Beyond Eyes - The art of - Part 1

The art of beyond eyes

Introduction

Occassionally in my career as a game artist I get to work on something really unique that explores a lot of new artistic techniques. I recently completed such a Project called "Beyond Eyes" for Team17. This was an incredibly original project in both theme and art direction so I thought I should write a small piece about how the art was created,decisions regards art style and the techniques used for those who may be interested.

Art Credits

The majority of art in this game was created by Team17s Art Direction Manager Nick Gomersall and myself. We done a little outsourcing when deadlines were looming and had the occassional artist helping here and there but everything you see was either created by us or retouched by us. Also to note Andy Morris created the animation.

It is all possible from an original concept by Sherida Halatoe who is the creative force behind the game.

I also must thank all the people at Team17 for making this game possible. You know who you are you beautiful people!

I am only going to concentrate on some of the early elements of the game too as I dont want to do any spoilers for those who havent played it. A part two will follow in a short while once the game has been out a while I can go into depth on later levels and other aspects of the art.

Premise

A young girl called Rae is the games main protagonist, blinded in a fireworks accident as a young girl she becomes a recluse, her only companion being a cat called Nani. One day Nani goes missing and Rae must face her greatest fears and go on an adventure in search of her best friend.

Art Direction

The interesting thing about this game is that we were not trying to create "real" we are trying to create an imagined perception.

What would a blind person "see"? how would Rae perceive the world in her minds eye? A mix of memories and emotion from the point of view of someone who maybe only has vague memories of the visual world. These were then to be intertwined with her own imagination, her emotional state and represented somehow graphically.

As any artist will say its not what you draw but the image each person sees in there mind when they fill in the "gaps" in the drawing. Art is as much about perception as it is reality this is a game that explores imagination and perceptions.

A theme we were all keen to explore was that Raes memories would be a mix of her favourite books as a child and her memories of reality when she had sight. One source of inspiration we looked to was children's books of all kinds, from beautifully illustrated classic dutch fairy tales which Sherida wanted to incorporate through to modern, more abstract children's books. It was important the visual style of the game was a blend of a child's memories and childrens illustration.

Memories are never perfect they never are reality, this is something we worked hard to convey.

Lighting

Without lighting you cannot describe form but in the same respect how would a blind person describe light? We initially wanted the game completely flat shaded but it was difficult to judge depth and looked too flat. After some experimentation we settled on a few common lighting rules.

Rae herself would be lit and shaded by the sun as a blind person could "feel" the warmth and direction of the sun.This also helped her to stand out a little. It made her feel like the most "Solid" object in the world.

The world would only have very vague ambient occlusion to help describe shapes and forms. This would be baked into textures and vertices.

"None more black!" A common thing in most childrens illustration is no use of black. Not only is it good practise in traditional painting it also keeps the world vibrant. We followed the rules of impressionist painting and put colour into all the Ambient Shadows. Normally in a game this is defined by the skydome but as there was no skydome we went with what felt right. It didnt always follow the rule of blues in the shadows either. Some shadows have purples or reds or greens.

To help represent the game as imagined by Rae the overall palette would change depending Raes mood. Happy is sunny and colourful, fear and sadness would be represented by a dark palette of desaturated colours.

Texturing

While many games strive for realism this game was quite the opposite, this was all about feel. In much the same way as some art seeks to capture photographic reality we were seeking to capture an elusive dream like quality of half finished images. memory is not a digital photograph it is embued with emotions, vague hazy areas and details only where they are important. This was something we worked hard to convey.

Shaders were limited in use the only one of note being the actual "reveal" shader which was designed to look like blotting ink or running watercolours. The shader was quite expensive regards rendering performance so we had to work around that. Look for the water shader too on the stream it has some interesting effects.

In this waste bin asset you can see an example of the brush strokes and unfinished quality to the artwork. Paint is dabbed on as if the artist wasnt concerned with filling in details just "representing" a bin. This style carries through every asset in the game including characters. Even faces are indistinct which is contradictory to every other videogame where faces are usually always the main focus.

There is no specular in this game. Specular indicates light source and we wanted the lighting as vague as possible. The "Shiny" look also wouldn't suit the illustrated style. There are no normal maps either, for sophisticated organic shapes we modelled them in "just enough" polys to convey the shape. It would not have suited the game to have perfectly realised animal anatomy we just had to suggest recognisable animals as Rae may have imagined them.

