The Long, Perilous Journey of Creating "Cult Of The Lamb" — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 008

Mr James or you go by on social media how you doing man jimp yes very well how are you Thomas good very very good um so tell tell tell me a little bit about yourself I know who you are but the people listening probably don't they should because you are you and your team are responsible for I would argue devolver most successful game oh wow uh thank you very much I think you would agree right I don't know actually um I guess they did full guys originally but um yeah yeah it's done it's done well um so my name's James James permain I am the art director at massive monster um we recently put out Cult of the Lamb or actually it's been out for a year and a half now but it feels like it was recently um and yeah I'm here in in England Bristol England awesome so when you say art director you are doing the 2D Sprites for Colts of the Lamb yes uh well we we have a couple of other artists now um so

sort of the the art team at the moment is made up of um myself and then we have Carlos down dalmau who's kind of doing a lot of the art as well um and then Julian Wilton who's our creative director also does does some art as well um so my kind of my role has changed a little bit over over the last couple of years um but yeah definitely kind of did a lot of the artwork in the game and and the majority of all the animation as well right um yeah are you are you responsible for are you responsible for that look right that CT of the Lamb look it's that that edgy cute look um are you the guy who guides Are You The Guiding hand for that that art I um I I don't think I can take full credit for it because I think um Julian our creative director uh definitely did a lot of early pre-production work um but we kind of brainstormed a lot of ideas early on um so he kind of quickly moved to a more of a zoomed out role and kind of helping

with more Tech art stuff um but yeah like definitely kind of we we kind of work together to develop that and I think we kind of both have quite a similar art style so so kind of developed it together um yeah so I I I definitely can't take credit for that but as the project moved on I I kind of took the art director role and kind of did the majority of the artwork and kind of start working with other artists as well later on to kind of direct them and help them kind of um make stuff that would fit into the world sort of thing sweet sweet so let's let's start here we're going to we're going to talk about two primary things in this podcast the first one is uh I I I want to talk about the it's really about what makes effective artwork for a a video game um what makes it effective from a marketing perspective and I think Cult of the Lamb is a it's a case study in the the

marketability or how to make 2D art marketable and so I want to talk about that but I also want to talk about the technical side which is from point A to point Z how the how the game is created in the from the art perspective right before we talk about those two things though I wanted to ask you how you got into this to begin with um a lot of my listeners are hobbyists right now and they they probably felt the same way you felt like when you were I guess you started when you were a teenager maybe you can tell me more about it but I know when I started making games I felt like it was a silly hobby that it was never going to turn into anything it was never going to turn into a day job um so let's start with that before we even move into the art side of things how did you get into this what was your journey yeah yeah absolutely um so I I started um as as you said I guess just sort of a as a hobby making silly animations with flash um and posting them up on on new grounds

um and that was a lot of fun and it was mainly just sort of as a way to express myself and make stupid jokes with my friends um that kind of kind of quickly realized that I could actually make games with flash as well um and new grounds was a really good uh sort of creative Hub uh for that kind of thing and you could find other people to work with um and I I've never really been uh a programmer or had that my mind doesn't really work that way but um I kind of found some people to collaborate with and make some games with um just sort of for fun really um and then we then I did one game that um I found a a programmer who was a lot more experienced than I was uh we made a game and it did really well and made some good money uh and I was kind of like oh I can actually you know make money doing this that was I must have been so the game was called penguins with a zed uh and I must have been I think 18 19 um and it kind of we we did I don't know if if you remember

cuz I know you come from a similar background of the flash game thing very similar that's my first big paycheck was when I was 18 19 yeah yeah so I was like I made sure all my friends knew you know I remember I remember telling all my friends holy crap I just made 20 grand off of this stupid 15-minute Flash game on Newgrounds uh so very similar situation as you yeah yeah so that exact thing and and sort of had a big chunk of money like that and then I you know remember taking all my friends to Amsterdam and paying for everything um getting a penthouse blowing it all in you know I know right and then suddenly it's all gone yeah I oh I've spent it all so I'm going to have to do this again um yeah exactly but yeah and and I guess you I think you started out in a similar time where it was quite a lucrative thing um there was a bit of a bubble around the flash game thing and you could I mean I think the yeah you could make a game in a couple of weeks or a month and and make like tens of thousands of dollars which was insane at the time I was you know still University it's very different now now um but that

was kind of how I started right and really side note here from for the audience Monet monetizing a game is every year it's different like the the way you make money could be different in 2025 versus 2023 and 2024 so it's always going to be different OB obviously you're always going to have steam sales and that's a huge driver of I'm I'm sure your income and and how devolver is making money but um I just want my audience to know just because you and I made money when we were 18 doesn't mean it it's it's completely different now completely different um but yeah definitely and I and I kind of um I I think I feel very uh privileged to have cut my teeth at a time where it was possible to do that and and we kind of you know some of the games that we made didn't make loads of money and and we they kind of probably failed from a financial point of view but um it was very much like spending a couple of weeks or you know a month on a game and

getting some money from it or maybe not so much but but kind of learning from that and then moving on to the next one and it was a really good um good way of kind of figuring out what works and because with the flash games we're all about um getting huge numbers uh and also trying to hook players in as as quickly as possible uh because there's so many of these games on these free websites that um you really have to grab people's attention I think we kind of quickly learn what players responded well to and what they didn't so that so I feel yeah very lucky to have kind of started out there and and kind of learn so much um because now if you're trying to starting out and you're like okay well I'm going to make my first unity game and I'm going to make it on uh release it on Steam uh and try and monetize that you kind of to make something that's financially viable is probably going to take you at least 6 months or a year or two years or however long um and there's not really so much of a a place to do that um now while also making money um right so yeah and

