An Esoteric Campaign - The Art of Ebb

[p]Esoteric Ebb lived in limbo for many years. For one reason: I could not find an artstyle. As much as you might imagine the writing acting as the 'main pillar' of Ebb (since it has so much damn text), back in 2018 I couldn't get any real writing done. Not without having a solid visual aesthetic nailed down. The reason for this has entirety to do with my approach: I 'envision' scenes holistically. Like a crazy person, I've got a whole dialog planned up in my head before I write a single word. That 'vision' includes both audio and visuals, both of which are required to exist up there in order for me to be able to set the tone. Obviously I'm able to write without this (I'm a freelancer at heart, I can produce bullshit on command), but I hate having to rewrite stuff because of my own incompetence. As such, I really need to have all the pieces of the concept nailed down, at least in a hypothetical way, before I'm able to write some cool stuff. [/p][p]For the first four years, I did not have any of this nailed down. Originally, in 2018, the game looked like a VTT, with a top-down 2D perspective - not too dissimilar from playing a session in Foundry. Then I spent a year diving into 3D, experimenting with a ton of different weird styles. At one point the game had dynamic grid-based dungeons with little untextured (unpainted?) minis moving about. I even tried my hand at that HD-2D pixelart trend. Nothing worked. Primarily due to my own shortcomings as an artist. But I kept getting better! As per usual, smashing my face into the keyboard eventually led to dividends.[/p][p][/p][p]As you can see I fell into the classic indie dev trap of: if you don't like how it looks, just turn off the lights.[/p][p][/p][p]At the start of 2022, I found those basic building blocks of a style. By experimenting in blender, I realized that I could put together a really quick and easy art pipeline by taking some basic geometry, and then painting a texture on top of it- from the perspective of my preferred isometric camera. This allowed me, someone who is not very skilled at painting to begin with, to essentially be able to create something really neat, really quick. Which is a good combo. And more importantly, I saw the potential in it. From the moment I started working on that first official playable build of EBBRPG (as it was called) I knew that if I could toss some money at other, actually proficient line-artists and modellers, it could make for an amazingly looking game. Alas, in the meanwhile, since I unfortunately did not have a pile of cash laying around, I put things together myself. Something good enough. Something that could show off, and hopefully prove my writing/design abilities. Or at very least, I hoped it would prove my hubris wrong so I could kill this prolonged, four-year long prototyping session.[/p][p][/p][p]This was the first thing I ever made in blender by the way. Funny how things go.[/p][p][/p][p]Instead, I was met with a raging wave of feedback, in the form of 'this is pretty cool, could look better though'-comments. Thus my fate was sealed. I spent the entirely of 2023 attempting to refine my rough playtest into a solid demo, barely scraping by. Then, in 2024, something magical happened. I was handed a large sum of money from Raw Fury, which was neat. For one major reason: I could now throw money at people. Technically I'd already been working with Oscar Westberg since mid-2024 on the updated keyart, but it wasn't until these funds came in that I could actually put him to work on in-game assets. Now, Westberg is a prolific artist whom you should follow on your preferred social media site. He is responsible for creating the ~50 incredible portraits you get to look at during dialogs in Ebb, as well as the many pieces of miscenllenius \[sic] Esoteric artwork that you'll get to see more of as we get closer to the game's release.[/p][p]And while he was busy working on these designs, I was facing the even more important question: who was going to take over the creation of in-game assets? I had come to the realization that it was neither expedient nor sane of me to attempt to create it myself, nor would the result be able to reach anywhere near the artstyle now brought by Westberg. Luckily for me, for months I'd had a local studio in mind...[/p][p]Gibbet Games (along with several local artists in their sphere of influence) have worked tirelessly for the past two years crafting the backgrounds (3D, line art, coloring) and characters (modelling, rigging, some very neat mocapping, and hand-crafted animations) for Esoteric Ebb. It was honestly a really satisfying process, primarily because my job was so easy: I simply told them to aim towards the Westberg style. And Gibbet, being the amazing group of professional and extremely creative individuals that they are, just made it happen.[/p][p][/p][p]A literal painting depicting figurative paintings. Sorry.[/p][p][/p][p]Starting off, Olof at Gibbet took on the task of cleaning up my pipeline. I'd been working with a weird grease pencil method for dynamic objects, which, while funky and cool, didn't get a great result. So a few dynamic objects in any given scenes were simply created (the normal way) to match the backgrounds - to which he put in place the many rules of consistency for crafting the backgrounds. Width of lines. Scale of objects. And of course, Olof also created methods to consistently and beautifully adapt Westberg's line art style to the texturing work. The result of which is simply stunning. Together with a team of several artists, they are crafting over THIRTY areas for the game, each with this same level of detail.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Then for the challenge that I quite honestly didn't know where to even start: turning this highly detailed line art into dynamic 3D characters. Jonathan at Gibbet took on this challenge, starting off early on by translating those early character designs - Agent Viira & Alfoz B.E. - hitting each of them hit right out of the park. Together with several other collaborators, Gibbet managed to translate those Westberg portraits with precision. The emotions, the unique personalities, all shown through intricate details - and of course, through animations.[/p][p]Gibbet makes use of both handcrafted animations and a really cool mocap pipeline. Jonathan even had me play several of the characters (I was a great zombie). As stylized as Ebb is, the goal of the world has always been that strange sense of realism, and hitting that balance between readability and suitability was always a struggle for me - while Gibbet managed to solve it easily. Characters are instantly readable whilst their mocap work brings in a natural weight and flow, letting subtle movements breathe life into the characters.[/p][p]What I love most about working with Gibbet is that they really put so much passion into the world. A random fun idea from one of them easily makes it into the game as a whole new interaction. If you've gotten stuck in that random sandbox in the starting area, or picked up the Wisdom tooth, those and so many more, only exist because of Gibbet's input.[/p][p][/p][p]"What kind of animations does the killer croc need?" - "BBQ." - "Of course."[/p][p][/p][p]Esoteric Ebb has come far in these few years. From a desperate duct-tape solution to incredible artwork, the world of Ebb has always been - as any good D&D session - an exercise in improvisation. Like I mentioned at the start, I always have a picture in my head that I go off, no matter whatever crazy path that leads me down. But when bringing it to reality, a big chunk of it never works. That's the nature of it, and working with these amazing artists allows me to iterate on that much faster. I'll ask for a 'mushroom jungle', and what I get is a design much improved from anything I blocked out originally. I might ask for a light-based celestial creature, a young-ish hag, or colorful physical portrayals of the six ability scores - not really sure what any of those should really look like in the end. What I get in return, from both Westberg and Gibbet, are over and over again: funny riffs, great ideas, and constant improvements on that image I had in my crazy head at the start of production.[/p][p]I love using the word 'collaboration' when referring to our production of Ebb, because that's really the best way I can describe it. Each piece given by these artists make up this strange esoteric puzzle of ours. [/p][p][/p][p]Buy Esoteric Ebb! Force Oscar Westberg to paint more sexy goblins for me![/p][p][/p][p]Please check out our collaboration page if you want to read more, and check out our other devlogs. Oh, and wishlist Ebb if you haven't! It really helps a ton![/p][p]-Christoffer Bodegård[/p]