Character art director Josh Herman covers Squadron 42 and 3.0 costume work, concepts for Xi'an, Banu, Vanduul and Tevarin, armor layering over undersuits, the Sand Nomad, female models, hair, facial hair, tattoos and accessories.
TL;DRJosh Herman says the character art team is wrapping up many costumes for Squadron and the 3.0 push, and is also finalizing 3D concepts for the Banu and Xi'an after recent Vanduul and Tevarin updates.
We have a lot of work going on right now for Squadron. We are trying to wrap up a lot of our costumes, and a lot of that is also playing into the 3.0 push for how much stuff we want to release to the players. We want to have some things that are specific to Squadron, but also we want to allow players to have a lot of stuff to do in the PU as well. Just a lot of costume work. We've been pushing forward on all fronts, on the concept front, on the character art front as well. There's a lot. We've been working on some aliens recently. We're finalizing some concepts for those, 3D concepts for the Banu and the Xi'an. The last couple updates we've had have been for the Vanduul and for the Tevarin. So now we're moving on to the other ones as well.
TL;DRJosh Herman describes the Xi'an as very long-lived with a regal, long-game aesthetic and anti-grav tech, and the Banu as traders whose costumes should look well-traveled.
The Xi'an are interesting to me because they live so much longer than everybody. The tech that they created with the anti-grav stuff is really cool. You see some of that in the Scout a little bit. They have a very different aesthetic. They really treat most other races almost as children because they live for so much longer that if they live for hundreds of years, if a human lives for 80 years or a long human life, that to them is still an adolescent. So everything that they do is very long game. It's not necessarily the short game. So trying to get some of that into their costumes, into their designs where we really want to show with that, there's almost like a regal-ness to it. A higher level of thinking. So how do you put that into a costume? So we're trying to get that across.
With the Banu, they're very much about trading, right? They're the traders. Obviously, the Merchantman is the ship that we all know about right now. But it's because of that there's so much about trading, and so we want to get that into their aesthetic as well, which means that they've traveled a lot. They're not just somebody that sits in one location, but they've gone to all these different systems and places, and so they need to look well-traveled. They need to look like they're coming from lots of different places. So, yeah, just pushing forward on all of our alien races.
TL;DRJosh Herman says reptilian doesn't quite fit the Vanduul, who lack scales; he sees them as apex predators, like big cats, with translucent, shiny skin that gives some reptilian look.
I think there's an aggressiveness to them that I think a lot of people would associate with animals like crocodiles or snakes or things like that. But it's not necessarily reptilian. And their coloring isn't really reptilian either. I would put them along the lines of a predator, like an apex predator where I think you're looking at combinations of lots of different kinds of things. But big cats, I think, are always one of the ones for me that are the biggest predators on Earth that we know of, where you don't really want to mess with big cats, right? But I think the mix of that maybe with some of the reptilian influence of what you're saying, especially, one of the things that they have is they have kind of translucent skin, and so they tend to be a little shinier. And that's something that can, I guess, get to that reptilian look where it's lots of color inside the skin. It's not actually on the surface of the skin. So when you look at hands and faces of things like geckos or salamanders, that influence comes through. So I can see that for sure.
TL;DRJosh Herman says the avian, beaked look of the Tevarin is an exploration and work in progress, not necessarily the final design, though it is an influence being considered.
Yeah, definitely. That's definitely a look we're exploring. Not all of them are set in stone. I think that's something that's really cool about working here on Star Citizen and Squadron is that it's so open development. For my personal work, I like to show lots of work in progress, and I enjoy that. And so we get to do that here as well. So note that everything that we're working on is work in progress at some point. So yes, this one may have a very defined beak. I think one of our sneak previews had a beak. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be reflected in the final design. It's just an idea that we're exploring. And so we like that. And maybe we'll take that and we'll roll off of it. And it won't necessarily look exactly like that in the future. But it's definitely an influence that we're taking into account.
I think we will at some point. For a lot of the alien races that we're talking about right now, they definitely have to fit into a certain paradigm: if they're developing ships and all the players want to be able to fly those ships, they have to fit that. I think we've talked about that a little bit before. But when it comes to maybe things that are non-sentient, absolutely. Things that are going to be able to be a little more grotesque, the whole non-bipedal look.
