Art Development

“The artwork done for Visceral Carnage has numerous influences namely the promotional and concept work done for games like Hotline Miami, Majora’s Mask, AngerFoot and Grand Theft Auto 5. Other influences included concept art for John Wick 3 and western comics that emphasised shadows like comic Batman Three Jokers and Batman: One Dark Knight. Overall it came down to wanting the art to have strong shadows, linework and highlights since the main visual focus of the game was contrast between neon lights and darkened environment. It mostly came down to giving the art strong shadows, linework and highlights since the focus we wanted for the game was neon lights and dark environments. 

Below is the initial art “style” proposed for the game:

Intentionally kept it simple with no gradients with the exception being the colour shift in the highlights/rim lights since there’d be numerous coloured light sources bouncing off the character. After this I did an illustration with both the Yakuza and Yankii enemies, with some clean up done on the Yakuza’s lines and adding some gradient to the shadows.

While the illustration was well received in the group, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. I was encouraged to look more into Japanese manga (namely shounen and seinen) that contain stories recovering around delinquents and mafia and considering their finer linework and use of screen tones/cross hatching for applying shading. The Yankii figure was revised into a result I am much happier with:

The screen tone added some shading to the image and the lines are sharper. The neon line thickness also suggests the character’s shape more so than the previous version; the “dotting off” in the neon lines was decided on as it reminded me of 80s neon stripes against black. The Yakuza figure will be done if time permits but will be revised in the same manner as done for the Yankii. “ - Kris (Art & Design Lead)