so was was making Flash games and and had some some good success of that you know I worked on a lot of different flash games and started working quite closely with uh armor games and doing a lot of art for their games so we we did Sushi Cat which did really well and I I worked on some of the blue elephant games that um JM tbo2 made elephant Quest and achievement unlocked and uh those games um well I think it would be valuable really quick to just sorry to interrupt you Jim or or uh or James James we're gonna call you James okay let's give it James James not jimp uh whatever James let's sorry to interrupt you James but I want to make sure we we had Clarity here when you say you worked with armor games what do you mean is that a publisher or is that the the old Flash website and somehow they were paying you to make a game can you yes sorry so we the the way that traditionally with

flash games you would make money would be you make a game and then you'd find a publisher a sponsor to sponsor it and they would put their um put their branding on the the game that you made and then this game would sort of spread around these thousands of different Flash game websites and people would click the links uh on a game that they like and that would draw traffic back to the the sponsors um the sponsors website so that was the kind of traditional way but then we did some games that did well and arm games got in contact with me and they said look we we're developing some games in house would you like to uh create some artwork for them um so that was kind of a more of a commission based thing where it was like uh you know they pay me by the day um and it was more sort of developing games in house with them remotely but um uh uh so I was kind of doing that but then I was also making my own games that I would then get sponsorship with a with other programmers as well um but yeah it was all kind of ad driven rather than uh

people paying to play the games it was all like based on getting huge amounts of numbers uh you know you get one cents per click kind of thing or something like that yeah exactly gotcha um yeah and and so had some real good success there and then uh I think it just got harder and harder to make money with flash games and so uh the and the iPhone came out and I think people started playing Angry Birds um on their phones and iPads rather than playing Mini Clip games on the desktop um and yeah the bottom kind of fell out of it and we kind of were struggling more and more to to make a living doing it so um and that was about N9 or 10 years ago now and uh decided to start a a studio with uh with Jay Armstrong who you I know you know and have spoken to very recently uh and we we start a massive monster um I think about 9 and a half years ago now and we decided that we were going to make make real games you

know uh with for console I think we we were kind of given a Crossroads and it was like either move to mobile uh or or console Steam games and we chose the the steam steam isn't isn't mobile couldn't you say maybe I'm wrong here but mobile would be more comparable to the flash industry right where it's like the game is free and you got to figure out a way to make money somehow off of a ton of clicks I think so yeah um but we could kind of see where the monetization was going and I think with with flash it was all about just making something really fun that's going to grab people's attention whereas um with mobile it was more about um microtransactions and how can we make this really fun game less fun so people will spend money on it um and that always kind of rubb me the wrong way a little bit yeah me too just wanted to create a thing and put it out there and and not have um the monetization affect it uh creatively or

you know mechanically um so yeah that was the decision we made and and I'm glad we did because um you know I've got no beef real beef with mobile games and there's some great ones out there but I do like making things that um can be seen as a kind of a a piece of art and something you kind of P up excuse me something you pour your heart into and you have that that product not product that thing that you know uh people can attach themselves to you rather than um the kind of microtransactions monetization and all that fun World um yeah and here we and here we are and we made a made a few games um we made we we did Adventure Pals which I wasn't so directly involved with um but that that did pretty well and then we did another one called never give up which didn't do so well um and then cutle the Lambs was our third game okay well I let's let's sort of bridge the gap between this final point or the

the point right before you guys started working on Cult of the Lamb which is I I know the feeling which is you you spend four years working on a game and it just it's it just sort of flops on launch granted you know pinstripe my game pinstripe and also never give up and Adventure Palace we all shared the same publisher which was armor games yes and yes we made money I I know for me personally pinstripe made Armor Games money it it it ended up making money um which was awesome but it wasn't it wasn't that million-dollar game that I had dreamt of right and that was kind of a sad moment for me and so were you in a similar situation obviously we don't have to talk about numbers but in a similar situation where you're like well crap I I I put my heart and soul into this thing and it's not people don't seem to like it like I like it yeah I I think so to a degree I mean

I think it was a slightly different situation with um with never give up because that was more of a work for higher I see thing we we did with for AR armor games um who so it was based on an existing IP that they already had uh give up which was a very popular um Flash game that you know did some crazy numbers and Pewdiepie did a video and Markiplier and all these big YouTubers and it kind of went quite viral and I think they were like right we want to bring this to steam and kind of made like make like um a premium version um so it was kind of it was and I think at the time as well when we took that job it was like we' just been struggling for money for so long all the time um and it was kind of like it sounded like a fun project and you know we thought it' be good but it was wasn't necessarily kind of our baby our kind of big project that we had always always dreamt of doing um it was and it was also a really hard project throughout development and had lots of issues and um sort of trying to

do commission work and contract work as well at the same time to just pay the bills and stuff um yeah and then yeah so and then it came out and I still don't think it's actually recouped so it hasn't made any money um so it's prettyy tough and it yeah definitely pretty crushing I I think especially coming from that flash game thing where it's like every month you're working on something new and if that if that thing flops then okay well on to the next one it doesn't matter it's only a couple of weeks couple of months of your life uh whereas this was like years um it's pretty crushing I definitely had like pretty bad burnout after that well the same is true with Jay mentioned this that you know Adventure Pals didn't perform like they that you guys had hoped and there's this there's this sort of precipice that you guys landed on please correct me if I'm wrong where it's like you you you felt like we need to figure out how to make something that actually goes Gang Busters because those

two games that you worked on they didn't necessarily prove that you guys were Geniuses right um we knew we were we just needed to prove it right exactly I mean and I and I'm saying that from from my own personal emotional sort of uh Paradigm which is like I feel like I'm smart and I I just I just wish that and I feel like I'm creative and so there were times when I was making games where I would just be like I just I I in this game I just hope that the the audience can confirm what I believe you know and there were moments where that just didn't happen where it's like no you know it wasn't a great idea um so you're at this you're at this moment where you realize you need to make something Gang Busters and that is where we us we Usher into the conversation about Cult of the Lamb specifically I want to talk about Jay Jay mentioned in in a in the podcast that I did a couple weeks ago he mentioned that with Cult of the Lamb

