Inside Cloud Imperium Games . the Vanduul . Chris Olivia

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] the process for the vanuel was basically started with Chris Roberts and David pck coming up with the basically the story about the character and the fiction and like who they are who the race is and what do they do and and how as the player or humans we interact with them and how we're going to come across them and then um as art director I got involved to try to decide okay how is this going to look you know um and in the beginning Chris always had sort of an idea to pay homage to the karrai from the wing Commander Series so there was always that in the back of my mind as I

2. 00:00:48

   started kind of roughing some very quick uh sketches out um also doing some rough sculptures in in mudbox so the feline aspect was always there in the back of my mind okay you know make it feline but he said he wanted it definitely meaner and sleeker um not as hairy uh more alienis so we that sort of evolved a little bit going back and forth Just Between Chris and I I I I know David was involved a little bit as far as seeing something that inspired him to possibly start to change the fiction or something that Chris and I liked you know David would would um sort of go off on a tangent of oh well this element that you know we came up with looks pretty cool maybe that can be for this and then that would in turn come back and Inspire the design so it was a

3. 00:01:35

   really interesting collaborative process so it got to the point to where um it was always going to be an 8ft tall creature I think everybody's happy with that so we did some tests as far as like showing the work and progress of the creature and then you know it always starts with a head but it sort of goes down to the body so we we I think we got the head where we wanted it and went you know kind of feline it went sort of fish-like at one point you know a lot of it is trying to figure out what Chris just doesn't line so as it as we work down the body um Chris wanted to make sure that it didn't have just a person in a suit feel so um we took the five fingers away went to three Long Claws we we thinned them up made them very Sleek the legs are are very thin and actually have some uh um openings in them both in the arms and the legs that so to show that um it's very inhuman unhuman um and

4. 00:02:27

   definitely a person can't be inside there um and we we made the the The Walking Motion in the feet um I think called digit grade which is basically walking on the toes um like an animal sort of semi that way so the the foot is not really long but it is definitely up above and it's not on the ground so that sort of um once we do things like that then we have to figure out okay let's do some range of motion sort of tests and um since we have a lot of these um exoskeleton pieces coming off of him that we all liked with some um shoulder blades and these tubes and horns and stuff we had to quickly see if they were going to work with all the things that this character is going to do in the

5. 00:03:14

   game you know with fighting and shooting and flying ships sitting you know I I originally had spines coming off the um the hips which looked really cool and gave a nice balance but um Chris felt that it would just he would be hurting himself constantly so off they came um and then um so we we do some walking tests and some animation movement very quickly I'll rig that up myself before it goes to our animation Department um so there won't be a lot of back and forth um to to make sure everything is working properly and it looks anatomically uh feasible um and as that happening we're sort of finalizing the finished material and the look um of the skin and the paint job on on the head and everything whether it has any hair for and I think we ended up having a little bit of chest

6. 00:04:03

   hair um on the front we have to be careful not to make it look like some weird Macho you know Tom celic but I think so far it doesn't um but that'll be have to be tweet once we get into the game engine and then we could sort of further tweak that to see um how the hair reacts in that before it goes into the game engine we we're designing costumes and and uniforms right now um another art uh freelance artist has taking care of that so we have to figure out sort of the U the military feel and look of these uh these races and these characters um both in civilian type clothing military type clothing um and within the military you know whether they're in space and they need you know special you know apparatuses beyond sort of their their

7. 00:04:50

   own evolved um body um which is sort of adapted itself over many many years of not sort of being on their home world to to um to live in space and to travel great distances in space as well as sort of being on different um planets environments so they have I think a pretty wide range of um breathing different atmospheres you know wherever they go so I think they're ready for for any of that stuff so um in addition to their their own evolved body you know we have to think about that when we're designing the uniforms and the clothing and and how they all you know mixed together without um getting too bulky because they're a giant creature um so we're we're exploring different things right now it's in kind of an early stage but um it's cool it'll go sort of like with what we're all

8. 00:05:39

   thinking the the style philosophy of the vandu would be um very spiny very dangerous looking you know dark hard Metals um some interesting sort of Tri tribal shapes um definitely they're they're they have a primitive feel to them so you know we don't want to go any anything too um slick looking you know so uh yeah should be good