The Banner Saga Post-funding Update #18: Art Blog and More
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The Sketch
We start every character (Re: class) with a sketch phase where we try out different looks and styles. What's this classes job in combat? Are they heavily armored or are they a damage dealer?Since we've set the Banner Saga in a low fantasy setting it's important to us to make a viking look like a viking, not some random fantasy barbarian with huge shoulder pads and spikes and...whatever. Keeping every class looking like they could exist in a real world is the major motivating factor behind each design. Here's the final sketch of the Axeman, which eventually became the Backbiter, one of the upgraded, or promoted versions of the base Axeman.
The Combat
The next step is to take the sketch we've got and design it to be used in-game on the combat board. Even though the combat design is, in this case, different than the sketch you can see the similarities and the reason for doing a sketch phase previous to this. You may wonder why we didn't do a larger, more detailed phase before this, but the way a class appears in combat is of the utmost importance to us. I've kept the details in his design simple, not just to help time estimates during the hand animated process, but also because I believe this is in keeping with what I see in the older animated movies. I favor burly beards and macho mustaches on my vikings so I went that route for this guy. Since we're using an animated style it's important for us to use colors that aren't garish, but rather a bit desaturated to go with our real world approach. We throw the concept onto our game board and see what he looks like in context with all the other classes. It's very cool and rewarding for us to see all the classes in our game on some big combat board all sized correctly and posed next to each other to see how they interact with each other visually.
The Rough
Okay we've got the combat design complete after some back and forth with the other guys up here and we're happy with it. We then take the combat design we've got and convert it into a rough that will later be used in close-ups for dialogue and UI screens. It's a time to finalize the details of the combat design. You'll notice his axe is just a viking axe as you'd see them use in a real world setting, it's not some huge, highly ornate epic fantasy weapon. The shield is what vikings actually used, it's a worn wooden shield which keeps the weight down, important during long combat, overlaid with metal to add rigidity and support. His jerkin is what you may see an average northman wearing, and so on and so forth. As average and normal as this man looks you should also get the idea that he's pretty serious and could kill you if need be. He's not called an Axeman for nuthin'!
