I think it was. I was sat at home with a pregnant wife, about to make a child, going, oh my God, I've got to get my life together. I'd been working in the advertising industry for a few years. After Moon, I spent three years in an ad agency, and then I left that to get back to where my heart was, which was science fiction. And I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do. And honestly, Star Citizen just kind of appeared like destiny manifest. It was awesome.
TL;DRRothery and Jones recall the Gladius as the studio's first ship together, built before the studio's processes were set, with early concept images they now find rough compared with the beautiful finished build.
I'm just going to do a share screen then and I'll show you a few bits and pieces. So this was the first ship that I did working together with Mr. Jones. So what you're seeing on your screen now is one of the earliest attempts at what a Gladius might be. So obviously it looks a bit hacky looking at it now. I've got to say as well, this is what, six, seven years old, Paul?
Pre-knowledge, we were just discussing, weren't we? I thought I knew spaceships because I'd built some previously, but I really knew nothing about spaceship design at all. So for me, it was a real trial by fire. But Chris was just like, you need a ship for Squadron. Just get one built, like a medium fighter, a light fighter, the Gladius.
So you see it quite quickly starts to get refined as we're working together. And you can see even right back at the beginning, the Gladius had a certain manifest destiny right from the beginning. But you can see the shape coming together quite quickly. I think one of the things I always loved about working with you, Paul, particularly, is that whenever we get our teeth into something, we get a lot of progress quite quickly, it feels like. We move when we work. And I always really appreciate that.
I mean, I think we have a good understanding now, basically. So it's like a support system. Obviously Gav does most of the heavy lifting and I sort of come in and just zhuzh it along in places.
It's a little more than that. This whole thing was pre-promo piece too. So when we were doing this, we weren't doing promo pieces. It was just to get a look at the ship. So my deliverable, I mean, it still is, but back then, my deliverable was these two images, this one and this one, to get a look at the ship. These look so bad and old now. I've got to apologize. I feel like I've grown a lot over the last six years.
No. I delivered this and also the 3D concept mesh for the build team, because all this comes from a 3D model. But this is back before we did promo pieces, right? So this is just images to see.
No, I mean, I took this piece because there was a point that we did need to do some promo for it. But I think I did two images. It was almost like an old war piece, like a collectible you'd find on a desk and it'd be worn. It's got a coffee stain on it and stuff like that. I think that was probably the start of the promo.
That was the studio's first ship. Once it got built, once it got put into production, that had a lot of love. There was at least six to nine months on that ship.
I think this is one of the things about it that bugs me too. The end result in the game came out so beautifully that I don't feel like my concept art shows that off. So I'd love to be able to go, look, I've got all my Gladius work, it's so awesome. And I've just got a couple of really cool scrappy little images to show. And the end ship's beautiful. And when the build was finished, it was gorgeous.
TL;DRThey say they never drag an old ship forward, but they do experiment with many variants at the start of each ship, which Chris expects, and he then picks pieces from different versions.
I mean, we do occasionally. I think really whenever we start a ship, we've never gone back into previous versions of things and just gone, right, that one, and just dragged it forward. That's never happened. But we do experiment quite a bit, don't we, Paul, at the beginning of a ship? Especially now that we've got our groove on, we'll do quite a lot of versions of things.
Yeah, definitely. And it's part of the process now. That's the expectation from Chris, is that he wants to see those variants, and my job and Gav's job is to basically provide variety. And then some bits he might really dislike, some bits he might really like, and he'll sort of pick a bit of A, bit of C, bit of D. And then we move forward. But when it's the new function stuff, I don't know, I find that the scariest time because I'm just like, I don't know what Chris is expecting.
TL;DRRothery and Jones recall the Prowler as a complex, intense ship with a new alien art style that several concept artists worked on, with Rothery doing the mesh and one image before the work moved in-house.
This one really sits with me because my girlfriend's Australian and I was about to go on one of those massive, cool, big holidays. I've only ever had one of in my life, this one. So I was about to go to Australia. So I remember when I delivered this, I basically dropped this ship and jumped in a taxi and was off to Heathrow. So I've always got really visceral memories of finishing this ship. Plus, when we did this ship, actually, let me just do a screen share. When we finished this ship, I recall, I'm not quite sure what was happening, but I remember I took a break after this. We had a little break from each other, Paul, do you remember?
It was a pretty intense ship, this one, though, because I threw quite a few concept people on this, not so much a shotgun approach, but just working with different strengths because it was just so new and so alien. So there was just a lot of stuff to figure out, wasn't there? And it was complex as well. All the things that had to shift out of the way and move, and just brand new art style, brand new interior. But this is without the cockpit as well, right?
This is the only image of the Prowler that I did. I remember I put the mesh together, got all the mesh work done, fired that over, and I did one of the interior that wasn't quite finished, I think. I remember I passed it over, do you remember?
Oh yeah, that's right. So we brought it in-house and continued with the promo in-house. So basically everyone had a bite of the cherry right at the end.