you guys had a similar approach where you're like let's just make something silly and kind of wacky um where you're like this you're like a god riding on the back of a whale right that's right and something like that right and then was it you who said no we need to come up with something striking and something that has a very strong hook I think it was Julian who was okay well I think it was all of us I think yeah because very much we were definitely at that point where it was like make or break and particularly after you know crunching on never give up and completely flopping and as you say kind of knowing that we thought we could do something that was really great and and that people would res would would resonate with people but we were also like getting into debt uh just trying to pay the pay rent and the bills and it was definitely a point where like we really need to like we need to do do do this or not do it and if this next one flops then we

are we're done cuz we you can't do this forever right you'd be better off just going going to get a job somewhere um so yeah we definitely at that point um awesome okay so what are what are some things that you slowly learned after you know I guess it was a decade of making games what are some things that you learned from the art side that make a game eye-catching that make people stop and stare at the game what are some things that you feel um game developers need to to apply and that you applied to Cult of the Lamb I think yeah with so with the the kind of the the floating the God on a floating whale idea and we had like lots of different ideas um and we actually kind of got got far enough with that idea that we were pitching it to Publishers um at GDC and we kind of they weren't quite as interested um as we had hoped and we kind of went

back to the drawing board and we were like well why is that and we kind of realized that the the idea was quite convoluted and we there was a lot of different ideas going on and we really needed to find that kind of that Gem and that kind of concept um and idea and tagline that that people would resonate with and and from like um and that kind of goes through from the the idea of what the actual game is all the way through to the art style as well and they kind of all have to be um connected so I think for us it was from like a an art point of view it was once we had the idea like how do we attach um a style and um imagery that kind of helps Elevate that and and everything kind of needs to all be working together towards the same goal um so like the idea of of of start your own cult um once we had that idea and that theme uh there was so much like visual identity that we could

take from that um you know all the the religious imagery um and and like making sure that that uh goes through every single thing in the game um from the you know the the character designs to the colors you're using to the imagery throughout the world um it all kind of works together to to support that um idea of starting your own cult um gotcha yeah and that was yeah I think that was really a light bulb moment and we were kind of I don't know if you've ever been in this position where you're kind of you've got all these little nuggets of ideas and you're trying to piece them together and yeah you kind of got these characters in mind but they don't quite work for you and you got you know what the game is but it's like I don't know and then you for us anyway you kind of we had the the idea of starting your own cult and then everything else kind of came real naturally after that

um yeah yeah yeah I get I get it because um we're in that same exact situation with our game Twisted Tower and we stylistically we were kind of all over the place we knew we liked Bioshock right um but that wasn't that wasn't enough and so for for two years well it was probably about a year a year and a half we were it felt like we were sort of floundering and trying just trying to keep our head above water and not get drowned in too many ideas too many visual flavors and visual Styles and it wasn't until we realized that it's a first-person shooter fairy tale that's when we go got it that's the style um and it all clicked and that was actually very helpful with uh a conversation I had with Jay um it was about a year ago where I was like that's that's what we're going for and so essentially all

we had to do was we said okay let's take Cinderella let's take aliceon Wonderland and let's put that into a first-person shooter what does that look like right yeah um it's it was and so you're so you are so spoton when you say that the hook dictated the visual style um yes and my question about that is can the visual style dictate the hook or should it is it easier to start with the hook first and then spread that to the visual style I mean I don't think there's a right or wrong way of doing it I mean I think if you look at something like cuphead that the art style is so first and foremost like that is I don't even really know what it's a sid scrolling shooter it's a really hard Sid scrolling shooter but um it the art style almost defines that entire game um yeah but I guess you could even even

with that game you could probably use the same mentality which the hook is it's if a 1930s if a video game was in the 1930s right and so so that's the hook and then the visual style spreads after the hook yeah potentially maybe I don't know yeah but I I think you can you probably could approach it for both from both directions for us it was very much like we know we want to make stardy Valley meets Binding of Isaac but we need anide idea to to unify those and and as soon as it was like okay you're this you're this cult leader who's going out killing monsters recruiting cute animals to this cult uh and we had the cult theme um everything else kind of kind of came from that um and that and and we also had like all as you say have all these different pieces and you don't know how they'll fit together and then once you have that idea that defines the art style and it defines the game but there's also all these other pieces that don't fit into that that Vision that you just have to get rid of because uh

they're kind of muddying that vision and and making it um you know like the floating whale thing it just didn't make sense like we had this idea for the this floating whale and but it didn't really it was like a cool idea that we liked but it just didn't fit into that idea at all really and we could have probably trying to hammer it in but sometimes it's better just to sort of let let go of these things that you become attached to because you put time into it but um you to that's definitely a big big lesson we learned on this one the other thing I was going to say as well was um you know as as well as the finding the the hook and what the theme of your game is I think also just playing to your strengths and finding what your voice is as well because I think if you're if you're trying to sort of do something that doesn't come naturally and and doesn't um isn't you as as an artist then it's going to really hard the whole way through um to make it work so I think uh our games

have always been kind of cute cartoony 2D um kind of handdrawn style um so we it was really important to us to kind of keep that um as a huge part of the the game uh but then we knew we wanted to add these darker elements as well um and the religious imagery and that kind of helped it well that contr is a huge I yeah I think if we had tried to make it like really gritt gritty and and some kind of style that wasn't us and didn't come naturally then it would have been a lot harder to to stand out and for it to feel true to us gotcha um sorry we're getting some lag here hang on one sec can you say something no no it's not your fault um you there hello yes I'm I can hear you okay good yeah no big deal we don't need to you know start over or cut anything we we'll just keep rolling that that contrast is was it luck the the reason I say that is because your strength um

