11-11: Memories Retold is a game that takes place during The Great War and follows the story of two soldiers, from opposing sides, that are brought together through unlikely circumstances. By director Yoan Fanise, developed by Digix Art Studios, and Aardman, and published by Bandai Namco, the game will see players experiencing the game in a way the never have before.
In this second Vlog for
11-11: Memories Retold, we are introduced to Bram Ttwheam, Art Director for the game, as he explains how they decided on the game's art syle, as well as how they tried to convey meaning through the visuals.
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When I first heard about the project, and the fact that Yoan[the game's director] was keen to use an artistic style, I got very excited about plundering our history. World War 1 is probably responsible for kickstarting much of modernism in the 20th century," Ttheam comments.
He remembers going to Puy du Fou, which is a historical theme park in France, he saw an opportunity to get a feel for the scope of the story, which he says influenced the game's art style. He mentions that he considered using futurism and cubism for the art style, at one point, but opted out of it due to the nature of the style being associated with low poly art, which is very prevalent in the gaming industry. They ended up going for a more seductive art form, instead.
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At one stage we were thinking of, perhaps pursuing impressionism a bit more vehemently than we currently do but as we were with the modernist movements I decided that it'd be more sensible to not restricts ourselves in any way."
Ttwheam recalls picking a few painters that he liked like J.M.W. Turner who conveys a lot of emotion and mood with very little detail, as well as Claude Monet, who has got a very interesting colour palette. They ended up focusing on a Russian artist named Alexander Peterhof, who does oil-on-glass animation, which was the theme that they ended up pursuing when developing the shader itself.
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After this, we were lucky to work with artists such as Giorgio[11-11 Concept Artist], who has a wonderful, unique light and pain strenghts to help us realise the look we were going for."
Once they figured out the look they wanted for the game, Ttwheam mentions that they then started to highlight certain aspects of the game and what colours they could use to convey the moods appropriately.
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What I'm hoping the players will feel once they've played this game is that they've engaged with two characters that have been through an awful lot. Both characters will change during the story and I want players to fell that they've traveled with them."
Ttwheam thinks that the art style will help convey the emotional journey by using all sorts of compositional tools that convey the themes more convincingly, and emotively.
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The art style makes me feel very excited. A little bit nervous. I'm excited at the prospect of being able to create something that is quite unique, I think. It's a really good opportunity to marry the practical skills together with the digital skills that I've acquired over the years, and also see what other artists bring to the table."
He then goes on to mention that he tried to move away from the Imperial War Museums, that was a touchstone for 11:11 game director Yoan Fanise, because he was aware of the intense processing power that those kinds of effects put on their systems and was worried the game engines would not be able to handle them properly.
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So we decided to break it down into more fundamental ingredients from the oil-on-glass technique. It's very tricky to get an engine to perform what we're trying to do because there's a lot of performance overheads and there's also just the fact that what we're trying to do is pretty uniquely human. So, when a human is doing a painting they make thousands, and thousands of decisions of what marks to make, what colours to use, where to make the strokes, what directions they should flow in, and that's a massive challenge for a game engine. And that's the challenge we took on. How do we teach a game engine to paint?"
Journey back to World War I, the War to End All Wars and follow the story of two soldiers brought together in the most unlikely of circumstances...
11-11 Memories Retold has not been given a release date yet.