back from Japan anytime a huge final fantasy fan so he brought me some little figurines I was like oh man how come the you know square they can make like like tens of iconic character I can't make one so I start to be really obsessed about those those little bugs and there's like one thing that started

to pop with mr. should eat those because they're not even close to what do you look in games are really small like one inch figurine and they're really abstract and I kind of start thinking about you know what what they're doing great is that their can define iconic tray so that whatever the outer figurine would look it would be the same character so for example it's done from final nine yes you know in every character in those little box they all have different a different air cut every one of them as a different air cut and so it's well defined then he has a puffy shirt the long tail and the dual sword so even on those tools those two figurines there are completely two styles then you can recognize oh you know what this is hidden from final nine and in-game doesn't even look like like him so it's like okay can can so we need to define what are the iconic thing that

our character as at the same time I returned to John Bower like it's returning to those that their roots and to go like and there's there was one story where in that story the little princess grew from being a child to an adult so I just created a kind of this collage in fact of pictures and it joint it jumped to me it's like I consider it's the same character because throughout the adventure she has the same crown while she's a crown just a long blonde hair and a white dress so what I did is that I always like a went to tumblr and say otama check this little this little character from john bauer can can you just do me a little doodle about like somebody that would have like it's like a crown long hair little dress and a sword took him like five minutes and you drew me this I was like okay I love I love this boom so it's like so we did actually like my

knee drawings a different thing and it took five minutes to fell in love with with the character so the next step would be actually would she look in the environment so we asked Mary know to draw her in color and if with you know the final result so here you could see at the crown a long flowing hair the dress and the sword and then she a little spunky attitude and it's even though it's not you know necessarily badass then already you see this and you love that character so and then at that point I was nobody asked like why I'm not playing a little boy you know at that you know once you have a cool character that people can identify with and love or it's strong then then the gender or wherever that person is it's it's irrelevant so original image but with the second country second character in Nicholas in I mean it's just perfect for me it was you know same thing here a little bridge so and

the other thing is I was like before we had that that you know version of a vaudeville act would be already close to be a woman so what if we just go instead and actually make her grow physically in a game so that metaphor is going to be stronger so that's that's like that's the design that we have and we are in the game she she is actually like going through a various phase and then at the end she is the White Queen of Lemuria and you can see also it reflected in the dialog through that and like this is going to be perfect as you know once again reminiscent of the John Bowers Illustrated story the fairy tales who I was really happy with this direction and well it's also basically okay so once again how are we going to achieve that

fel feeling in the game and so we just start talking you know talking about that with with young programmers you're like okay what can we do with the engine or push no technology and one Monday morning or architech it's really hard to take jeff brushie he said a petticoat a little something yesterday so I'm not encouraging overtime but you Yuri wanted to work on a Sunday morning to code that so he said I sell something to playable to show you you want to see it and this is the prototype that he showed me that Monday morning I saw this and I said yes finally now you need to make that leap of faith but you can see that the fluid

with interacting with the error and you go like oh yeah I can project that you know eventually they're not going to look like spaghetti I'm sure Jeff it's not going to look like spaghetti oh yeah I think so okay guys so so basically this is what we're going to do so finite so instead of talking like it's impossible then by letting people come with solution you know when we were talking about a vision then you know magic happen in this case we're lucky to have and we're really lucky to have like an amazing team to work with it would require that to move the character to tree to be 3d however so that was a risk and also a risk in in terms of production because it would actually take three months for image code to work it's at three months in three months is going to be fully

polished and we were on I like a year long production so we would take the best programmer that we have for three months to see if it's going to work in game but it was totally worth the investment so we went with it and yes here happened so the final result so we went from the good character the first iteration now I'm still still like her but I think that the second one is a more iconic character I'm really really happy with the you know that that evolution in design I think that if the way we were challenged was the right challenge to give us and I was really happy to be to have decided to answer the call and one of the thing that happened is so we released the first trailer and since then we got a we got a lot of fan art and I'm really happy about that and you can see it that whatever the style that

the artists decided to depict off of you can see that it's still the same you know it's the same character because people understand language even the last one this one is my favorite there it's been the one with the fur middle child that's salami stop a song one of our artists little butter she's like a four year old and she decided to make a little drawing of her fighting monsters and at that point you're like yes this is that's like that that's a character so on that side I think at least for me it's great it's just great to be able to be able to see that you know people want to participate or it push them to you know paint or draw that character so so it's really humbling on our side so to conclude you know the thing is that taught for me it was difficult at first you know right

because I didn't drew a single art piece in the game so I'm going to talk about the the art but I really want to thank the thank the artists of child of light tamo values John began aging Ji Young Jin tail search makino nicola avec le ha que viva voce and sarah mezkappa song it's it's their work that is going to make the child of light so unique so vibrant and every time that somebody like it's telling me I'll I was going to be the gamepad this is going to be great I just hope that the game is going to be as as fun as it is beautiful because they really brought like artistry in this game I just went with that little vision of like let's make a game that would be a playable painting and they just just created the art that is at