There's a little bit, I guess, from the cockpit. Do you remember, Paulie? We went backwards and forwards over these angles and lines on the ship, didn't we? Things like the engine intakes, really complicated ships.
But I guess it's not so much of the Gladius in there. I guess it was more Sabre. It was sort of heading in that territory. But then it's a stealth bomber. So that was heavily influencing it.
It was one of those things where I remember when we were designing the vehicle in its entirety, Paul, right? We started with a chassis, didn't we? We were trying to take the proper automotive approach, the design engineering approach. And we spent quite a bit of time on the chassis, and the wheels, we just had blocked out cylinders for wheels for quite a long time. And I always just wanted to do some signature stuff that just stood out a bit and looked cool.
TL;DRJones says the central hole came from the rule of cool, with the silhouette resembling two joined claw hammers, and that Chris later wanted the guns to converge on one point, which changed the shape.
I think that was me. That was the rule of cool. Do you know what it is? It's really funny, actually. It's basically a claw hammer. You look at that in silhouette, and it's basically just two claw hammers joined together. So it creates a double hammerhead, and then you've got two shafts. It was as simple as that. And I guess, like we were talking about before, there's always that drive to create something interesting. And I don't like doing stuff that's already been done.
I remember the early thing with this, Paul, I thought I'd nailed it straight away. I was like, they're basically after the Blockade Runner from Star Wars. So I did this. Hang on, I'm not even sharing my screen, sorry. Okay, so this is the first version I did, which was like the Star Citizen Corellian Blockade Runner, basically. You've seen this, yeah? And so straight away off the bat, I was like, I've got this. This is going to be the quickest one ever. I know exactly what you're after, and I put this together. And then I remember we chatted about it, Paul, didn't we? And Paul just went, far too obvious. I'm not even sure I showed Chris. Well, we quite quickly got to the, I'll just show you the next version we got to quite quickly. So this was somewhat of a compromising version. You can see the DNA warping from one to another over these images.
TL;DRRothery and Jones recall the Kraken taking months, ending up based on Jones's rough sketch of a boat on its side with landing pads like paddles, shaped further by feedback from Chris.
This was a big one, wasn't it, Paul? What was this, four and a half months or five months or something we spent on this thing? It's a long time. It was hefty.
I used real world reference, which then I half drew over, but basically it was a ship. It was a boat that I put on its side, and it was just a top view, wasn't it? So I drew in the shadows as if there was a really strong sunlight. So you could see the verticality of it, and then just put some landing pads on the whole thing.
So I was working from a more abstract point of view of looking at it like a Kraken, essentially. So having eight paddles of some sort, like there was some vague representation of a Kraken creature. And that's what the landing pads were. And so Gav was trying all these ideas and I just had this one little image just sat waiting on the board. And so he went through his process and I was like, hmm, let's just try this one. Let's just give it a go.
Sometimes these things get quite conversational, don't they? And we'll have a steer later on. And we've already started and we're already exploring some things. And then it's like, oh, actually, can we bring it towards this? And all of a sudden, it'll just click.
I guess in the early days, it used to scare the hell out of me because I'd just be like, I don't know what Chris is going to say. But now it's just like, we're just going to give him cool stuff and then just see what he says. There's always that difficulty where you're not hitting it and it's just like, no, no, no. And then you've really got to put on your dancing shoes and do your pivot and just do the 180 and figure it out.
TL;DRPaul Jones is an art director who leads the spaceship concept team and also looks after FPS weapons, ship weapons and ship components, noting concepts must now meet functional metrics.
Basically, I'm one of the art directors at Cloud Imperium Games. Currently, I look after spaceship concepts, so I work with a small team, internal and external. We do a lot of the cool stuff, which then you guys buy and help fund this fabulous project. Then I also look after FPS weapons, ship weapons and ship components at the moment.
Now, you mentioned that small team of concept artists. We've had Sarah McCulloch on the team, we've had Jim Martin on the show before. Other names folks might know, Gavin Rothery, stuff like that. It's a very talented team that you're the focal point for, the head of the... what's the word I'm looking for here?
Well, I'm like a focus. They're like a bunch of wild horses, and I kind of bring them in and take direction from Chris. Also, we still have quite a lot of leeway in terms of what we get to do. We try and basically hit all the notes that Star Citizen needs to. There's a lot of functionality in our ships. It was a lot easier in those early days, I would say, because there was functionality, but it was like, let's just throw in a door, throw in a table, yeah, it looks cool. We didn't quite have the metrics. Now everything has to hit metrics, and especially we are trying to improve the process. Well, it's a continual thing, but when we deliver and hand off the concept, it's as good as it can be within the timeframe. It's never perfect, and I think the artists are always like, God damn it, why isn't this right? And I'm just like, there's a lot of moving parts.
Yes, because it was part of Squadron at the time. He did it back then as part of Squadron. And then it was the Gladius. So that was with Rothery. So that's the first time I worked with Gav. And there was a little bit of help from Andrew Lay. Remember Andy Lay?
TL;DRHe says he probably didn't work on all of them, since some were done by Chris Roberts and others with concept artists, and he was still learning about spaceships.
