Backstage Pass #1 - Developing The Art Of Rockbeasts

Rockbeasts! Welcome to the first of our Backstage Pass Dev Blogs! In this series of short posts we want to give you a glimpse behind the scenes as we move towards Rockbeasts' release, sharing our insight into the development process and more detail about the game itself!

In this first Backstage Pass blog, we're pulling back the curtain on the art process behind the character designs in Rockbeasts! Our fantastic lead artist, Mateusz took inspiration from a few different sources when designing the look of Rockbeasts: animated shows like Daria, Beavis and Butt-Head, Bob's Burgers and Bojack Horseman, as well as graphic novels like Blacksad and Maus, and games such as Night in the Woods!

As you'll see below, the game's art style went through several iterations before we honed in on the final designs!

Original Human Design Style

One of the toughest challenges we faced when designing the art of Rockbeasts, was creating an art style that stayed true to the personality of the characters we were creating, while also being easy to animate and that would allow players to customize their band as they see fit.

Early in the design process, we explored using human characters in the game. This would give our characters the full range of emotional expression that we were looking for, but we ended up deciding against this direction in favour of using animal designs for characters instead.

We felt that using animal designs would allow us to play into the well-known animal archetypes that players immediately understand and associate with certain characteristics. For example, players immediately understand the personality of an awkward and introverted fish, a tired old lion, or a timid young mouse.

Games like Night in The Woods, movies like Zootopia, cartoons like BoJack Horseman, and comic books like Blacksad were all inspirations behind the anthropomorphic animal designs we moved towards. If you haven't already, we'd recommend checking out all of the pieces of media that inspired Rockbeasts!

Grungy 90s Zines Design Style

We also explored styles that were more reminiscent of '90s comics and zines with a look that was grungier and more punky. As seen above, one of the first iterations of Paz was much more detailed in this style, but it proved very difficult to animate. Especially once we decided that we wanted players to connect with the characters' emotions as much as possible, meaning that the animation style had to be able to show every sly smile or brief grimace. As much as we liked the look of this grungier style, it would have taken a lot of work to animate it to the level we needed.

That proved tricky using a comic book style too. There were just too many things to redraw and adjust for each animation. Something that would have been almost impossible for a tiny indie studio like us.

Vector Art Prototypes

At the beginning of Rockbeasts development, we started doing all animations in Spine using 2D character skeletons. We were happy with the flexibility the software gave us in-game, so we now knew that we needed an art style that would look good when paired with the animations in Spine. For early prototypes we used vector art like the example above, as it was easy to work with in Spine.

Whilst we were getting to grips with Spine, we were also working on an art style that would be more detailed and could replace the prototype designs. The sketches above don't necessarily match any of the characters you'll find in the final game, but they should give a good idea of the direction we were moving in.

MTV-Inspired Design Style

We started looking at 2D cartoons for inspiration, especially '90s MTV shows like Daria and Beavis and Butthead. The art in these '90s and 2000s cartoons had faced and conquered the same issues we were facing with animation and expressing characters' emotions, so they were a natural fit as inspiration for Rockbeasts.

We landed on something that was really close to what we'd envisioned - a punky and retro style that suited the themes of the game. But also a style that we could animate using our team's tools and know-how.

With so much dialogue in the game we also had to introduce lip-sync into the designs, refining the look of the characters' mouths to make sure they still looked natural when speaking. There's a big difference between how Vernon's beak and Carlton's fish mouth looks when they're talking!

We also didn't just want animal heads on top of human bodies, we wanted that '90s cartoon feel. That meant designing a llama with a moustache or a chicken-lady with a majestic blonde hairdo that only a supermodel could pull off. We also play around with how "animal" the characters are. You might notice a koala in Rockbeasts having two thumbs, for instance.

Character Customization

The last step in the design process was band customization! We knew from early on that we wanted to give players the option to change the look of their band. In Rockbeasts, players have the freedom to dress their band up in different outfits at gigs, shoot music videos in outrageous hairdos, and much more. This level of roleplaying was super important to us, as we wanted the player to be able to guide the direction that their band went down over the course of playing. One player's band might be full-on glam rockers whilst another might stick to a grungier, Nirvana-like vibe.

This level of customization again proved quite challenging, requiring more cleaning up of the overall design that we'd chosen to move forward with. We had to make sure that every item of clothing and every hairstyle looked right for each of the characters as well as looking natural during animations.

Overall, getting the art in Rockbeasts to where it is today was a process, but we're happy with the style we landed on. It gives us the flexibility we need while still having that 90's cartoon vibe we wanted for our game. The animals, the line-art, and all the details in each character help bring the game world to life.