The Art of... Weird West


Released this year by WolfEye Studios and Devolver Digital, Weird West offers a dark fantasy reimagining of the Wild West, with gunslingers going up against weird and fantastical creatures. Richie Shoemaker catches up with WolfEye Studio’s Etienne Aubert to find out more


HOW DID THE IDEA FOR THE GAME’S VISUAL DESIGN COME ABOUT? From our childhood that never left us? Let’s see… Westerns are cool, especially those from Sergio Leone… ah yes, but what about monsters that can creepily crawl toward you? Or these monstrosities that like to spit poison at you? Or a world with pigmen cannibals? Sure, we can add it…


Oh, and you would find it cool to climb on


the roof of a saloon, to shoot these annoying witches with our level action rifle? Seems fun… ah yes, and adding something Dark, can we do it? Ok guys, I’ve got an idea: Let’s take all of that and mix it into a single world! As for the technique itself, the choice was


pretty obvious.


When Raphael and Julien told me that they wanted to create a complex game with a lot of detailed places, characters and exploration, and that we will be a team of two or three artists, the first thing to take into consideration was to find something that will be easy to produce. So, let’s cut the technical part as much as we can, and see what we can achieve with the most basic tools, if possible. Luckily, my background as a traditional 2D animator, where I worked with pencil and paper for several animated feature films for Walt Disney Animation, was an advantage. Let’s just replace the paper by a tablet and the pencil by a photoshop brush, and we should be able to create something that will be visually appealing.


52 | MCV/DEVELOP May 2022


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