Fast, Cheap and Flashy An Indie Art Direction Adventure

In this 2017 GDC session, Chickadee Games' Adam DeGrandis breaks down the visual design process for Tooth and Tail, the follow-up to Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine.
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[@kmfnj]

To GDC and Adam DeGrandis -- This was a phenomenal talk with some really timeless advice that transcends the world of "game dev". LESSONS & KEY TAKEAWAYS Quick Note: Below are key points I chose to tag. It's not really intended to be exhaustive or "official", but I wanted some indexes for my own personal notes on this talk. 13:30 1.1) Slow Down to Speed Up 14:06 1.2) Learn Art Fundamentals 14:55 1.3) A "Game Artist" has a Distinct Skillset 21:24 2.1) Choose Art Styles that Play to Your Strengths & User Experience 22:02 2.2) Mockups are Faster & Cheaper to Iterate vs. Game Builds Avoiding Team Miscommunication: 24:47 Visual Documentation 25:42 Communicate the Same Idea Multiple Ways Understanding Art Pipeline 26:23 Create at Least 1 of Every Major Asset 27:05 3.1) Experience is Better than an Educated Guess 32:55 Unit Animation Artwork Pipeline 34:44 3.2) Baby Steps & The Long Shortcut Applying The Long Shortcut 36:56 Drawing on Past Experience 40:14 Flag Animation: Iterating Upon Previous Success 42:00 4.1) Pragmatism & "Good Enough" 45:00 Strategic Compromise vs. Technical Gains 46:23 4.2) "Bad" Ideas vs. Unconventional Ideas 47:03 4.3) Make Time to Experiment Production 49:25 Iterating Ideas 50:17 Avoinging Rework: Building Animations Handled in Late Prod 50:44 Portrait artwork creation 50:55 Lost Time: UI Iteration 51:44 Particle FX 53:13 "The Feature Creep" 54:32 Weather System: Was It Worth It? Costs of Development 56:49 5.1) Project Management Best Practices 57:13 The Downside of Poor Planning is YOUR TIME 58:14 5.2) Maximizing Value 59:15 5.3) Defining Succes Questions: 1:01:33 Are the Flags Different from Character Sprites? 1:02:25 How do you tackle large-scale graphic changes when your artists do not possess technical knowledge?

[@NotASpyReally]

Thanks for the buttons!

[@MD-yd8lh]

this should be the pinned comment

[@wildawolf702]

THX for your time code😚

[@cmd5789]

Thank you!!

[@TANIMAYTO]

so many gems in this one :) Love the note on stopping for a minute to think of a battle plan. I definitely forget about that.

[@hughspector1115]

this guy is amazing, no wonder tooth and tail is beautiful. what a total boss, when he brought up graphic design my heart fluttered a bit (being a graphic designer).

[@hibryd7481]

JESUS that's a dark backstory for a game, especially one featuring bunnies and badgers... Did not see that one coming.

[@eeluminatus967]

haha, I made a couple of skins for that game, but I never wanted to touch the commanders - mostly because of their flags, which just seemed like a horrible job to paint pixel by pixel... glad to learn nobody actually ever painted them that way

[@cozymonk]

The best artists match their tools to their capabilities and intended uses. Photoshop is not the best-suited thing for animation; it is perfectly fine to blame it. Good artists don't bash their heads into a wall over stubbornly sticking to a bad tool.

[@l.a.w.6494]

But it can be used 😅

[@exedrusz8497]

Wow, Adam really hit this one out of the park. This was a pretty great overview/presentation.

[@Twisted_Logic]

I love Tooth and Tail's art style. Cool to hear the story behind it. Very educational.

[@RazielIgor]

This was a great talk. This was actually a topic which I was interested in nowadays. I was trying to find tutorial videos for creating different types of art styles for video games but all I could find was like: "2d tutorial, 3d tutorial, pixel art tutorial, etc." while what I wanted to learn was like these mentioned in this video like "color, siluette, art that supports your games narrative, etc". I will try to learn more on art fundamentals, color theory, visual design and I guess that Animator's Survival Kit book will help as well. Thanks for the talk 👍

[@pixelotix]

I literally clapped at the same time as everyone else. What a fucking awesome presentation.