There's definitely the coloring on their skin, I think, in those older images that reflects that. And they have almost ridges in their face and forehead, so I think that's where the heavy skin texture comes across. Right now, they will definitely not be on the tortoise end. We're shifting away from that a little bit. But I think we're coming up with some cool stuff. I think people are going to be excited about all the alien races we're going to have. They're all going to be distinctly different, which will be good.
TL;DRA casual-clothing character takes roughly 40 to 60 days from concept through rigging, depending on complexity, while armored characters take longer because the first one needs both an undersuit and layered armor.
That depends on if we're going to do a costume character or an armored character. Our armored characters are a little more complex because, as you can see with the CDS, the marines right now, we have basically an undersuit where you can then layer things on top. And so that means when we're creating armored characters, the first time we make a new one, we're essentially making two characters, because we have to create the undersuit. And then on top of that, we create the armor elements that are going to be layered on, which also allows for future different manufacturers of those armors being put on that one as well. So that takes a little bit more time investment.
But for something that's in the shops that you can just buy as casual clothing, roughly including concept and including the rigging phase, it can take about 40 to 60 days, depending on the complexity of the costume. Usually a couple days to a week to nail down a concept. When we're doing concepts, we're doing them in batches rather than just doing one at a time. And then the high poly sculpting phase can take 20 to 30 days of time to get that really nailed down, and then the game model and the texturing and rigging go in those last 10 to 30 days. Some people are really good at certain parts of the pipeline; some people are much faster at sculpting, some people are much faster at game asset and texturing, and so it really does depend on that. That's a pretty broad timeline, but 40 to 60 is about average.
Band shirts don't take that long, especially things like texture variants, which means we already have a model done, but we're going to add a texture on top of an existing one. We'll change out the texture. Those don't take more than probably a day to change out. To make a new shirt, just a T-shirt like I'm wearing now, that probably takes three or four days.
I am. He was one of my favorites that we worked on. We have some cool stuff that I can't talk about right now that I'm very excited about. Some much bigger things as well, which we're pretty stoked about. But I think as far as currently, the Sand Nomad is probably going to be my favorite one that we've worked on so far.
Yeah, absolutely. We're looking for places in our concepts and our characters to have that, to have secondary animation, things that can sway and move. Capes. Big fan of capes. But even little tiny things, like, I'm trying to find my zipper, but I think it's at the bottom, but when you move, the little part of the zipper jingles around. So anywhere where we can get a little secondary immersion.
Wind physics. I don't know. That's definitely more of a tech question. We'll get Sean in here and Sean will ramble on wind tech simulation for like 10 minutes. But yeah, I would love that. That's definitely more of a tech situation.
TL;DRCostumes are typically themed by purpose, such as mining, civilian or combat, to help design and players, but this is an intent rather than a restriction on how players wear them.
I guess I would have to counter-ask the question what they mean by themes, but I'll take a guess at what they mean. So if they're saying, if you're wearing a mining outfit, you would be having a costume that is specific to a miner, or if you're wearing civilian wear, that's just general civilian wear, or if you're wearing combat wear, that's specifically themed towards combat. Yeah, we typically theme things in that way. And that's for a couple reasons. First off, it helps design, because then they're easily able to cater things and theme things to certain situations, which is good because it makes it a little simpler to understand, especially for the players. So, yeah, we try to do that as much as possible to say we're going to make some costumes that are specifically for this reason.
That is, of course, an intent, but by no means a restriction. If you want to be a pirate who dresses like a circus clown, by all means. It's just like our ships. We create them for an intended purpose, but then it's up to the player to use them for a variety.
Yeah, exactly. The Caterpillar's made to haul around cargo, but if you want to try to jam a Merlin inside of there, you can absolutely do that, right? But it's not designed for that. You can do all kinds of different stuff. Even right now, within what you guys are playing now, we have variants of marine and armor types, but you don't have to go and fight in those. You can just walk around. It's not specific for that, so it can be used for anything.
TL;DRJosh Herman says working on varied established properties was useful experience, and he enjoys creating alien races without a fixed aesthetic while still giving each its own distinct look.
