· Scott · Devlog · 4 min read
Devlog #2: Out with the old and in with the new
In our second devlog, Scott takes you through the honest (and sometimes messy) process of designing our hero, Kit. See the early concepts, the mistakes, and the final model!
Welcome back to the Ki10 Games devlog! This week, I (Scott) will be walking you through the design process (or lack thereof) for our main character, Kit, from our upcoming game: KIT: Knight in Training.
The Beginning of Kit - Early Concept
We knew very early on that we wanted to base our game on an anthropomorphic animal character, similar to games like Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Yooka-Laylee. The list could go on forever! We had lots of inspiration, but it was really important to us that we didn’t just make a clone and instead made this game our own.
In the very beginning, before we landed on the cat character concept, I made some… questionable design choices. The image below shows off a very, VERY early concept, which clearly inspired our mindset of not wanting to copy other franchises.
The very first concept and sketches.
As you can see, it looks very much like a Sonic the Hedgehog OC mixed with Terriermon’s ears from the Digimon franchise. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s clear I was in the middle of playing some Sonic and Digimon games when this was done… Sorry.
Getting REAL
After the unfortunate concept above, we sat down and really thought about the design of our protagonist. We realised that as Ki10 Games itself is inspired by Mark’s love of his cats and my own son, Kit, we should base our very first game on the same things. Thus, we came up with a cat protagonist named Kit!
Against my better judgement (and over-excitement on starting the project), I opted out of making initial sketches and designs to base our character on… I winged it.
This was a mistake and wasted SO MUCH time (sorry Mark), BUT I did learn a lot using Blender, as I am still very new to the program. I started watching tutorials on YouTube to help fill the gaps in my knowledge, probably following them too closely in some cases, as my initial models were far from what I had envisioned.
The first models for Kit, created in Blender.
As you can see, sculpting was a mystery to me! I had tried to sculpt without any knowledge of the skill and once again… winged it. I also wasn’t too happy with the overall design, wanting it to look less like a chibi cat and have more human features.
Welcome to my Uncanny Valley
After the chibi cats, I was slowly becoming self-aware… I learned from my mistakes (only a bit). I started to experiment more with Blender outside of the main model, trying to learn how to create without the heavy reliance on tutorials. I stuck to my previous idea of giving the cat more human features and eventually landed on this model.
The next iteration of Kit, moving away from the Chibi Cat look.
This is where I felt the model started to look like it came straight out of the Uncanny Valley. The hands… they creeped me out. I’d started to use a small amount of sculpting in this model, still very early on in my knowledge of the sculpting enigma. BUT it still wasn’t what I had envisioned, so off I went on my next time-wasting adventure through the modelling process! However, this time I actually drew sketches, planned the design, and put everything I had learnt into the model… even sculpting (took long enough)!
Introducing Kit
Finally, here we are with the final model for Kit. It still needs some work as the topology is a bit of a mess, but overall we are quite happy with how it came out! I’m just happy that I can FINALLY give us a model that doesn’t look like it’s fresh from a chibi wonderland or my nightmares. I learnt from my mistakes and kept going, sometimes feeling like a bit of an imposter, but Mark often reminded me that we’re new to most of the skills we’re using and it doesn’t need to be perfect. So, we slowly killed off the perfectionist in me and made ACTUAL progress with the main character model.
The final model for Kit.
Next time you see this, it will hopefully be rigged and more usable in our game, so make sure you stay in touch to see what comes next in the development of Kit: Knight in Training!
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