[@stealcase]

Great talk, Theres a lot of high value here: And I always seem to come away from these things with a greater appreciation for the fundamentals. They always seem to solve the hardest problems. 😅

[@midasmagnezone4282]

59:19 "Tooth and Tail is, in my eyes, already an incredible success" That's great to hear, congrats! "...and we haven't launched yet." Wait, what? 'Tis was a great talk about even if the title seemed a bit misleading and clickbaity at first. I think the last part about production goes to show that you don't necessarily need more time to make a great product but rather a proper means of communication and good planning. Cheers!

[@vicenteperez2136]

i was wondering how they did the flags cause i was doing pixel art for what im making and spent a whole day or two building just character sprites and i looked at the tnt flags recently while remote playing with him and asked myself "how did they animate the flags by hand? they look absolutely amazing for hand drawn animations did they get a whole team to make these? and hey they even put custom ones too... that's a lotta work for something that's only on one sprite in the game why would they do this?"

[@mmmyum4779]

Why is a 2017 talk just now being uploaded?

[@bengerman4722]

they hide the really good stuff behind a pay wall on their site

[@boiboi7717]

@@bengerman4722 oh snap

[@NotASpyReally]

Yeah I was like "Wait, game didn't ship yet? Hmmmmm.............."

[@WarjoyHeir]

The self awareness is impressive. I like the game art but it is true that they went a bit hard with the bloom and effects.

[@AdamBelis]

if only this guys know about how good is Krita for frame by frame animation

[@virpoja271]

Excellent talk! Many points to consider in my next project. Thanks!

[@cmdtrigun]

The artist on my game in progress switched from Photoshop to Aesprite for animating pixel art since it's a much easier pipeline

[@nintendude794]

Was thinking the same thing

[@dragontailsb1971]

I have it, it's really good with pixels!

[@romulino]

Awesome talk, but I have to say the pretty little liars mention got me cracking... 🤣

[@conrichdev]

This was an awesome talk, for a load of reasons. Let's get more out like this!

[@the_elder_gamer]

Obviously this is a very personal take, but I think it's worth mentioning that I've gone to purchase this game probably a dozen times over the last few years and every time I stop short explicitly because of the pixel art. I understand the motivation for the changes made, especially after hearing this talk, but I feel like it doesn't really do justice to the vision Jerome Jacinto obviously had for the game. That said, it's a great talk filled with plenty of well-thought out advice. Thanks for making it available GDC.

[@elmaxo1591]

Knack 3 BABY, knack is Back

[@laggingdragons]

36:56 Someone has never played Donkey Kong Country lmao

[@sierrafoxtrot1331]

Starcraft meets Mario is not accurate at all. More like Starcraft goes back in time to Soviet Russia. Love the game though!

[@styxrakash4639]

loved this game, wish it got more attention

[@muzboz]

Really enjoyed this talk, thanks so much Adam! Awesome. :)

[@pedrovasconcellos3346]

what. a. masterclass.

[@laggingdragons]

No shade against dude, his talk is great and I learned a lot about time management from watching this, but I would rather my project falter and be delayed or even cancelled than settle for "good enough." Don't get me wrong, I'm no perfectionist, but I'm mega mega fucking fuming when I get rushed and have to push out work that falls short of the expectations set forth by the rest of the work on a project, and I will absolutely push blame cast on me for that product being worse off because of my rushed work on the people who rushed me. I don't care if that sounds toxic to you. Do better. I know I can and so I will. You should too. The world is shitty because too many people put forth shitty effort in improving it. Edit: 48:30 case in point

[@whendricso]

Don't do game art in Photoshop, use Krita, it's designed really well for animation

[@bamboobandit]

Photoshop has great scripting capabilities though, which is helpful for the art pipeline

[@rmt3589]

I'd prefer illustrator anyways.

[@rafaelcerveglieri]

I'd like to thumbs up this more than once

[@SebLeCaribou]

Great great great talk! So much great little advice in this one!

[@marscaleb]

Did you ever try using Graphics Gale for your pixel animation?

[@Ralke1]

Awesome content!

[@mcpepa]

23:47 that seems a bit odd, birds should be ranged they have extremely good eyes even night vision, while mammals are more into take care of the group and fast reproduction, they could be healers or cheap soldiers that go in groups.