your yours and Julian's strength is cute hyper cute characters um and that was like I I think all the way back to the Happy Tree Friends do you remember Happy Tree Friends yeah of course um and I'm sure that was an inspiration for you guys because happy the reason why Happy Tree Friends and for th those of you listening who don't know it's just basically bunch of forest creatures super cute kind of like Warner Brothers Vibes or even even like a kid like a Nick Jr show but all of them are getting like slaughtered right that was from like early 2000s um I remember watching those videos and feeling really cool when I was in Middle School but the reason why those did so well is because there was contrast right you have super cute and then super dark and you slam them together and you get something that's viral when it comes to Cult of the Lamb was that an intentional thought process of we're going to create contrast how do we create contrast okay let's put Cults next to cute creatures or were you were

you kind of Lucky where it just worked out and that contrast became viral it was it was definitely a conscious decision to I mean I think it came in two parts the the first part was um we had a lot of our previous games um and like Adventure powers for example which is like really quite cute and kind of silly um and I think we saw a lot of comments of people thinking it was like a kids game um and kind of and I think as soon as you have that cartoon style particularly the a specific style which is quite like Saturday morning cartoon um I I think it instantly puts quite a lot of people off and then we were sort of seeing games like Don't Starve and Binding of Isaac um which had a real element of Darkness to them and and had huge success um I think it was so it was definitely a conscious decision to to that we wanted to keep keep the the kind of cute cartoony stuff

but we also really wanted to um to add the darkness and and make it a bit messed up um I I think coming from flash games the for me at least I think the the super cute cartoon stuff went really well and was really popular and and that I kind of fell into a little bit of a trap doing that um like starting out like you said I um I loved Happy Tree Friends and we and I even made like my own sort of knockoff happy true friends cartoons and that kind of thing but I kind of lost that kind of that Darkness a little bit um yep I think just because I I saw such success with the the cutesy stuff but then going to sort of Steam games I think the audience is quite different there um mhm that and they really appreciate that so it was it was definitely like quite early on um something that we wanted to do and before we had the the cult idea and then I think when we had that the idea start your own cult it just it all fell into

place because we're like right well you're this kind of you know satanic uh cult leader but then the animals are really cute and that kind of juer position um felt really natural and it came very naturally and it was a theme that we wanted to explore as well was the sort of the good and evil the light and dark the the cute and the horrific um and and as a cult leader like you're you're sort of you're given this power um do you do good or do you do bad um so that kind of it was it it was almost a happy accident um in that the kind of theme eventually came together so well with with the art Direction um so yeah it was a kind of mix of both I guess I guess well you know I see the game and I when I when I look at everything that from the game play to the story to the hook to the themes and and even to the visuals

everything it leans on one primary principle and this is just my theory it's all about contrast it's like there's contrast in everything and can we talk about that when it comes to color and lighting um and and and even like marketing material like when I look at cult to the lamb your color palette is so bizarre but it it's it I can I can almost taste it it's so flavorful how does it taste it tastes kind of like a a a really sugary cupcake with like Jalapenos in it oh nice awful I know right it's but you wouldn't think it works but there's actually desserts that do that where it's like you've got contrast of two two seemingly different flavors that wouldn't work together but they work you've got you've got vibrant almost it's almost like a neon red mixed with

like a parchment yellow um and so I'm curious if you could speak to just some tips and tricks and your thought process behind color theory when it comes to Cult of the Lamb yeah totally I mean I think very early on the project originally we wanted to make the whole game in this um very limited color palette uh and I think we were like you know let's you got pick five colors and everything in the game has got to use just those colors and there's no other colors allowed and and and I think um some games do that really well and keep things really striking for us that idea kind of fell away a little bit because I think we wanted all these different color animals and we wanted the the biomes to feel quite different color-wise um but that that idea um still kind of persisted through a lot of the marketing images and and um the characters um so I think yeah pick a a palette to that kind of defines your

game early on can be really powerful um even if you don't like exclusively use it for the artwork um I think it can really help um form the identity of the game so I think with coton the lamb you got the the black and the red um which are kind of quite evil and dark but then is had the uh the kind of light white white cream color to kind of represent the lightness um and also there's like a kind of bright uh G neony greeny blue that we use as well um which is quite a light sort of holy holy color um which we don't use as often but um yeah and I think that really helped particularly with like the UI and the the kind of the marketing stuff to just keep things consistent and kind of uh keep like an a visual identity for the game that kind of goes through everything um so yeah I think that's super valuable to do um so how did you go ahead I'm sorry I was

going to say um so it's kind of quite early on in the project we kind of in the pre we went through a lot of pre-production and we we we kind of came up with this color scheme and the the fonts and some symbols and um basically a set of rules and visual motifs that um that we wanted to use and kind of created a bit of a Bible um and that was really useful just as we kind of went through the the full production of the game to to have that to refer back to um and make sure everything kind of uses some of these ideas and I think especially when you're kind of bringing in on other artists as well like later in the process it's really useful to have those those rules you set out for the the world and the the imagery and the the identity of the game um to have that to refer back to um and make sure that you're kind of yeah just it's that's permeating through every every aspect of it yeah color is a it's almost like a sixth sense um obviously we can all see you know but what I mean is like

to be able to know which colors work together just right away like you could immediately go red black cream like you just know um a lot of people listening I would argue the majority of listeners they don't have that sense and that's not it's not anybody's fault it's just certain people are just gifted in that way could you recommend any way for my audience to know where to what to lean on if they don't necessarily have that gifting yeah are there any tools or or websites they can lean on to to choose a color palette yeah and there's loads of websites out there um even like you go on illustrator and there's kind of um you can choose different color palettes and it will it will show you what the complimentary colors are so if if you pick like let's say a red that you really like and you're like okay I want to base this I want to use this color as like the the kind of coral um it will then it will show you and they have different names of like the different

