An indie game based on Winsor McCay's groundbreaking comic strip.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello dear backers!
I realize that this is your second update of the evening after the Discord update (or if you're seeing this not as a backer - please consider becoming one for all the exclusive stuff like our Discord server and developer brainstorming podcast!), but there's an exciting update series that we wanted to introduce today: Artwork Wednesdays!
This is going to be where we show off new artwork for the game or deep dive into the game's look. For this introductory episode, I thought I'd share the elements of the game's art style, and where how it connects to the source material!
As we discussed both on the page and in a previous update, the game pulls from a lot of retro classics, but the heart and soul of our game lies in the original Little Nemo in Slumberland comics. These comics were created by comics and animation pioneer Winsor McCay starting in 1905. A self-trained artist, McCay's comic was known for not only its serialized storytelling (stories were told over the course of multiple strips), but also for its draftsmanship, 4th wall breaking, and inventive use of page layouts
McCay drew with a thick outer line, which he drew first when he drew his characters, and thin inner and background lines. This is consistent with the Art Nouveau style, a movement in the graphic and applied arts popular between 1890 and 1910. This connection led Winsor McCay biographer John Canemaker to refer to this technique as the "Art Nouveau" line, and it's a key element of our drawing. McCay's thin inner lines on many of his characters have an almost minimalist sketch-like quality - boosted to clarity by the carefully drafted outer line.
We recreate this in our own process via separate adjustment layers for outer and inner lines, in case we implement a character and find that their artwork needs to be adjusted.
We also try to keep details on the characters simple and not over-drawn so that the characters are economical to draw and animate.
McCay's character's faces have dot eyes with tiny eyebrows, the bottom lines of noses (unless the character has a particularly large or round nose), and mouths drawn only where their shadows occur (corners of the mouth only on smiles, single lines, or circles when surprised) We are adapting this style to be inclusive of techniques in comic art that have come in the intervening years between McCay's and our own times - for all of McCay's skill, he did not have the graphic language that we do today to create character expressions.
Likewise, cloth is drawn minimally. Modern cartooning minimizes clothing wrinkles since they are hard to animate and increase drawing time. McCay was not animating his drawings but was working on tight deadlines so he drew clothing wrinkles with quick, thin, pen lines to show at least some minimum draping.
Little Nemo in Slumberland was not colored by hand, but using the Ben Day Lithographic process. McCay would include detailed color notes with his pages on what colors things should be. While there are pages that include smooth gradients and other effects, art generally used 1-tone blocks of color encased in black lines, except in very occasional cases (Nemo's pajamas, which usually featured some shadowing to break up the white.) As I tell contributing artists in our style guide: "do not use shadows or shading on characters unless instructed."
To get the older comic look that's become a Hallmark of Little Nemo, we sample all of the colors we can from the comic itself, this gives characters a richness that otherwise wouldn't be there (if Nemo's pajamas were straightforward white instead of an aged-newsprint off-white.
Last is how we deal with the color black. If a character was wearing a dark suit or dress, or if there were very strong shadows, McCay would just black them out completely with his ink brush. This eliminates a lot of work for us on characters like Doctor Pill or the Nightmare Fiends, but it also means that we have to be creative with his animations so that we maintain a good silhouette, meaning that you can read his pose if you were to only look at him as a shadow. While this is normally just a theoretical animation guideline, we are literally animating as silhouettes with these characters.
As you can see, getting the look of Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends right is no small task! We think that the final product will be more than worth it though. We also hope you enjoyed this Artwork Wednesday look inside our art process and stay tuned for more updates and game development deep-dives.
Cheers,
Chris and Team Nemo
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Dear backers,
Happy Monday!
After our Nintendo Switch announcement yesterday, we want to keep the momentum for the campaign going and we need your help!
Here's the deal: IF we can get to 50% funded ($35,000) by Saturday, March 13 at 11:59pm EST, all backers whose rewards include the game will receive:
Help us get this dream game funded (and beyond!!) by sharing the campaign far and wide (reddit, Discord servers, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, anywhere you can!)
We can do it everyone!
Team Nemo