★Indie games by Greg Lobanov & friends★
This week we’re here to talk about Kichik, the body-focused emu chick monster athlete from Beastieball. Beastieball’s Kickstarter campaign is now in its final two weeks (!!!) with just a handful of remaining stretch goals to hit. If you’re excited about sports monsters and/or want to get your hands on some of the exclusive items we made for this campaign, then now’s the time…!
Unlike the other starters, Kichik was mostly designed just by Alexis, our Beastie director and animator. Alexis always has a hand in every design, but many are driven just by her - like this one, which was a bit special for her.
Alexis: I had always planned to do some sort of strong-legged flightless bird beastie, though I wasn’t sure exactly what their theme was going to be, other than the vague direction of ‘strong legs, kicks ball, big feet’. I started trying to cartoon an emu chick, figuring out what to emphasize, and thinking about how it would move and hit a ball. I kind of love the big-floppy-wings version, but it felt like they were getting in the way of their legs, and making them feel very duck-like.
Greg: The game starts by having the player choose their first Beastie from a set of 3 - this is something Pokemon does too, and it’s frankly good game design that we couldn’t improve on. You want players to choose their own Beasties so that they feel a personal connection to them; and 3 is the perfect number of choices (just enough to have a “favorite”, but just few enough to not be paralyzing). So before even a single design was done, we knew we needed 3 “starter” Beasties at some point. Once I saw these sketches, they seemed like a natural choice as a “starter Beastie” since they perfectly encapsulate the “sports + animals” theme of the entire game - most designs get a lot more loose with that premise.
Alexis: These were all done (I think?) before we’d brought other concept artists on board, so I was very much still figuring out what constituted a beastie! It’s hard to know when a design is done at the best of times, and harder when you don’t have much to compare it to. These are still rough drawings, but even considering that, they look a little underbaked in hindsight!
Alexis: I had originally been going for sort of a kids’ soccer team outfit, with a shorts-like body shape and a vertical stripe along the side. The feather on the head is a nod to a theme that appears in their grown-up form, which… To be frank, doesn’t really come across, even if you know what that form is haha! I felt like it wasn’t quite finished, but wasn’t sure where to go with it, so I stopped looking at it for a while and focused on other designs.
Alexis: Once we had Axolati finished and Bildit started, I had a good basis for comparison! …..aaaaand it was pretty clear right away that Kichik needed stronger shapes, simpler and more decisive details, and a clearer indication of their theming! And maybe a little more colour.
Greg: Making the stripes yellow here was my idea! We had established a color theme of blue, pink and yellow for the key types in the game (Mind, Spirit, Body) and I wanted to highlight Kichik’s focus with the colors more. Alexis has a tendency to make every creature brown or gray because she prefers naturalistic colors, whereas I’m all about oversaturated neons. Somewhere between our preferences is a happy medium.
Alexis: I liked the personality of the original design, so I tried to iterate on the shapes and proportions while keeping that feeling the same. I made the shorts a lot more obvious, moved their leg detail down so it didn’t break up the shorts’ silhouette, brought the wings back in a simpler form, and simplified their head feathers to match the scale and shape of the wing feathers. Feet got a lot bigger, and generally speaking I tried to make them look just a tiny bit more grown-up, as the previous version felt very babylike alongside the others.
Greg: Because they’re a starter, many decisions are made specifically to make them stand out next to the other 2 creatures. So with Axolati being such a perfect round circle, we decided to make Kichik more square-like and the last one more triangular. It helped us hone in on what made each one unique - squaring off Kichik’s shapes made them feel more strong and solid.
Alexis: I definitely have a tendency to lean towards more organic animal shapes and colours when designing a creature. This game is giving me a lot of opportunities to recognize that, and to try to push myself towards stronger shape language and bolder decisions!
Greg: It’s amazing how, even with a simple design, there are so many subtle considerations!
See you next time, where we’ll talk about designing everyone’s favorite blue bilby, Bildit!