Overview:

This Game is About Robots is heavily stylized. Taking a lot of inspiration from retro sci-fi illustrative media of the 70s-80s, and putting a contemporary spin on it, gives it a sense of uniqueness. This stylization is still based around physical based rendering pipelines, and adheres to those rules in most cases. These rules are broken for certain specific situations.

Key stylization principles:

• Stylization is achieved in this order:
  • Silhouette
  • Unity and cohesion in shape language
  • Stylized PBR materials
  • Custom shaders
  • Final post processing
• Energy should feel like a natural force in the environment. Energy is signified by emissive lights, and the color denotes the purpose and function these objects serve in the world. Are they interactable, set dressing, lights, or navigation lights?
  • Cool → warm spectrum in emissive temperature shows how much energy an object has, or can receive.
• Limited color palette, with bright saturated oranges and blue pastels being the highest points of contrast in an environment
  • Contrasts with cold metallic grey of ships interior. Depending on the mood and desired feel of a space, this can vary.
  • Color must be done intentionally, no colors can distract or detract from navigation and wayfinding in a level. This means restricting a particular level’s set dressing to a certain kind of “biome”.
• High contrast. This above all is the main tool of directing players in our levels. Areas of interest are given contrast in through silhouette, lighting, and color.
• Lighting through physical values. All lights have a source in the level that is visible and quantified through real world values. Overall temperature is skewed to a cooler side.
• Let the tools, shaders, and post processing work as a tool to enhance the art, they do not become the main way of stylizing the game.

Early Concepts / Moodboards:

Silhouette:

For interactable objects, silhouettes are defined by what function they serve.

• Objects that contain energy:
  • Large, cylindrical jar shapes. Feels like the contain some kind of liquid energy