color theory um palettes and it will show you all the different complimentary colors and the secondary colors and that can be really useful um even if you like you know you don't know I don't really know too much color theory and I kind of Base a lot of stuff on just trial and error to be if I'm perfectly honest uh and but you kind of find that the stuff that you end up stumbling on through trial and error uh is actually following the the rules of color theory so just just like you know picking a color that you think looks really nice using a tool to find the compliment complimentary colors um is a really good way of kind of getting you there um and I'm sure there's loads of YouTube um tutorials about uh and or videos about like the meaning behind different colors like you know red is a kind of warning danger color whereas blue is kind of serene and relaxing and all these uh different kind of uh themes and emotions that you can attach to different colors um should be

relatively easy to find um and I think a lot of it is kind of almost obvious when you read it but um yep I think well you know there's there's uh something I've identified I I've studied y'all's artwork um obsessively because I love I love 2D art and I I'm so impressed with what you've done and something I've noticed is there's there's three types of contrast you use you use contrast in Hue contrast in lightness and contrast in saturation um the point being you know with Hue it's complimentary colors so you have you have a red and then you have a the blue right yeah um those are your complimentary colors generally speaking and it might be a full like 180 degree contrast but it might actually be even triatic I'm not sure but you also have contrast in saturation which is you've got that low saturation um uh almost like a a paper color the

the cream right and then you've got a super high saturation like 100% High saturation of that red right yeah and then you've also got contrast in lightness where you've got dark dark shadows and Silhouettes and then you've got vibrant bright probably near the center of where you manage your cult so you've got this sort of contrast in in every way when it comes to color you guys have really really mastered that because when I look at your previous games you didn't necessarily do that um I want to lead that into a question I sort of a final question about color which is how did you guys ever stretch your legs outside of those rules was there ever a moment where you go you know what we need to do a little bit of pink here or we need to do a little bit of yellow here yeah definitely and I think that's kind of why yeah originally as I say we were trying to use this very limited palette but it kind of felt a little bit too limiting in the to use for everything um

because we yeah we we wanted the game to feel really vibrant as well and I think all our games have always have been and we want it to feel yeah super colorful and like a Saturday morning cartoon so I think there's definitely areas that you can can stray stray from it but some sometimes it does just look out a place so I think it's for me it's just been a bit of trial and error um yeah uh and making certain things pop that you want to kind of draw attention to um I think with all the all the kind of core things and the main visual language in the game we we do try and stick to it uh to those kind of core um core colors that we use for the identity but yeah I I do find myself just putting in other stuff here and there just to kind of make it feel unique in the world kind of thing like for like for example we we got all these buildings in the cult right and and um um a lot of it is kind of it's all like

natural materials and a lot of it is uh wood and stone and you know wood painted red and using that kind of uh that palette that we've used for a lot of stuff um and and green as well for like the grass cuz you wanted it to feel verdant and and um you know luscious um but I have found with like more the more recent buildings I kind of want to mix up a little bit so we've added like a tailor building and I just didn't feel right in all these different colors and I tried all the different colors and then I kind of just tried it like a a pink and purple and it just just worked and it it it gave the it's quite a flamboyant kind of color scheme um which kind of fits with the idea of uh tailoring clothes and dressing up your followers and it just made it it kind of gave that building its own identity and there wasn't really much of a like mindset or reasoning behind it other than that I was just trying all these different colors and that worked it looked it looked good and it just it just felt right so um I think a lot of it is just kind of what feels right and

what um experimenting I think and don't be too afraid to break your own rules as well cuz um you know that's that's sometimes where the magic comes from if it's not working and you're following all these rules that you set and then sometimes when the uh when you break your own rules that's when the kind of real magic happens okay so to sort of wrap up the color conversation would you agree that the it's it's a it's a generally it's a good idea to have a set color palette that is your brand it's kind of what you put in your your Bible your your the bi for those who listening who don't know a Bible would be what are the fonts what are the colors what's the what's the themes what are the the symbols and identities um so yes it's good to have a set standard for color and to build your game on that foundation and then once you're sort of once you fully understand that language that color language then you can start sprinkling in new colors but it's it's

best to start with a foundation first would you agree that that's a general a good general rule absolutely yeah yeah and that really helps kind of uh just give it that identity and and feel consistent um okay yeah ties cool okay well now that we understand how you created this uh or or sort of the thought process or the philosophy behind the art Direction let's talk about the technical side okay um before we get into the the point A to point Z of how you actually did it all um let's talk about tools really quick so let's just really quick list off the tools you use for the artwork yeah uh super simple really we just draw everything in Photoshop import it into Unity job done for the animation I use spine which is really good uh a great little 2D animation tool um but yeah beyond that there's not really much else it's all what about an illustrator haven't used illustrator for anything

Nate me neither um I I I don't like using it it's so clunky for me um it's heavy uh kind of like Overkill I mean I I always come from that that flash flash game background which is Vector based um so this was actually the first game we ever did that used photoshops and it was uh quite The Learning Experience going from doing everything in Flash to photoshop but I think we wanted there's another thing that we kind of noticed looking at a lot of um other games was like having that kind of more textured feel um that you you you can only really get from bit from bit map is is gives a kind of sense of I don't know what it is it's a sort of sense of depth and grit and almost authenticity and it might just be like a what what's currently popular thing um but that was kind of definitely a conscious decision as well was to try and keep the cartoony uh