Yeah, but I don't think I've worked on all of them. Some of them have slipped through. It's a big learning process, this, and I didn't really know a lot about spaceships when I first started, funnily enough. You think you do, and then you realize you don't know anything. And so there's been a big learning curve, and I've just been picking up from lots of people. But there were some ships that were obviously done by Chris and concept artists that he worked with. There were a few by Nate that he worked on with concept artists. Because at the time, I think there were too many at one point for just me to handle because I had Squadron as well. So we were splitting.
No, Chris Roberts. I guess it was because there was a lot of feedback that I would see from CR on Shotgun. So I'm not quite sure what the process was back then. I wasn't really privy to their working methodology.
Basically, yeah. My methodology is that I try and give the concept artists as much leeway to put themselves into the ship, basically. I don't want to be micromanaging, but if things aren't going right, then I will dig in. We've done interviews recently where, and definitely in the last two years, there's been ships where I've started to do a lot more hands-on in those early stages as well. Generally the concept artist is still finishing off the vehicle or the ship. And so I jump ahead, often do paint schemes and that good stuff, and then start working with Will and the marketing team and Turbulent. Okay, how do we want to... it's a lot more formalized these days. So it's, okay, what are the beats that we're trying to hit? What does the website want? What does the brochure want? Those simple days are gone.
No, we specifically chose the Aries because this is work that is done during the concept phase. And so we specifically chose a ship that was still in concept phase to use for our demonstration. So the Aries is not in active development right now. It's not being built. So it's not coming in 3.9 or 4.0. We specifically chose it because it's a concept ship and it's still in concept phase.
Yes, and we have the assets, and so it's a little simpler just to make an image, basically. It's just showing you guys a peek behind the curtain about how this stuff is made.
Yes, basically. It could be anywhere. And often, sometimes we'll just make stuff up for the promo art and ask narrative to backfill. Sometimes we have a good idea and then we're like, hey, can you give us something that will help support this so we can keep this visual?
Basically, I'm just saying, give me a render. I give it a time limit. So you've got three minutes to do your best, and the software alters the settings to render out an image for me. It then renders it out with all the passes: the specular pass, the diffuse, the ambient occlusion, the clown pass. So these are all things that can help with fix-ups a little bit later on.
TL;DRYes, it is an intermediate render that effects are painted over, and Jones deliberately keeps his pass rough so concept artists, who spent months on the ship, keep the satisfaction of the final polish.
Yeah. Basically, we'll take this, and what should happen is they will have rendered out ships, we'll bring it in as a separate layer, and then we'll start adding on all these effects. So there's all sorts of things here. It's a real kit that I've used over the past. So muzzle flashes, sparks for hits, details for ships. We won't need that today. Lens flares. And the funny thing with this stuff is that in the past, it's not a mistake, in the past I've done it where I've taken a concept artist's image and said, make it like this, and I will have put in all the effects and done the color grading and everything. And so it gets you to that 80, 85 percent mark really fast, but it really pisses them off because they're just like, we've done it. It's like you've given them an unwrapped present. And they're like, well, I can see what it is now. What's the benefit? So that's why I try and stick to crappy stuff like this. Seriously, so that they still have that surprise and that magic of, because they've been working on this stuff for, what, three? I mean, some of the stuff is six months we've spent on some of the large ships. I think two months is probably the fastest we've done something. Even that is two months of solid graft, eight hours a day, looking at the same thing, solving problems, solving mechanics, solving visual problems. It's like they're the baker and then suddenly you go, well, here's your cake, it's done, I've decorated it. You want to give them that payoff where they're just like, okay, yeah, this is looking cool. They get to do all that fundamental groundwork.
TL;DRConcept ships aren't built in-game yet, and concept models ignore engine efficiency, whereas in-game ships need engine-correct work, so the two workflows are kept separate.
It depends on the artist as well. Some artists are super clean. There's no right or wrong, everybody just works differently. Somebody might build the same ship and it'll be one million polygons or tris. Another artist might build it and it'll be 200,000. But the ship team, they're spending time on creating something that works for the engine. All the bevels are correct and the shaders are correct and parallax occlusion maps and lighting. There are so many technical issues.
I'm remembering the rivets on the second generation Freelancer. In concept art, you don't have to worry about efficiency. You just have to worry about it looking good. But the second version of the Freelancer, maybe it was the third, I don't remember, but it had all the rivets along the lines and each rivet was like tens of thousands of tris because it was just created really dirty really fast. And unfortunately, when it came time to implement it in game, they took the rivet from the concept model and just said, oh good, I don't have to make a rivet. And at one point, because of that concept rivet that was in the actual hangar model, the Freelancer had a greater resource footprint than the entire Idris, because of all the duplicated rivets. It was crazy. It's a vastly different workflow creating concept ships versus in-game ships, and there's a reason they're separated.
Yes. Sometimes it's just like you run out of time. You're just like, oh, God, that sucked, that image. It just didn't quite pull off what I wanted it to do. Thankfully, they're few and far between because I'm really not one for failure. I don't deal well with it.