With established properties, there's definitely looks that you're going for. I think actually one of the reasons that I've really enjoyed working here is from my experience at Marvel, where I got to work on all different types of properties. So there I was working on Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man and Avengers and Captain America and all those movies. And each one of those fortunately has its own aesthetic. So there's realistic in Captain America. You've got a fantasy sci-fi with Thor. You have very sci-fi with Guardians. You have realistic tech with Iron Man. All that kind of stuff. So that's helped. And I look at that the same way with our aliens. So they should each have their own theme. They should each have their own thing. So yes, it is great to not have to fit a certain aesthetic and be able to create one. But I like to also try to give them all their own specific look that's going to be separate from each other. It was a very useful and great experience working there, and it's really set me up for creating new aliens here, which I'm super pumped about.
TL;DRFace items like glasses, goggles and masks are being looked into or done, piercings are harder because face customization moves them, and clothing layers are meant to work together without replacing each other.
Sure. That's a good question. Stuff that can go on the face, which would be goggles, glasses, masks, all that kind of stuff is definitely things we're looking into or doing. Things that get a little more difficult are things like earrings, studs, piercings. Those are a little harder, especially as we're getting further into our customization of the face. Typically, if you put an earring on or a nose stud on, it is going to be in that location. But if you customize your face and you move that around, that is no longer going to be in your nose. So we have to dynamically update that, which is a challenge. It's something we're pushing towards. All kinds of accessories with that. Obviously, when it comes to actual armor, we're going to have helmets and gloves and arms, all that kind of stuff. We're going to have chest, we're going to have legs and boots and pants and shirts and jackets and all different kinds of hats and helmets.
BB
Bristol BoyCommunity streamer, co-host
I like that you've got the modularity to be able to pick and choose various items of what you want.
Yeah, we're trying really hard to make sure that everything's going to work with everything. We don't want to limit the player to say, okay, you've got this pair of pants on, but now you can't wear that t-shirt because it doesn't fit with that, or now you can't wear that jacket because it doesn't fit with that. We're even going far enough to say, a lot of games, I think in Grand Theft Auto and games like that, if you buy a jacket, it replaces your t-shirt. So what we're trying to do is, if I'm wearing this Run D&D t-shirt but I buy this blue hoodie, I still see the Run D&D shirt. We're not going to erase the shirt that's underneath there. One of the challenges that we're currently looking at right now is, let's say you're wearing a long sleeve shirt, but you buy a shorter sleeve jacket that goes on top, or a vest. How can we show that and make it look like, if you're wearing a suit, that you have the cuffs underneath your jacket of the same thing that you're currently wearing? So we're going pretty far in depth with the customization and how much we want to allow the players to do, and then also how difficult it is to create a system like that, because it does get incredibly complicated. I'm sure we'll talk about that a lot more at some point because it's going to be something that we're going to be rolling out to players and want them to play with and experiment with, and we also want to get their feedback too.
Right, exactly. So that's its own question of what do we want a character to be able to do? Do we want them to be able to have a holster? Do we want them to be able to have pockets? And that's another way to answer a question from before about theming characters, where certain costumes maybe shouldn't have any of that stuff, but they should have a bonus somewhere else when it's looking at armor. So it's like, okay, maybe certain things are going to be better against heat. Certain things are going to be better against different types of damage. So you can have pros and cons to each one of those. But yeah, that's something we're working with with customization: certain things are going to be better than other ones at items or storing items or different types of items.
Oh, absolutely. I like it too much to keep it just for bad guys or NPCs or things like that. Of course we want to give players the chance to play with that stuff. Definitely a yes.
TL;DRJosh Herman jokes he owns one shirt, says they want more band, team, location and formal shirts, and personally would favor a duster or cloak for a layered look.
I only own one shirt. It's this Run D&D shirt. I wear it every day. That's not true. I think a lot of the stuff we have right now is like the first taste of what we want to put in the game. So we want to have a lot more band shirts, team shirts, location shirts; we want to do some of that stuff too. But different styles. I want to get into some more formal wear stuff, stuff that we don't have. Like the tuxedo stuff, the collar shirt, the white collar stuff. I want to get some of that.
See, so now that's the difference: when you guys are saying shirt, because of our modularity, it's only the undershirt for me. If you want to know a thing that I would wear, it'd definitely be some kind of a duster or some sort of a cloak, where I want to feel some of that Firefly, that Star Wars look where you've got stuff on you. I like the layered stuff for sure.
