We received a lot of amazing feedback from the Beyond These Stars Demo (and yes, we were listening 👀), especially when it came to our Peep Character portraits. So we went back to the drawing board, reworked, refined and reimagined them.
Which means that now… it’s time to introduce the new and improved Peep Portraits!
A lot of the feedback focused on how our original Peep Portraits didn’t quite fit the feel and art style of the game, so we tasked one of our artists, Reyna, with bringing our Peeps to a new level. And boy did she deliver!
I asked Reyna what her thought process and inspiration were while designing our new characters:
“I read through the lore document Laura had provided me and focused on how best to communicate their personalities through expression, the way they wore their clothing and how they would emote. I was given very detailed physical descriptions of the characters, so focused more on exploring art style than exploring the physical features of the characters themselves”
“As for inspirations, I was inspired by the art of Hades, Pyre and Prince of Persia the Lost Crown but we wanted to find something that more closely matched the 3D style of Beyond These Stars so I did some very cartoon versions of the characters and some more realistic versions of the characters and we settled on something between the two. The old art was very helpful because I was able to ask ‘what would these characters look like if I mixed in a little more realism" and go from there.’ ”
Of course, throughout Beyond These Stars you’ll be introduced to some other fun characters throughout your journey. While we won’t spoil anything just yet on who they may be, if you’ve spent some time in our Community Discord you may have heard of the infamous Ublo. This cheeky Alien has also received a makeover - here’s a peek!
We absolutely adore our Peeps new look’, and we hope that you love them just as much as we do! And of course, a HUGE props to Reyna for bringing our beloved Peep crew to life with this re-design! We can’t wait to see your reactions to the designs on release!
If you want to keep up to date with these little Dev blogs and join the discussion, be sure to head over to our Community Discord! 🔗: https://discord.com/invite/balancingmonkeygames