Hi, I’m Maya, the former Art Director for Studio Archcraft. I was invited by the CEO of Studio Archcraft, Vincent Dehaut, to talk about the art for “Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled”, recently released for the NDS.
I have been told that many people, including those who have been following Black Sigil from its GBA days (when it was still called “Project Exile”, where in fact it was already Black Sigil before that!), are interested in how the art came to be. Thanks, and I’ll do my best to explain why and how.
I think I should first explain how I got into pixel art. When I was about six, I was blown away by Akira Toriyama’s design work in Dragon Quest I and II. Combined with the amazing interactive worlds the games offered - the art, the music, the story, the characters, I was just sucked right in! Cute little slimes, the tension of going somewhere new and frightening, and the excitement of finding Roto’s Armor set… who wouldn’t fall in love?
When I was in high school, games like Final Fantasy V, Estopolis (Lufia), Dragon Quest V, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Romancing Saga 2, Shining Force 2, and Lunar were the golden games. I wanted to start making game art, so I scoured the net looking for amateur game studios to see if I can join in on the fun! I joined two teams - Project Whitehole in Japan, and Red Rain in Canada. Red Rain was a game being developed by Studio Archcraft’s programmer, Pierre Leclerc. At that point, I started to study pixel art. There were a lot of pixel art communities online where you can share your work with fellow pixelers: Pixelation, Kema’s (Japanese), and the forums found on the site that hosted Edge, the premier pixeling software in Japan (though I use Adobe Photoshop). I learned a lot about shading and rendering in a three pixel radius, and other obscure techniques there. As I continued to make design and pixel work with these groups, Pierre and I realized we worked really well together. That’s when we started up Studio Archcraft to make Black Sigil.
We spent the first year pretty much writing the story, building tools, and making mock ups. Originally I wanted to go for a more western look, with realistic proportions and large, detailed environments. I wasn’t too happy with the outcome on the GBA screen. First, the characters were too serious looking. The small, undescriptive faces felt too impersonal. To show any details in the face I had to make the sprites huge, which made movement impossible. I then tried the super deformed style (two head lengths) but it was too cutesy and lacked character in the body. I tried out a few things here and there and ended up with what’s in the game now.
For the environments, I wanted to make a massive world filled to the brim with details. I wanted people’s rooms to look different, stew to be cooking on the stoves, and kings sitting in lavish, over the top throne rooms. I didn’t want “screen after screen of pretty illustrations”, but a whole connected world you can really feel and understand, and most importantly participate in! For the world and map designs I was really inspired by Bethesda Softwork’s Morrowind (my favorite RPG of all time, bless that company!). Everything in that world was logical, and I just “get it” and feel so immersed. Everything belongs in just the right places, and isn’t a mess of rooms and corridors like in most SNES-era games. I wanted the world design itself, just by the visuals, to allow the player to be able to imagine
that area being built, expanded, and populated. I wanted each place to make sense according to the world map, and the player to be able to understand why each town was built where it was built. The biggest problem was that the GBA had limited memory and I couldn’t use too many tiles (and darn it, too few artists!). Tiles are square building
blocks (in Black Sigil’s case, 8×8 pixels) that you align on a grid to make a map. I guess you can imagine building something using legos, where the basic shape would be a 2×1 box. It sort of made the maps a bit clunkier than I wanted and I couldn’t add in all the details, so I tried to focus a lot on layout and having one, simple theme for each
area by having a (hopefully) memorable layout and one or two unique objects (such as ice and height for Bel Lenora, the gated wood community of Fort Domfriu surrounded by forest, and the water towers of Cythere).
The user interface was pretty fun. The one I worked on was the GBA one, and it was interesting trying to show the mass amount of information available onto a tiny screen. Having only 4 buttons (L, R, A and B) was challenging too. I tried to make sure the player knew exactly what was happening when swapping inventory and changing equipment, since I think it’s really important to show the before and after for stats, rather than just the after. I wanted everything to be easily accessible too. I avoided submenus as much as possible, since it’ll be a chore to have to cycle in and out of so many menus, which would happen since there’s only “A” to select and “B” to cancel/go back. L and R were reserved mostly for switching through characters.