Cartoon bright colorful style but also add that layering the the darkness and the and the grit and slightly rough edges uh to the lines and stuff um so yeah it was it was definitely a big learning process moving from that but then we were like yeah it's there's no Vector it's all it's all uh all Photoshop um okay well what about what about sourcing texture work um sourcing brushes um yes we've got Photoshop and we've got unity and they work those two are probably open 95% of the time but do you ever find yourself in a browser going in and grabbing some textures or assets yeah so yeah we definitely we found some brushes um that we liked and that were kind of just you know available for free and then we kind of tweak them a little bit we've got like the we the LINE Brush and then we've got the the shading brush and then there's like a watercolor brush which we use to kind of create a lot of the the shadows and textures and kind of grit I guess um and so we don't really use too much

actual like uh like textures Sprites or anything in the game it's all kind of usually just drawn by hand um but yeah definitely finding the right brushes cuz was a big part of just trying to get the get the style we wanted down and having those and again like putting those in the Bible and deciding what the line widths are going to use for the characters are and what the line widths we're going to use for the uh the environments are and what brush we're going to use for the shadows and making sure that we follow that throughout the whole game and so it's everything's consistent there um but yeah it's pretty B pretty basic really we got four three or four four four brushes in Photoshop um and then just draw it draw it straight in Photoshop import into unity and yeah there's not much too much else from like a technical point of view until uh it's in actually in the game

and then well what about Hardware are we using a mouse are we using a Wacom pen tablet yeah I got Wacom um which is great um and just uh I started out on a Mac MacBook um and the the Photoshop files just got bigger and bigger and the MacBook kind of struggled more and more and uh Julian persuaded me to to get decent PC and it was um y it was amazing to be honest like it's amazing having the the scratch discs not running out and just you know I think once you working with big files it really slows you down eventually you could buy a Mac that that runs great but it would be five grand exactly so yeah that's true um I I had to convert to PC as well obviously but I ended up actually one sec I'm going to show the camera I ended up buying a a Mac Studio because I because it's the only um well

it's the only thing that'll run logic pro so I write my write my music as well so I have my setup here currently is I have a little switcher it it's stuck to the side of my PC and it switches between my my two monitors it'll switch both monitors between Mac and PC um sort yeah it's I'm trying my best to automate everything because um and that's why I I have my my keyboard on my desk right now my my uh MIDI controller because uh as quick as possible um I could switch between different crafts um the the the less frustrated I am when I'm making games so that's that's what I'm kind of setting up my studio to do right now but for you you know yeah I appreciate it for you you're just spending all your time in Photoshop right Photoshop you have a pen tablet and then are you importing the psds psbs or pngs to Unity usually it's

pngs yeah really so you're exporting everything and you're not you're not you're not saving the psds yeah I don't know if that's the right way to do it to be honest uh with with spine um we we do export the psds cuz um you can kind of set the layers up uh yeah in for a character and you have like the arms and different body parts and then you can export the PSD and then import that into SP into spine which is is Sav some time but um yeah usually I don't know I don't know man we don't know what we're doing we're just well clearly you did yeah I asked because I abandoned exporting pgs and I also abandoned spine for unity's proprietary PSD importer they also have a PSB importer which allows you to weight paint your actual uh character inside of unity with unity's new uh 2D animation tool so I was curious because because I I left spine but I'm I know that it's

still having updates and I was curious um about that so let's let's move this discussion into the technical side I would love to hear and we could talk about spine and and all that um I'm GNA frame this question so that you can you can hopefully give us like the most effective answer um because I could say how did you do it like how how how are you creating art but what I'm going to frame the question is is a little bit more precise which is if you were to tell your your let's say your 18-year-old self here's how you're going to do artwork from start to finish for this multi-million dollar explosive viral game what is that process like from start to finish that means from ideation to pen and paper to photoshop to Unity what's the process look like from like from a creative point of view or yeah that the creative side but primarily the technical side the creative side would

be like more like the ideas and um but mainly I'm looking for like the technical side like if you were to teach this and and people wanted to learn how you did what you did with the artwork what's it look like um that's tricky I think just just just practice Lots right uh and and learn how to use the tools as well and I'm I'm still I'm very stuck in my ways about not learning new techniques and stuff so I think it's just like I really I really am and it um and it's bad but I I think you it's really important to be to not be afraid of learning new techniques and cuz even like going from flash to photoshop I was really stubborn about it and I didn't like it and it took me a long while to get used to it but yeah I think ultimately it was it was for the best so I think it's just really important yeah and this is you know this is advice for myself right now as well is is don't be afraid of you know learning and and pushing yourself to try new things and techniques uh cuz in the long run you're probably going to save yourself a lot time um but yeah I don't know I think just just um just

stick at it and and keep practicing and learning and does it start let's let's figure out like the the the line okay so starting from point A to point B it's a difficult question I understand I I I totally get it that's why I'm trying to I'm trying to learn how to frame this when I ask developers who come on the podcast because it's a difficult question which is what cuz a lot of times we're just on autopilot and it's like what you just draw a character and learn how to draw a character so maybe I'll ask it a different way does it start on a piece of paper does for example a character does it start as a sketch usually I I'm not the I don't do too much drawing on paper um I I I find it kind of quicker um and I'm just so used to drawing on a on a computer and but but yeah I think it's kind of with yeah how do you start out with drawing a character designing it I think it's figuring out what what the character's personality is and what

are the goals that you want the character to be so for for C of the lamb um we wanted the lamb to to feel really iconic and simple uh but also you know complicated enough that it was it felt interesting um and we and that that kind of involved a lots of tweaking and copy and pasting the same of design but changing the side the eyes slightly or changing the the style of the ears or and just kind of really going through iteration and kind of doing it in a I mean I'd love to say you just kind of sit and sketch it a few times and then you're like okay that's the that's the perfect character but it's really been a kind of a case of iterating and just tiny changes until you kind of figure out the what works best through um just changing things and and kind of yeah going through many many different versions um and maybe that's not the kind of right the most creative

alter way like you love to think that um true artists just create things that are thin air but that for us that's definitely been the the process you know drawing lots of things picking bits that you kind of like from one others and kind of putting them together and then redrawing it and redrawing it and eventually you kind of get to something you're like okay this is this is the one um yep and so that's all done in Photoshop you just open up Photoshop is it a 4K document for let's say a character for example so would you just start with a 4K document or would you start really rough super duper rough yeah just like super lines and kind of because I think you kind of want the you know it's important that the silhouette strong um and the the the main features are like the defining features are kind of figured out first and then once you have and you can do that just with very simple thick basic lines it doesn't have to like look too good it's just like uh fig figuring out what the Yeah the silhouette and the defining features of that character are and then once you