least for me it's retouching I'm just want to finish with some IRS screenshot that we took straight from the engine last week sitting with with Tama I really think that the that vibe of creating a painting we was really really achieved by our artist that's it for the art of satellite thank you very much [Music] so effed I'm sorry for some questions and you can go get the microphone and

please state your name if you want so that it's there for posterity because it's filmed yes hello I miss when you have a fear I've got a terrible cold sorry I was wondering if like everything is made with real watercolor if what okay if it's made with watercolor yeah no it's all it's made with Photoshop yeah but no way what might we actually did is Nikolaevich one of our artists he actually did some watercolor spots so we painted a bunch of spots we scan them and could use that for our brush okay like that you brush okay awesome stuff thanks yes um hello I just wanted to ask you since you're apparently all kinds of Final Fantasy and like when I saw a little child with a really big sword yeah so that was part of the inspiration

to see cloud with a really huge sword and yes well the the inspiration with a big sword one of it is yes clouds but then there's also that thing where since the character grow alright you have that thing where there's the sword and the crown would be too big at the beginning because they like kind of like symbolically but it's too big because she's not ready for for that quest so there's the sword would be you know she would drop it drop it and I'm the sword which would be too big and when she would be an adult then it will be the right size and the crown would fit so I don't know it says that was you know one of the main reason why the the I love the big sword especially at the start of the game can be that feeling that she's not yet ready and she needs to go to that journey to be ready for for the for being like the the queen of the of that world thank you absolutely beautiful game thank you yes

hi could you talk a little bit about the challenges of integrating the 3d character into the 2d world and making it match with all the 2d creatures yeah okay so I want to be technical at first we integrated the the character trait in the environment but because the assets were flat she would clip in it so what Jeff did is the the character is running elsewhere like far away in in the world and we're displaying a 2d film of the character interacting well so I don't know how you might actually do it but that's that's how he does so basically the character is flat in the game and has some shell cell shading but the 3d character is not in the environment it's a it's a it's a movie of that picture that we're seeing so that that way she's fully integrated she's not sleeping with anything so that's how we managed to have that 3d character in 2d cool so it's like an orthographic camera that's projecting it yep thank you

thanks hi my name is gelling I was interested in because in recent modern times they were talking about Western gaming especially the integration as you said the concept of a badass female character like what actually solidify I feel like your character is very feminine and I really like that because it's not as if we have to push the girl into being like a strong tomboy while being strong and it seems like it from the screenshots that you kept that you keep that sense of femininity all the way up to the points when she grows through like what was the choice of that to fight convention in some way in comparison to what other games expect well on all the arts from like key Nielsen and and John Bower especially and yesterday cuz and I know there's a sense of feminity that I really loved that's you know what captured what I wanted to do so for me that was important to keep it I don't wanna it's like I don't want to have anything to badass that's the inside the

initial creative expression was that and then Jeffrey wrote a Jeffrey Alan Moore writer he started to wrote the story and I love that character I just loved her so at that point I wanted to have the character that was on paper represented on screen so so it made no sense to turn her into a a badass so so that's that's that's there the principle reason why you know it didn't work for me of course if somebody can make a female badass character it's it's okay but for this project where we were what was interesting for me it just it wasn't connecting so we kept going with something more delicate out of curiosity like did you receive a lot of contention I'm not contention maybe I'm not using the right word do you really receive a lot of no we should go for the badass

instead of actually accepting the way you went with the art direction from co-workers not on a project yes I got some guy at a bar it says never going to you and I'm going to play your game because it's a little girl said I don't care so know me that's the that's the point it's not important the important thing is you know what this is what I want to create I think there's going to be some value there and it don't look like nobody that everybody in the room plays Madden and they're not going to make the Madden player more feminine to attract another crowd so and every project has its own direction and for me you know I was I was sure in my art that this that wasn't it was the game we need to be thank you I was wondering if the idea for the game was inspired by the ub art framework or if you had this idea for a 2-d game already okay so the thing is I'm a you know why when I play on is

JRPGs that's what I play so I made a open-world games and shooters and there's a point where you may specially when you start making those open-world games when you make Assassin's Creed you don't want to start playing Batman because enjoying Batman you're deconstructing how they made stuff so to have some pleasure or stop working when you go on then I would return to the Japanese style game so if there would be one play and personally it's like you've been in the nest the industry for 10 years like 11 years ago would have tell me that she had the chance to make a turn-based RPG I wouldn't believe it either so for me that's like kind of a dream project and the fact that the ub art engine would be there then I kind of see it as a you know I wanted to go with with try that engine I could see as an opportunity to realized that thing in my bucket list you know to be able to you know what I

can make a jerk console type or J type RPG I can after that I can die ecke I had the pleasure to meet mister you should I come I know and did one art piece for us and and that's another part of the you know bucket kiss has been scratched and I it's like so yeah so for me that's like it's an amazing project amazing here so I hope that for everybody that you're going to love the frame the game after but you know for at least for me it's a kind of a dream a dream project thanks I'm looking forward to it thanks so so that's it no more question so thank you very much [Applause]