For the battle interface I wanted the player to not really have to look at the screen, because honestly the GBA screen was very dim and I found it hard to make out things. Also, I couldn’t have huge boxy menus block the screen since the battle is in real time. I tried to make a system where players can remember button combinations, like “down, right, right” for heal instead of relying on visuals. I think it is similar to Mash (Sabin)’s button entry system in Final Fantasy VI. A lot of the challenges were for the GBA so I guess I don’t need to go into that too much.
For the character illustrations, I started with pure anime, eastern style, but as production went on I tried going for a blend of western and eastern style, at least with rendering. I think it’ll look more eastern or western depending on who’s looking. From my standpoint, Ni no Kuni and 7th dragon looks very eastern, while Mass Effect and Oblivion looks very western.
All in all, art is always a learning process. I learned a lot while I made Black Sigil, and I could go on forever about what I want to fix/change but I’ll have to save that for the next game! 
Thanks for having me here. It was a pleasure, and I hope everyone has a fun time with Black Sigil.
So Ms. Anderson, I think you mentioned before somewhere else that you weren’t able to work with Studio Archcraft during the porting process to the Nintendo DS. What was the reason behind that? Also, are you planning on working with Studio Archcraft again for any of their new projects? Thanks in advance!
Yes, unfortunately because of several factors outside my control I was unable to participate in the porting of Black Sigil. As for future work with Studio Archcraft, I moved (about one and a half years ago) to Tokyo, which places me in a completely different time zone from Studio Archcraft in Montreal. Sadly, this makes it a bit difficult for me to work closely with them, which is crucial for making games. However I wish them the best of luck on their new projects!
Very interesting read, thanks for sharing that info.
Are you planning on working on any other projects with Studio Archcraft?
Although only barely into the game, I’m really enjoying the artwork and environments. Good luck with any future projects!
From what I have seen so far (unfortunately I wasn’t able to play the game yet) the graphics are very beautiful. It’s this kind of graphics that makes me think that the 2D era was something very special that shouldn’t vanish in these modern super realistic 3D times.
I have a little question: Did you also make the artworks of the characters? I think they are absolutely gorgeous!
I tried to do some pixel art myself for a little DS-project at university and I felt very good doing this. It’s amazing how some colored squares can become something this beautiful.
Anyway, thanks for this article!
Kinta
Hey, thanks everyone, I appreciate the support!
Thanks Kinta, yes I did the character artwork. Oh, and you did pixel work before? It really is a dying art, so that’s awesome! Pixelers who left major game studios who were turning completely 3D (like Square-Enix) to form their own companies are now making 3D work. Pixel art is disappearing, so best of luck to you!
Personally I think 3D work is awesome (some of my favorite games are 3D), it’s just sad that 2D is becoming more and more unprofitable (or seemingly so), making it hard for companies to risk making a 2D game. Even if a big company does take a risk, 2D game are not expected to make much money so they are given a low budget and a super tight deadline, which of course results in a mediocre title even with talent and passion behind it. To me it looks like Nintendo and Vanillaware are the only two companies who develop non-casual 2D games seriously, but with the market slowly shifting to downloadable content, I’m pretty excited to see what happens!
I like the fact that there are still plattforms that have a lot of 2D art. That’s why I love my DS. But I also like its 3D qualities. I guess I’m just a nostalgic person. ^^
Btw. did you play Suikoden Tierkreis, Maya? It has incredible graphics! It combines absolutely gorgeous painted backgrounds and cute little SD-3D-models. You won’t find any tiled graphics in this one (don’t get me wrong, I also like tiled graphics, but painted backgrounds as a whole are something special. It also reminds me of the Playstation Final Fantasy games ^^).
Here is one of the characters I did for the DS-project:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/Kinti/KungJumPing/IdleMiyogiBig.gif
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/Kinti/KungJumPing/JumpMiyogiBig.gif
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/Kinti/KungJumPing/Portraitbig-1.gif
Hope you like it. ^^’
Kinta
Hello,
that was a nice read. I’m so in love with your work for Black Sigil even though I have not played it yet. Actually, Black Sigil and Contra 4 are the major reasons why I bought a DSi some days ago at all. What they have in common is amazing pixel art and awesome old schoolness, hence I can’t await discovering every single pixel in Black Sigil.