have that you can go in and um do more details and kind of tweak the different features and try out different ideas for them um until you're kind of iterating it and then once you're like okay this is the design and it's still kind of rough but I've kind of copy and pasted the horns from this one onto this one and then I'm like okay this looks good and then you kind of actually draw it for real kind of thing once your the design is is decided it's um yeah if you do the the one and that's when you try and like really caring about making every line perfect and until that point you don't need to worry too much about that um so it's kind of like a logo it's kind of like logo design yeah totally yep okay tell me more about this tell me more about the silhouette what do you mean by silhouette is strong what does that mean um so I think there's this principle that you that a good character has like a really you can tell which what the character is just by looking at his silhouette so if you kind of take take um Homer Simpson or Marge Simpson and just fill it in full black and all you can see is the the shadow of it the

silhouette uh you can still recognize what the character is and it has a very clean well- defined silhouette um and that just really helps with just making a character recognizable and um iconic um cuz sometimes you have you know I'm drawing a character and I'm like okay I want it to have huge horns and I want it to have these kind of I don't know big eyebrows and ears or whatever but if they're kind of overlapping and it kind of makes a bit of a mess it doesn't make doesn't just doesn't work and it doesn't it looks a bit messy and you're like okay well I wanted it to have these big horns but if I shrink the horns a little bit and it kind of stops overlapping from the ears or whatever then that kind of it the overall uh design is is a lot stronger and more easy for for the viewer to kind of um decipher a glance and just I don't know it's a kind of it's a funny thing that you just kind of intrinsically notice I think or subconsciously notice

yeah I've been I've been learning that actually it's so funny I've been doing this for 10 years honestly it's been about 15 years of making games we're making 3D games now but you know I was making 2D games you know right alongside you we were just in different places in the world uh and we didn't know each other but we were making 2D games at the same sort of age and time and I never I never knew about the silhouette principle I just I guess instinctively kind of understood it yeah um you know I think it's what yeah there's so many different Theory things that you you don't necessarily know the theory behind but you kind of you read about the theory and you're like okay well I I do that already and I it took me six years to figure out I wish I'd read a book I know I know I know well okay so so do you illustrate your characters or do you let's say do you conceptualize your characters in the context of the game so what I mean is do you screen shot something from the game do you understand what your world looks like

before you make your character because I know when it comes to the silhouette you can't even see the silhouette if the character is blending into the color palette of the background um so what's your process look like there yeah I think you definitely want to know the context of what it's going to be in um particularly I mean I guess for for Cult of a lamb if I'm designing an and because we kind of wanted the the designs of the characters to be quite um like the enemies and stuff we wanted each biome to have its own uh kind of type of animal and and color palette and we want the certain enemies if if an enemy's if it's an enemy that kind of shoots a exploding bomb and there's like a there's a frog that does that or there's uh you know there's a jellyfish that does a similar thing we want those all those kind of types of enemies to be a specific color but then we also want them to fit in their respective biomes um and then

there's also like these uh kind of orange globules that we have on certain enemies and if they if an enemy has that then it explodes uh well you know it's going to explode when you kill it kind of thing and all these kind of different rules um that you kind of uh used to the player kind of understands and maybe that's something that's a little bit more specific to enemy design or you know the the more the gameplay stuff um yeah so you kind of develop this visual language and it's kind of tricky because sometimes it can be hard to be creative because you're like okay well it's got to be an a frog because it's in this area and it's got to be this color CU it's you know this type of enemy and it's got to have this because it's going to do this when it dies and um you got to kind of design the character within those uh limitations I guess okay um okay so you've you got your character you you use context so you're creating

your character maybe with a backdrop or a background in Photoshop to to understand where it is when it comes to the color so it stands out yeah now do you are your characters um are they designed with layers um or do you do you merge all the layers together and it's just a drawing and then you create Sprite animations from it or do you up the character with various layers what's your process like for animation and setting it up for rigging yeah it's all in different layers um so and I I really like um with C valan we wanted we wanted a Vibe right and we wanted a very bouncy kind of everything's moving all the time so I think I like having different bits that I know are going to move or going to kind of wave um and stuff so you kind of everything's on a separate layer and then uh if an arm uh you know it's going to bend you have to kind of draw it straight um because you're going to rig that up to a mesh so you certain things you'll have

to draw like or jellyfish for example all the the jellyfish tendrils will have to be draw them straight so then you can kind of uh turn them into a mesh and bind the mesh to a bone and make them animated so yeah draw everything straight and in a way that is not deformed and it can be deformed from um export them into spine and then you you kind of set them up in the the layout that they're going to have attach bones to them if it's going to be a mesh which means yeah just um kind of you want to deform them like you would a jellyfish limb or um I mean pretty much everything in cat of the Lamb is meshes cuz we really wanted everything to have a sort of squash and a stretch and a sway and a uh we want it to feel bouncy um and yeah and then just attach the bones to it and and you're good to go gotcha gotcha so let's talk about iteration really quick how often I'm going to assume please correct me if I'm wrong but I'm going to assume that you weren't just one and done it's

like yay we we made the protagonist and we're good to go did you did you have to go back to the drawing board and do it all over again multiple times oh my God so many times with everything like we um particularly early on in the game when we're you know even when we decided the the cult theme and stuff we really were absolutely brutal with everything uh particularly like the important stuff but even the stuff that isn't even that important just um uh really particularly like me Jay and Julian just just being brutal with each other about what we thought about it and whether it worked or if it sucked or if we think it could be better um and then you finally get to a place where you're like okay this is good and you get it in and it's good and then you're like okay I'm happy with this this is great how can we elevate it and make it even better um and that's sort of something we've really tried to do throughout the whole process with everything in the game was was really um when you're happy with it and you think it's good enough how can you make it better

