stippling in every shot to make sure it had the right look, so nothing was just dropped in and left. I called this ‘bedding in’ and it was to me the final touches that made it feel finished. Once that was
Be afeared...
ready I then handed the file over to Dom to add them into Unity in their split up layers. Once there, the lighting and fog could be added and any point lights to help gameplay. We both collaborated on this part with myself art directing and Dom implementing the process to achieve the finished result.
WERE THERE ANY UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTIES IN IMPLEMENTING THE LOOK AND FEEL OF THE GAME? Dom: The goal was to make the game look like Tom’s paintings, but there are some features to his style that took some work to get into the game. For example, Tom likes to draw really strong lighting with really strong highlights that give the images that characteristic high-contrast you see all over his work. In the game the lighting had to be much more dynamic, with moving light sources, and light sources that could turn on and off. It was crucial to try to find a rendering and lighting solution that would look in motion how Tom’s drawings look on paper. It took a lot of attempts to find something we liked. We similarly had a lot of work to do to develop a terrain painting/level art workflow that worked for us. In Silt we did all the level design in a digital painting program rather than in the game engine. It took a long time to develop the toolset to make this work well, but once it worked it meant we could mimic Tom’s art style by literally having him paint the game like it was a regular digital painting. Making sure Tom’s workflow was similar to his familiar digital art workflow really helped create a direct line from what Tom draws and how the game actually looks.
60 | MCV/DEVELOP August 2022
HOW DIFFERENT DOES THE RELEASED GAME LOOK FROM HOW IT WAS ENVISIONED? Tom: I tend to dream extremely big so the only real difference for me was how much we could feasibly do in the time and budget we had for a small team. Considering this was our first game though, what was discussed in the early stages certainly came through. Any project will turn out differently to what’s inside your head, I think that’s just the nature of art. We are all very proud of how Silt turned out and it’s been a journey and then some to get here, that’s for sure!
AS THE ART CAME TOGETHER, DID IT INFLUENCE THE GAME DESIGN IN ANY WAY? Dom: The art is central to the game design. When we’re designing for Silt we start entirely with visuals, concepts, references, etc. Once we have a theme for an area I start to think about creatures that are interesting for gameplay and that fit the theme, and Tom starts to generate dozens of possible versions of such a creature. As we’re building levels, we are constantly going back and forth between the level as an abstract puzzle room, and the level as a work of visual art. Sometimes the puzzle constrains things about the image, ‘this wall needs to go here’, ‘this gap needs to be this wide’, etc. We try to keep the constraints as minimal as possible and then let Tom’s visual instincts guide the rest of the level design.
ARE YOU PLEASED WITH HOW THE GAME TURNED OUT, ESPECIALLY IN TERMS OF ITS AESTHETIC? Tom: Very pleased! To be honest, sometimes I have to pinch myself that I have blagged such a career and that my artwork has been made into a game. It really is a dream come true and a lovely feeling as an artist to know that my ideas now have a world to inhabit. Aesthetically there’s always improvements and things you can tweak of course, but I am immensely proud of our debut and very much looking forward to the next one! Dom: My barometer of success here is whether Tom likes it. He is his own worst critic and he’s a real perfectionist. I’m sure there are elements here and there where he’d prefer it looked a little different but in general if he’s signed
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