One of the big challenges on the project, was to create an art style that was original, catchy, pleasing, and satirical, all at the same time. We were going to use real life people and include them in the game, but not with realistic visuals, and it had to work well.
The only direction given to our art director, Stéphane Chung, was to try to create his own version of the satirical cartoonists you can find in newspapers, like Eric Allie for instance. It was only a guideline : the objectives of originality and catchiness were paramount.
Searching for an art style out of the blue is like a shot in the dark, I wasn't sure we would end up somewhere good. But it went incredibly fast. The research process was done in about a month.
Research had been done initially by concept artist Gilbert Han. This was very useful to cover all across the map and have an idea of the general direction.
Stéphane then started with some scribbling to establish his style. He drew a few characters in a more or less realistic fashion.
We quickly set up to small characters with disformed heads - the goal was to recognize each person, while having them relatively small on the screen. So the head had to account for a third to half of the total height (a lesser challenge in the case of the former french president).
Once the satirical drawing was established, and size ratio validated, only half of the way had been covered. There could be any number of rendering of the style. We could go for shaded, videogame-like art.
Of we could try to stick to newspaper cartoon style, or pixel art, or anything! As long as you don't try, you can't be sure what will work out.
Of the last five tests, the middle one (Khameiny) was the most promising. What was left to do at this stage? Creating the initial characters, detail them and tweak them. For instance here, Hillary could appear more or less old, more or less hippy...
And once everyone agrees on an image, it has to be detailed in great lengths on a character sheet, to get to the next step, 3D rendering.
Here you can see Stéphane working on yet another character :)
