David Hellman

Last week this series kicked off with some abstract color experiments. As much as I enjoy the idea of Braid emerging from a Genesis-like pre-existence chromatic maelstrom, my first job was actually something else. Jonathan sent me a screenshot and asked me to draw over it.

Here it is, in its programmer art glory. Though visually crude, the game was actually pretty advanced, from a functional perspective. Keys, switches, ladders, spikes, monsters, and a guy in a suit – it was all there. If you read the whole post, for dessert I’ll show you how little (or much!) this screen changed in the final game.

Here’s my first try. I deliberately got away from the materials and palette in the screenshot. This looks kind of like some areas in Yoshi’s Island, on SNES. The background was meant to radiate gently. In an e-mail I described the atmosphere as “ethereal!”
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Today I bring you another new feature, Who’s Reading My Mind, in which I scramble to take credit for an idea I’ve recently learned someone else plans to implement. Word just hit the street that Wayforward Technologies, maker of Contra 4 and Shantae, is developing a Wii Ware game called LIT. According to the press release, it’s a 3D horror puzzler about maneuvering a scary, dark environment by creating safe paths with light. That’s right, you light the way to presumably stave off whatever horrors lurk in the 3D darkness.

Well! Dudes, I had the same idea back in 2003. Here are some hastily-snapped photos from an old sketchbook.

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Over the next month or so I’ll be wrapping up work on Braid, a video game by Jonathan Blow, coming to XBOX LIVE Arcade. (For an overview from my perspective, here’s the relevant page from my portfolio, and for general Braid-related news, here’s the official blog.) It seemed like a good time to “start talkin’,” as they say in interrogations. This is the first of a series of blog posts highlighting different aspects of Braid’s art, and explaining some of my thoughts behind them. Some posts may be fairly concrete-minded, but others (this one, at least) verge a little into my own associations and difficult-to-pin-down feelings. But hey, it’s art! Behind-the-scenes info and creator commentary are always interesting to me, so hopefully these will address someone’s curiosity at least.

(Certainly I welcome comments! Let me know what you’d like to hear about, and how I can make these features more interesting.)

Let’s start with these vague yet vivid digital paintings. They’re from the very beginning of my involvement in the project, in the summer of 2006. Even then it was known that Braid contained various worlds, and that each world had a different theme, and that each theme would call for a different graphic solution. These exercises were just an initial foray into mood and color, to see what range of sensations might be appropriate.

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This idea originated from playing video games with friends and finding the expressions and movements of the characters often more entertaining than the game’s prescribed goal. My desire to win was frequently overrun by the temptation of doing something funny. It made me wish there were more ways to express myself within the game, and some motivation besides conquest.

My first experiment was a simple realization of the concept “digital puppet.” Using Flash, I drew an old man whose eyebrows and pupils could move independently. Different combinations of brow and pupil positions seemed to evoke different emotions, from pity to whimsy to rage. But the face didn’t do much on its own. It just stared out of the screen. I added another character with the same behaviors, but surprisingly, together they looked even more idle. I added a little yellow dog – and immediately the scene gained focus. It’s about the dog, who is either a treasure or a nuisance, and the mens’ reactions to it. The dog can be in one lap or the other, but never in between. Therefore the scene is always unbalanced, and never resolved. It’s still only a modest demonstration, but I like the direction.