[@RedTenGames]

Amazing amount of useful information. Indie dev is a lot about workarounds about optimizing the process to make dev faster.

[@kirbymia6209]

Yes!

[@NoisyNitGames]

Great talk, lots of great points and identifying common problems in smaller teams

[@Magicguy33]

This needs more views and likes!

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

one of the best lectures in GDC history.

[@LilayM]

Really quality talk

[@ultimocontrole9980]

This game is the opposite of the comunist revolution of russia, its impressive how wrong it actualy is

[@MH-lr6ue]

Uh!

[@RglMrn]

Phenomenal talk. Thank you very much.

[@Thomason1005]

really inspiring talk about how to attack problems & plan projects! i am sure these insights apply to many fields and industries

[@christopherwilliams242]

it's animal FARm the game.That's brilliant

[@alpercizmeci4039]

One of the best talks of GDC, thank you!

[@chriswahl1337]

Wow, this was a really great talk.

[@simP001]

Take a shot every time he says "undulation"

[@takashy87]

or "Tooth and Tail "

[@simP001]

@@takashy87 Nah you'll absolutely get alcohol poisoning from that lmao

[@ifvictorthen10]

Thick of a self avertissement

[@bencanfield]

Is that badger's weapon a red rocket? 24:08

[@alexalexandrov5514]

Excellent talk! Huge tnx

[@ZappForThat]

Really excellent talk

[@WikiSnapper]

That was a fantastic talk!

[@LutraLovegood]

Lmao imagine using photoshop for pixel art animation Yeah, he really needs to update

[@DAEDRICDUKE1]

Please post games you've made

[@FirstNameLastName-wv2iz]

what's a good software to use for that nowadays?

[@lfstimpy2130]

@@FirstNameLastName-wv2iz Aseprite is usually the go to for that since it has specialized tools. I personally use Clip Studio Paint but it's more of a swiss army knife software rather than something specialized for pixel art. The point is, Photoshop is one of the worst options to use for pixel art since all the tools are counter intuitive and much more cumbersome to use for this specific type of workflow. For photo editing it's pretty good, but kinda terrible for anything else. The only reason it sticks around it's because it's industry standard and synergizes with the rest of the Adobe suite software.

[@deadflesh1000]

watching his presentation about the creative process behind everything is just like a mind cleaner it gives so much clarity to think about how you can try things in your own way

[@williambaker4915]

Tough crowd

[@muffinberg7960]

this game was boring af.

[@theheroesofether7300]

Maybe check our website

[@muffinberg7960]

@@theheroesofether7300 yours is not only boring but also shitty.

[@theheroesofether7300]

@@muffinberg7960 we just started lol

[@muffinberg7960]

@@theheroesofether7300 sure I wouldnt discourage you if you didnt marketed that shit under my comment via shameless self plug. But I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, just the same as me while bashing you for that type of behavior. Have success with your game.

[@KingKarlomagne]

he replaced the art with pixel art lol

[@eversostrange6337]

Stop making games aimed for everyone they are coming out bland and for no one cyberpunk is an example of this they tried to get everyone on board and it blew up in their face if they went after only the rpg base they would of gone down in history but they wanted that lowest common denominator money and pushed it towards the gta and cod fans who if you don't know hate rpgs. Know who you're trying to reach with your expression

[@takashy87]

Great talk, but I can't really agree with the "Good enough" part. "Good enough" is very subjective. If you work on your own game, then you're the 1 who decides if it's "Good enough" or not, but when it comes to getting a job in the industry your "good enough" might be the equivalent of "bare minimum" of a person who's been working with those things for years and possibly is responsible for hiring you or not. I'd say "good enough" is only good enough if you work on your own projects, but if you're trying to get a job, then aim for "best you can do". After all you want to leave the best impression you can, if it comes to getting a job. Once you have a job, you can go back to "good enough" if that's what the company is fine with..

[@iamafroskeleton181]

To be fair, the context for this is focus for art direction. An art director should know when to stop the polish in one subject to not overwork both that one feature and the other artist that working with you so the overall game. Just to be clear what did you say is 100% correct, just for any other context but that one.

[@orangutangetiquette8962]

What kind of a gamer wants to run around with a bunch of animals having warfare. Cant help but feel like its utterly stupid..

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

Seems you have never heard of Redwall.