Player Character (How our bird boi came to be)

Hello all!

This is Bailey or Bailz from the Divining Rods team and today I’m going to go over how we developed our main player character The Wanderer for our world.

We started off by talking about how we wanted the main character to inhabit the world. Asking where they going to be tough? Big? Shy? Flashy? A fish themselves? There where a lot of options, but finally came to the consensus that we wanted someone who looked a little out of place a “fish out of water” if you will.

Long and lanky seemed to be the way to go to give our character that feeling of being a little awkward while still feeling like he belongs where he is supposed to in the end. To make things even more easy to differentiate the player from the NPCs the player character coined “The Wanderer” was themed around having a bird like design while the NPCs where designed to have more fish characteristics while having their outfits being practical for being in and out of water.

NPC outfits without masks designs

designed to resemble surf wear with an artisan handmade cloth feel

Sitting study of our guy

promo art concepts of the wanderer

The king fisher was selected as the bird the character would be based off of due to the color contrast since there is a lot of rich deep blue in the world a warm orange and a light warm blue would stand out more. And basing our fisher character around a “king fisher” was a little too good to pass up.

No skin should be showing so the player would be more easily able to put themselves in the characters position, and we wanted the player to question if the wanderer was even human.

Small details from the king fisher made it on to the final design. I was a huge fan of the little teal flecks on the wings of the king fisher and incorporated them on his cloak mimicking the feathers.

The most important test was to see how he would look when he sat in the boat as that would be the most common angle the player would see the character from so after a few studies and silhouette tests we where ready to do a character turn around.

After the turn around was done and everything was finalized, I handed him off to Chloe who Modeled and skinned him, who then handed him off to Lou who textured him, who then once again, handed him back to Chloe who is now currently animating him!

Overall its been an amazing journey developing the wanderer and seeing him change and grow with the project has been a very rewarding experience.

Thanks for tuning in this week!

Bailey "Bailz" Chumas

From the Divining Rod's team