um really pushing yourself to to do that um it was brutal process though well you you mentioned it's brutal my what I'm curious about is did it ever make you think like we're incompetent and we're we're we're wa we're we are a wasteful team um I asked that from personal experience cuz I feel that way all the time especially when I'm delegating to a team cuz I'm like I'm sorry you're going to have to redo this but you need to redo it and then I already apologized for it and then two weeks later I say sorry bud you're going to have to redo it again and so I feel incompetent you know yeah totally I always feel I always feel that um you know impostor syndrome and I think everyone does but to be honest I think it's um it's something that keeps you humble uh I think as as soon as you think everything you do is hot then you're GNA stop trying so I think it's I think it's important to to keep that uh but yeah it can be very

frustrating and it can be I I think particularly at the beginning of the project where I was at a place where we just don't never give up it it flopped didn't make any money I was very frustrated I was moving from flash to photoshop it's kind of it's about and just um felt like nothing was good enough but I think you you just have to kind of stick with it and really uh find your motivation and dig deep and and um yeah just just keep banging your head about it sometimes move on to something different um and then come back to it with fresh eyes um I have a very bad habit of kind of sitting and being like okay I'm I'm going to get this character or animation or whatever it's done done this evening and then it's sort of 2: a.m. and it's it's still not good enough um no I'm not going to bed until it's done but I think sometimes walking away and coming back to it with fresh eyes can be really valuable um I the same way throwing it away starting from scratch yeah man it's such a terrible feeling

it's almost like a drug where you're you're you're glued to your computer and you for me so I've got three kids well I've got a third one on the way and nice I get off at I'm I I'm supposed to get off at 5:30 and when it's 5:29 I'm like so obsessed with trying to figure something out you know and you got to just you almost got to rip the Band-Aid off and like slam your computer your laptop closed or turn your computer off and just get out uh and stop yourself because something about making games is super addicting I don't do you feel that way do you feel kind of like a workaholic oh yeah I'm a complete obsess obssessive um you know really dialing down and obsessing over every tiny little detail like sometimes to the pixel you know was ridiculous but um it just doesn't quite look right and you tweaking it tweaking it tweaking it

tweaking it and eventually you get there um but yeah I think uh I think it's a dangerous thing but I also I I kind of I don't think I think it'd be very hard to do it without without having a little bit of that in you yeah well John Carpenter I don't know if you like any of his films um but I don't know if I've watched too much of it but yeah I'm I'm well aware and thing and he um he mentioned that he never likes his movies he's never happy with his films um when I see Colt of the Lamb I think this is a perfect game there there are there's literally I do I really do I see a perfect game and I'm I'm sure most people do um my question for you is sort of wrap this up here this is sort of a final question do you see a perfect game no definitely not uh definitely not uh I I yeah I I think

you I don't know if there's even a such thing as a perfect game um and I think you're always thinking about things that you can improve you're always seeing the flaws in it um but it's just about getting it to a place where you're as as close as possible to being happy I mean I was I was playing I started playing uh Hol night again uh over the weekend and I was playing that game and then I kind of jumped over to Cult of the Lamb just cuz the the new updates just came out and I wanted to test it a little bit on Playstation cuz I haven't played the new update on Playstation I was like going from Hollow night to Cult of the Lamb I was like God damn it the colors are all wrong it this looks like crap compared to hollow night um and yeah you know you you're always thinking of oh could have done this better it's too late now but um yeah yeah I I struggled to even even see that discrepancy like when I see C of lamb and I see Hollow Knight to me they're they're both equally equally

valid in their their um their visuals uh I take that as a huge compliment thank you I'm not sure I Hollow Knight Hollow KN Hollow Knight is a huge inspiration to me as well yeah and it obviously and there's there's something there's something to be said about the painful growth or the the the painful process of learning to hate what you just loved so like you like you mentioned staying up till 2: a.m. and you're you're you're making these characters perfect well they're perfect until 2 am and then a week later you look back and you go well actually I should have done this and I should have done that you know and so you know you're you've grown right and so that is like I can't I I what I'm trying to say here is 99.9% of the people listening to this podcast don't

have that visual muscle that you now have where you can critique Cult of the lamb but I couldn't and my audience couldn't we couldn't see what you see and that is a huge gift but it also hurts at the same time you know what I mean that's why we're just still updating the game just going to be we'll do another one in in 10 years time and I'll still be like yes it's not it's not perfect yet it's yeah exactly exactly yeah well speaking of updates uh to wrap up here um we in the description of this video is the obviously link to Colt of the lamb um but you guys recently did an update uh do you want to talk about it yeah we did um we did an update called sins of the flesh which uh adds it's kind of meant to be the the cult depth update so the previous one we did was like more depth to the dungeon and this one's more depth to the cult um ideally

we would have done both at the same time but we just ended up adding so much stuff uh but yeah it's uh it adds lots of new fun stuff like uh follower mating so you can have a little have two followers go in the little tent and you get an egg and then you can hatch the egg into a baby follower um and you can do a nudism ritual so you know your followers will throw their robes off and dance around with a little leaf covering their private Parts um that's so funny there's a drink house so you can you can grow hops and grapes and Brew brew uh drinks for your followers to get uh befuddled or yeah um get them all drunk um I love that such a good idea that's so good man well kind creating sin that's right exactly so you're kind of in a situation where feature creep is is happening after launch uh which is great cuz it keeps people engaged and you you guys have a I think you have an evergreen game and you should be really

really proud um and so yeah dude I'm so grateful for your time here I feel really really lucky to be able to talk to you because not everybody can and um I appreciate your time dude a thank you so much for having me Thomas it's been lovely um big fan of your work as well so it's um yeah it's been great to catch up um yeah yeah thank you very much yeah man all right take it easy bye get over [Music] here hey thanks for watching by the way if you haven't downloaded that free 2D game kit below click below it's my treat to you I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days and actually got to play it with him in front of his audience which is really cool this game kit is totally free it's my treat to you and you can use it however you want you can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit I don't care or you could just use it for a hobby project it's my treat to you and by the way if you haven't clicked like that would mean a ton to me hit subscribe and also this

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