As I got into all that DS and its games (thanks to your very art for Black Sigil), I figured there are quite a lot of old school style games already available, ones like I grew up with (e.g. the Wizardry series, with 8 being SirTech’s opus magnum), such as Etrian Odyssey or The Dark Spire.
Old school and pixel art for the win!
Greetings from Germany
Kinta,
I think the issue that many 2D lovers (old school gamers, etc) have with 3D game art is the fact that a style or two has been pretty much set, even though the possibilities are endless (probably due to marketing). I remember being somewhat disappointed with Square for not making a 3D style based off Amano’s work when the PS came around. I mean, that’s a huge waste right there! He must be one of the biggest pioneers for game art style in Japan. Anything he touched (or anything based off his color palette and design taste) you can tell right away.
Anyway, 3D game development is still very new, so I’m hoping artists will soon be able to make very stylized games, especially with downloadable content springing up. As for mainstream 3D games, I think what they did to offset the downside of the inability for players to use their imagination, is to include the feature of the customizable avatar (visually). Otherwise, it becomes a game that’s more about the development team’s skills and imagination, not the player’s ability to be immersed in their own mind after being stimulated. Having the customizable avatar means the “imagining” part of the player will have to be done in the game world. No easy feat! In that way I think games are maturing, and will require huge, huge talents to make excellent games. Since now, they are in competition with the human mind. I feel that games are on their way from ‘children’s books’ to ‘classic literature’. For now developers will take the ‘customizable avatar route’ if they can’t excel beyond “children’s books” status, but who knows what’s coming up next!
I haven’t played Tierkreis, but I have seen screenshots. It looks gorgeous! The style is very clean and modern too, which is interesting to dissect. Have you played Braid for XBOX/PC? That game is also very beautiful. I’ve only played a little bit of it but the gameplay is phenomenal too!
I love your little sprite character btw. The jumping one is adorable, with his missing teeth and all. The goofiness sorts of reminds me of the Mother series, which I also highly recommend… Dammit I can’t stop staring at the psychedelic portrait one…
Sean,
That’s awesome to hear! I know some people who worked on Contra 4, their love of the pixel is crazy. Much love in that game. Thanks for the support too, I’m happy you are enjoying the graphics for Black Sigil. I hope you enjoy the game as well when you play it!
I watched the DQ9 trailer some days ago and I had to smile when I saw that you can customize your hero in many different ways. I think that it’s a nice way to attach the player’s feelings to the character, but sadly it often ends with the character becoming a soulless puppet (and DQ9 seems to be a good example for that from what I’ve seen so far).
Character-customization should add to a character in my point of view and not take all the personality away.
Yes, I have played Braid on my Xbox360 and I loved it! It instantly went into my “special games that everyone should have played at least once”-list.
And I loved the art style, it looked like from a dream. I would really like to be able to draw like this but I just got my graphical tablet and I’m a total beginner. ^^’
I’m glad you liked the sprite of the old man.
When we planned the DS game our team wanted to include a big story mode with lots of dialogue and stuff (okay, it was mostly me who wanted that xD) but it was just too much so we only made a prototype. In the story I had written so far the old man was absolutely goofy. A bit like Master Roshi from Dragonball (but without the sexual themes).
I played Black Sigil for eight hours now and I’m absolutely impressed by the graphics. It’s very oldschool, but still so full of detail! And I love the vibrant colors! But I think the thing I love most about the graphics are the character portraits. Especially Kairu and Aurora are marvelous!
You’ve really done a great job!
Are there other games where you participated in the graphical department? I’d really like to see more of your style!
Kinta
Kinta,
I think that’s where Western games shine these days. Have you played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? I think that game did a superb job of balancing an epic story, free roaming gameplay, and avatar customization. I have yet to try Mass Effect, I’m curious how the developer expanded on their balancing specialty. I’ll cut this discussion here since it’s Archcraft’s site - you can always contact me through my personal site if you want to talk more about stuff unrelated to Black Sigil.
On that note, I’m thrilled that you are enjoying the graphics. I actually didn’t do the character portraits - that’s all Nami Sakamoto’s work! There’s a link to her site on Studio Archcraft’s webpage. She’s an excellent artist and is on her way to become a huge comic book artist here in Japan.
After I left Studio Archcraft I worked for a company called Gameloft making cellphone games. You can check out the titles I did in the about section on my homepage.
Peace!