HOW TO CREATE ICONIC IP
STEP 1
CREATE A STRONG TEAM CULTURE
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF CREATING ICONIC IP IS CREATING A STRONG CULTURE OF PLAY & BELIEF IN YOUR TEAM.
The human brain is handicapped as soon as it feels unsafe, threatened. By definition, you must be in a state of play to access the full capabilities of your frontal lobe when it comes to creative exploration & turning 3D shapes in your mind.
A person in fear doesn’t want to explore that new territory to find berry bushes, because you might die. A person in play is happy to explore. EXPLORATORY MOODS ARE THE ROOT NECESSITY FOR ICONIC DESIGN.
Often, when leading a team, I mention my vulnerabilities in front of everyone. I’ll own up to mistakes (THOSE WHO ADMIT THEY’RE WRONG ARE RIGHT MORE OFTEN) & by demonstrating the ability to show weakness, I make it safe on the team to do the same. This is the FIRST STEP toward creating a culture of honesty & play.
Another fun note, teams that have flatter heirarchies, & where people talk in equal proportion instead of one person dominating, tend to be more creatively successful.
STEP 2
DEFINE YOUR RULES & STORY
WHAT ARE THE BOUNDARIES OF YOUR WORLD, & HOW DO THEY AFFECT VISUAL IDENTITY?
Is everything in your world grown? That affects the visual indication of your world across all crafted items. By crafting unique rules, you can craft unique worlds.
STEP 3
DEFINE YOUR SHAPE LANGUAGES
Each root shape language has subconscious associations in humans as a whole, & they may vary according to culture.
BY KNOWING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HOW HUMANS PERCEIVE SPECIFIC SHAPES & LINE QUALITIES, YOU CAN CONTROL THE IMPRESSIONS OF YOUR DESIGNS.
An accelerated curve has different impressions than a normal curve, and there are a plethora of forms of acceleration to pull from. This is why we go back to first principles references & we must understand the psychology behind design.
Are the forms of your world faceted.. smooth? 30% accelerated?
STEP 4
DEFINE YOUR 1,2,3 PROPORTIONS
Is your world a place of extreme contrast? Between upper & lower class? Between ideologies? Between urban & rural?
There are a million ways to define contrast in story, & so too, there are many ways to control contrast in visual design. You can create a smaller proportion of any design tool (listed above) or tilt one object at an angle, change its shape, color, lighting..
TO CONTROL CONTRAST, YOU MUST CONTROL THE PROPORTIONS & USAGE OF YOUR DESIGN PRINCIPLES.
STEP 5
DEFINE YOUR MOOD
how does your story arc define & influence your lighting & aesthetic over time?
BY ESTABLISHING MEANINGS TO COLOR & LIGHT & KEEPING THE USE OF THEM CONSISTENT & DISCIPLINED, WE CAN SUBCONSCIOUSLY INDICATE GAMEPLAY MECHANICS, INTERACTABLES, & STORY.
STEP 6
DEFINE YOUR TEXTURES
Is it all rendered in high levels of Color Jitter? That unifies one aspect of your style across all assets.
The more you delve into the realm of texture & rhythm, & control your IP even at this tertiary layer, the more you can push an IP into iconic space.
STEP 7
ESTABLISH FIRST PRINCIPLES THINKING ACROSS THE TEAM
When choosing reference, as a rule, it’s better to go back to the source. While we can reference other games in specific cases, if you want to INNOVATE & make something ICONIC, you must use first principles reference. Don’t reference medieval designs in other games.. reference real medieval clothing, props etc. Understand their FUNCTION, & use what you’ve learned to design coherently.
STEP 8
DEFINE YOUR RANGE & PROGRESSION
How do your props, assets & environments upgrade over time? How do your designs develop to establish a strong feeling of PLAYER PROGRESSION?
Also- not all assets in your game can be super cool. Some need to sit back to let others shine. We save our eye catching silhouettes, contrasty values, saturated colors & more for our focal elements, characters, & interactables.
STEP 9
CREATE A PIPELINE FOR YOUR SPECIFIC NEEDS
Part of my role as an Art Director, outside of developing specific styles, is making sure they can be executed on in an efficient way. By mastering the style myself, I can easily break it down & teach it to anyone on the team to ensure complete consistency.
Secondly, having a strong understanding of the pipeline from concept through block-in & polish can help my team pre-empt potential issues & work more efficiently.
Because I understand the style from concept through VFX & UI, I can help the team develop pipelines that ensure completion.
For example: on Chernobog, because the style relied on mastery over texture & shape etc, each person on our team became a master of 2 steps, and we passed assets through every single person. This was efficient because by mastering our relative steps, we could be much faster.
If one person were to take an asset start to finish, everyone on the team would have to understand sculpting “wood” in our IP, which would require me teaching 5 people instead of 2, and would be slower & less visually consistent.
Thirdly, we work BACK TO FRONT, & BIG TO SMALL. By establishing a strong background with our desired lighting & environment in a reduced value range, we can then layer in more contrasty/saturated hero props/characters, even more contrasty VFX, & finally, our most contrasty UI at the end.
THE GOAL IS FOR EVERYTHING TO WORK AS AN INTERCONNECTED SYSTEM FIRST, & THEN YOU DETAIL THE WORLD OUT AT THE END.
WHY DO WE WANT ICONIC IP?
Beyond the goals of stretching ourselves as artists & creating incredible worlds, iconic IP helps us out in many ways. One of those ways is marketability & brand recognition.
The more iconic & memorable the style, the more your marketing can work for you. The golden duo is HIGH MEMORABILITY & HIGH REPLAYABILITY. The more you can get people to spend time in an iconic art style, the stronger that brand.
Secondly, a self similar iconic world is believable because of the consistency of its rules & execution. By creating that kind of believability, we can give players a powerful & meaningful experience.
Our job on the art team is to wrap an incredible story in iconic visuals; to do justice to our story & gameplay, & work WITH the other disciplines to deliver something revolutionary.
