Devlog: Crew Love Is True Love
Today we want to introduce you to the crew. To the birds that populate the space station in Star Birds. We show you how we came up with a strong cast of characters, and how we brought the kurzgesagt birbs to a 3D universe. And not to forget their roles on board - as we will send them on a mysterious mission ...
[h3]Getting Dressed for Space 👩🚀[/h3]
Sure - a game called Star Birds needs spacefaring birds. Cheerful supporting characters who lead you through the story, in dialogues and campaigns. But how to recruit them?
As a first step, we analyzed the birds that we discovered in the YouTube videos together with our project partner kurzgesagt. Their body parts, their emotions, their animations. We were looking for an elegant way to equip them for their space mission. By replacing the head feathers with accessories such as pilot's caps, and their body plumage with space suits.
[h3]Modular Bird Generation 🦉[/h3]
The next challenge was to send the 2D YouTube birds to a universe where they will become the main act of various dialogue scenes and the quest givers for the delivery missions. To do so, our teams (Toukana🤝kurzgesagt) had to create a skeleton that could be animated in our game. In Blender, we converted the SVG Vector graphics into flat mesh shapes, attached them to the skeleton and a rig and now ... they're alive!
Finally, we added gradients and a splash of color in Unity. It was important for us to think about variation of the birds in a modular way. Easily swapping body types, shapes and colors. Internally, we call our tool the "2D Bird Generator".
[h3]Creating Interesting Characters 🐔[/h3]
As you will not control and play your own bird character in Star Birds, but take on a managing role, our teams had to double down on the birds supporting the gameplay and narrative, leading you through the story. One of the most difficult questions was where in the game we wanted the kurzgesagt birds to appear, and where the gameplay should stand on its own.
To make the gameplay and narrative fit together, we imagined them as main charaters of the cutscenes and dialogues, operators of the buildings and machinery and quest givers. To make them interesting characters, we gave them specific professions as Scientists or Engineers, Workers, and of course last but not least - a Captain to keep every member of the crew focused on the mission... in theory ;)
You can look forward to seeing the result in Star Birds soon and meeting the bird crew! Fully clothed and commissioned. 🚀
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[h3]Wishlist Star Birds & Join Our Newsletter[/h3]
Star Birds is an indie project by Toukana Interactive and kurzgesagt. We are over the moon to have such an amazing community. You are the reason why this project exists. If you want to support us, Wishlist the game here on Steam, and tell your friends about it.
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