So much goes into the development of an Xbox® game, but perhaps the most important element is the art. Without good graphics, evocative images, and imaginative characters, a game falls flat. Thus, when the team at FASA set out to design the art for Crimson Skies®: High Road to Revenge™, they counted on Robert Olson, the Project Art Director, to bring the alternative America of 1937 to life. Olson led the art team in its flight through the many obstacles and challenges of the artistic process. Let's meet him and hear about his war on boring graphics!
Xbox.com: Where do you begin when designing the art for a computer game?
Olson: There are a few correct answers to this question, but the first thing that needs done is the project leads need to agree on what kind of game they're making and on who comprises their audience. If just one of the elements is out of place with the overall theme, it ruins the player's experience. Once the game and projected audience are established, we begin to solidify an art direction that supports the game's tone. We develop concept art that will help the whole design team visualize the world we want to create. It is an iterative process and much of the work being done at this phase is thrown out, but it is crucial to the development of a solid art direction.
Xbox.com: How many people contributed to the art of Crimson Skies?
Olson: A quick count of the credits tells me that there were over 60 different people who participated in creating art for Crimson Skies. This doesn't mean we had 60 artists working on the game all the time. There was actually a pretty small team of artists for most of the project, but the team would grow or shrink to accommodate the various stages of the production cycle.
Xbox.com: How did you decide what the main character, Nathan, would look like?
Olson: The original PC version of Crimson Skies used a 1930s radio drama presentation to set a pulpy tone for the game. The original Nathan Zachary was pretty campy but fit well with the theme of the game. Since our direction for Crimson Skies: HRTR was considerably different than the first, we knew we would need to give Nathan a makeover.
We began by defining the qualities Nathan would possess (or, in some cases, ones he wouldn't) that would help our audience relate to him better. We wanted him to be self-deprecating without being an idiot. It was important that he became a hero through the outcome of his actions rather than being born a hero. We wanted Nathan to have a sense of humor, but not be a jerk. He should look at home covered in grease while working on his plane but should shine up nice at the end of the day when it was time to hit the nightclub. All in all, we wanted Nathan to be a somewhat ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances.
Xbox.com: How do you make the characters look so good when animated?
Olson: Since our characters would all be computer-generated, we knew it would be challenging to come up with compelling characters. Photo-realistic, computer-generated, human characters always tend to come across feeling lifeless and look odd when you see them animated. We decided we would use a somewhat stylized caricature approach for the CG characters so they wouldn't appear unnatural when they were animated. I then began working with a sculptor to create busts of all of the main characters that could be used as reference when we entered production. They still had to go through revisions during the production cycle and may not look exactly like the original maquettes, but I think the final CG characters do a great job giving our game believable and likeable characters our audience can relate to.
Xbox.com: Were there any designs that were thrown away?
Olson: We threw away more designs than we kept. Like everything else, all of the characters went through many revisions until we found the ones we thought were best. This may sound somewhat wasteful, but it's a necessary part of the game development process and helps ensure that the highest quality content makes it into the game.
Special thanks to Robert Olson, project art director for Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge for the Xbox, for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Be sure to look on the Crimson Skies page on Xbox.com for the second part of this interview.