Oh, yeah, sure. We're working on them in conjunction. One of the challenges with doing two genders is that we have to double the amount of assets. So we're currently working on as many female variants as we possibly can in conjunction with the male. We're going to try to get it to you guys as soon as possible, being as vague as possible, saying I don't know officially when, because it's much more than just myself included in that. We're definitely working on it. We are getting stuff out as quickly as we can. And when we release it, we're hoping to release it as soon as possible. I can't really say much more beyond that, other than that we're working on it.
Do you mean like when I find or buy a shirt, that it's a male-only shirt versus a female-only shirt? I don't know. We're trying to build most things to be accommodated across both. We wanted to make sure that there's an equal playing field as far as that's concerned. But I think that's more of a design question, because that comes into items, and if you find items, do they fit on everything? Or is it a universal one-size-fits-all? I don't know about that one. There will be some that are specific to male versus female. But for the most part, character-wise, we're creating them for both.
TL;DRHair is coming along well with an outside studio, with about 30 styles in progress to release together, but initially each style has no customization like pulling out strands.
Shorter, longer, curlier, grooming, stuff like that. So hair is coming along really well. We use one specific outsourcing house called Airship, and they're very talented, from the UK as well, and they are doing a lot of our hair assets for us, and it's coming along really well. Right now I think we have about 30 styles that we're working on, and we're pushing along with them. It's the same kind of thing as with the female, where we want to make sure that we have a good selection of stuff before we release it rather than just giving you the one so it's just something that's in. We'd rather do it nicely and all at once. But when it comes to the customization of it, right now we're just doing the one style. So let's say if it's a short haircut like myself, there won't be the option to pull out strands. Part of that is just the tech right now that we're working with, and also trying not to put the cart in front of the horse too much. Let's get some hair in there first before we start talking about grooming the existing hair.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think whenever we make stuff with hoods, it's easier to always make it down and then up, right? Because it's not that much of a change. So there'll definitely be variants in that. But when it comes to animating it on and off, that's a good question. I don't know. And if that's a gameplay element...
Yeah, because I really like that. I think it's super cool. Now I'm actually getting into dev mode and trying to figure out how we would make that work. But yeah, I like that idea a lot.
Definitely a design question, but from my understanding, they might not necessarily have stats, but they will definitely be themed towards certain things. That's a question for Todd Papy.
And I actually, right after I asked it, I realized that I asked Todd Papy that question when he was here last week. He said yes. Basically, once the new heavy armor is in there, heavy armor will protect more than medium, more than light, and you'll be able to mix and match things. And so I expect to see a lot of people with light armor and heavy helmets running around.
Yeah, we'll have options for that for sure. The ones that we're focusing on right now are definitely Squadron-related, and there's much more tech involved with a face than there is a head, because a face moves around more than a head. So right now we have several characters in Squadron that have facial hair. And so we're solving a lot of our tech issues there before we move on to creating a bunch of styles that might not necessarily work with the system. That's the downside: if we wanted, we could say yes and create all these assets, but they might not work. So rather than wasting all that time, we're going to invest it in the place where it should go first, make sure that those work correctly, and then we'll put that over.
Yeah, big fan of tattoos. I have some myself, so we definitely want to have them. I think right now we're getting into the questions of how that gets implemented. How is the customization of it? Is there customization? Is it choices? There's all kinds of tech questions that go on with that as well, where it's like, can the player place them? Can they draw them? There's huge questions that go on with that. Or here's a selection of them, and it goes with your typical character creator: chest tattoo, and then it goes through a list and you can pick your chest tattoo or face tattoo. Same kind of thing. We're trying to figure all those out right now.
TL;DRJosh Herman's standout memory is the last CitizenCon in Los Angeles, a few months after he started, where he saw how friendly the fan base is and how far some travel.
There's a lot of stuff that goes on day to day that I can think of. The biggest moment was CitizenCon, the last CitizenCon. Being able to go there, because it was also here in Los Angeles. I think I had only started maybe four or five months beforehand. So just knowing about Star Citizen and being involved, understanding a little bit of the community, being thrown into the fire of how much there is to learn about the game and everything there is in the community, but then also really learning and seeing firsthand, which was the best part about CitizenCon for me, how cool all of our fan base is, how friendly they are, how far some of them travel. That's really cool to see and be in a community where people are traveling from all over, seeing all the orgs there at the event itself, cheering and grouped up. That was a really cool moment, to be able to see everybody there at the same time and all about the same stuff.