How the art came to be

In this devlog we're taking a look at the artistic process of the game. Since When We Were was made during a game jam I had to figure out a way to make backgrounds and characters fairly quick and consistent. I wanted to add a lot of poses and expressions while having a wide variety of backgrounds to choose from.

Character Concept Art

When making the characters it was key to create something simple and easy and customizable. The decision to make posable 3D models in blender was easy because I would not be able to create this much 2D art with such a short timeframe. I asked my friend Vesper to create a simple character design that I could build upon using my knowledge in Blender.

Since the concept is simple I decided to go for a low poly look with a simple rig. This made it easy to quickly render images to use for the characters in the game.

Blendshapes or no bendshapes, that's the question

One of the more time consuming parts of rigging a model is to create the facial expressions. I wanted many expressions while not consuming too much time. So I decided to go for an Animal Crossing-like system. Where each facial expression is their own texture and then changing coordinates in blender.

Here are some examples of expressions for the main character called Lunar.

Making backgrounds from scratch solo

Backgrounds are a key part of visual novels and I wanted a lot of variety. I had to choose between making my own or using assets already available. I know from experience that hunting for assets online can be time consuming. So instead I came up with a process to create my own based on my own photographs. I've been photographing for a long time as a hobby so it felt natural and also fun to explore.

To add artistic consistency to the backgrounds I asked Vesper for a simple palette. I then made a Blender project solely with the purpose of creating backgrounds based on the palette.

Here's a before and after of a background being processed by the shader.

Closing Comments

This project has been an immense challenge for me but it's been so much fun. Time constraints really makes you focus on optimizing the process which in itself is a challenge. I hope you enjoyed this little devlog!