A little bit about the internal kitchen
Good Lords, fair Ladies!
Today we continue the story of making the cutscenes in Diplomacy is Not an Option.
Last time we stopped at the concept art stage. Allow us to proceed, shall we?
The task of the concept artist is to make the first impression of the character's look and to make him fit the script. For example, if the character is physically weak, but the script requires him to carry a weapon, it is necessary to understand what kind of weapon he can use - definitely not a heavy two-handed sword. It is also important to take into account the accordance of the drawings to the DiNaO world. If we're introducing a rebellious peasant in the cutscene, he should look about the same as he does in the game itself.
Concept art is not only about the characters, but also about the environment. At this stage artists also draw the details to help the Player to understand where the action takes place. The artists, with the writer's assistance, decide, for instance, what paintings hang on the wall in the Lord's chambers and what color the tablecloth in the King's throne room is.
When the concept art phase is passed, the modeling of the characters and environment begins. And don't forget about animation either. Thanks to the sketches, the technical requirements for each character's model are clear to the people in charge. For example, our Lord always sits with his back to the camera. Which means he doesn't have to walk around and wave his arms around. In addition, this means that the main detailing of his image falls precisely on the mantle, the back of the crown, and his haircut.
Each scene is created by hand, and most of all it resembles a movie shoot. Once the "pavilion" is set, whether it's the Lord's chambers or the ocean shore, the lights are adjusted, angles are selected, and characters are arranged. When the shooting is done - we get the same clip that you see in the game. With one slight difference. There are no text lines in the filmed and rendered cutscenes.
As you know, our game has no voiceover. The characters talk to each other via text bubbles, just like they do in comics. The next task is to place the desired lines in the cutscene editor and set their duration and timing. The only difficulty we may encounter at this stage is the difference in the number of characters and the duration of the phrase that may show up in the translation. The default version is the English text version, but often it happened that even the English lines had to be slightly changed to make the meaning of the texts remained consistent in all languages.
In conclusion, we'd like to say that the making of the game is a collective creative process. Not all of the solutions that look good on paper can be transferred to the sketch language. And not everything that looks cartoony works as well for the low-polygon graphics and slowed-down manner of in-game cutscenes. At each stage, something adds, something disappears.
We hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you very much for your attention.
Yours, the Door 407 dev team