Paint strokes are also apparent on the animals too Here are some pics of creatures in the game along with there accompanying texture page. Note the use of blue in the shadow bake, the unfinished brush strokes. The goal was not to make the animals "real" but maybe like a half finished illustration with obvious brush marks. Did Rae ever meet a dog? or is it a memory of a dog from a book she read? It still had to be obvious to the player what it was but I left many details unfinished

I used a lot of Zbrush in this, not just to paint out UV seams but sometimes to just paint directly on to the model.

All of these are just screen grabs from MAYA I wanted you to see them as is without "retouching"

I tried to also occassionally use "wrong" colours, I wanted to suggest that Raes memory of colour wasnt entirely accurate. You can see this in many assets with deliberate wrong colours. This cow is a good example of this, it had a habit of appearing in many demo videos for E3,

Purple cow for the win!

Work smarter not harder, with only two of us and limited time we had to be clever with how we produced assets. When game design asked for a "scarey" dog I just remodelled the first dog slightly and re-painted it in zbrush. we done this with many assets, birds I made too are all a variation on the first bird. This only works for so long before you have to completley redo the mesh though.

I love the water colour blotting on this dog.

I would often take the texture painting too far and they would start looking like real animals, often I had to dial it back. I originally made the woodpecker too real and had to knock its details back. It is incredibly difficult as a trained artist to not do highly finished pieces of work. Nick and I both struggled with this concept early on.

Some sort of "fur" shader would have looked odd, to get around this I just fattened up some of the animals and suggested it in the texture. Nani is a good example of this. Also in this example the eyes were too detailed, later on we blurred out the eye detail on the creatures and people. Is there a greater meaning to this?

Props and Dressing objects

The same stroked rough brush techniques were also used in all the dressing objects too. AO would be baked in to either the verts on the textures which ever gave the best result. We couldnt bake lighting into other UV channels as these were being used for clever reveal shader things. I think this boat worked well as a good expression of the technique. Note the purples in the shadows? This object appears in a stormy level.

The image above has a dark desaturated blue in the AO whereas the image below has a light greenish blue baked into the shadows. The boat is used on a stormy raining level whereas the market is on a sunny day. The same painting techniques are carried through both.

Where would a video game without barrels? These ones dont explode and dont need to be used as cover. Text in the game was often blurred and unreadable although it hints that the games takes place in a french speaking place. While we never define exactly where the game is set a lot of it is suggested as to maybe france which is nice as rural france was the home of so many great painters.

These are just dressing props but you can see how deceptively simple the textures look.

There are many shops in this game each of which had to be populated with props, luckily these props also found a second usage on the pier.

There were many bespoke objects that were critical to the furthering of Raes story, this is one of them, the Culvert. Techniques for different stones and metal were all explored and then kept consistant through the game but always with brush strokes and blurred details. I like how the rusted metal turned out on this.

For larger objects such as buildings we created a selection of "parts" and dressing ojects we could use over and over in different situations. This also helped keep the world believable and consistant.

Environment

The environment especially vegetation and ground textures were a real challenge. I originally had beautiful alpha brush strokes for the foliage but this proved problematic with performance and sort order. Unlike a typical game Beyond Eyes can end up showing the level in its entirety. In the end I had to get the best result I could with a 1bit alpha shader. Leaves became paint daubs and rough strokes. Also note the unusual colours in the trunk. I was always looking for places where I could offset the palette into new strange colours.

Can you spot the hidden chicken? his name is Steve!

Below you can see some example foliage textures, there apparent simplicity belies a great deal of trial and error in getting the final look. Its too easy to overly detail vegetation when in any great painting it is often just suggested through simple strokes and daubs.

This is the school, many of the buildings were built out of a series of component parts then dressed with the occassional special prop. The advantages of this system are speed at creating assets but it also helps to keep the world consistent. Often in old towns the architecture of all the buildings is defined by the materials available so there is usually a consistant look to everything.

The game features full weather and seasonal variation, We simply done different textures and mixed it with some particle effects. The game fades between different texture sets, this is an old technique but still effective.