Braid is a video game about solving puzzles in imaginative worlds. It's playful and philosophical. Its designer, Jonathan Blow, hired me to create the graphics for his functional but visually spare rough draft. Happily for me, Jonathan asked me to bring my own sensibility and artistic guidance to the project. Braid is available on XBOX 360 and Windows PC.
In the story of Braid, the true nature of reality is ambiguous. The protagonist, Tim, is an introspective type who questions the appearance of things, as well as their underlying mechanisms. Braid itself is a series of playful thought experiments: what if the world worked this way? What if time could go backwards? What if there were multiple concurrent realities? Each world Tim travels through presents a different twist on nature's laws. Coming to grips with those laws is the heart of the puzzle-solving.
These are the sorts of themes that informed the art. Because Braid's world represents Tim's thought experiments, a painterly, hand-made look is appropriate. It reminds us that the perceived world is a human contruct. As a living work in progress, it also made sense to depict the world in varying states of finish. Some areas are highly detailed, while others are rough, the creative hand of the thinker clearly visible. Another reason for the varying detail is interface-related. Not all objects on the screen are things you can touch. For example, the distant trees are only a backdrop. To help the player see the difference, objects Tim can touch are usually much higher detail than things he can't. Being clear about this distinction was perhaps the most important directive for the graphics.
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WORLD ART ATMOSPHERE AND THEME
Tim travels to six unique worlds, each governed by different natural laws. There's also a story for each world, a fragment of prose that frames the puzzles in a certain narrative context.
For example, one world begins with a story of a man leaving his girlfriend or wife at home to pursue a personal challenge. He is torn between staying and going. The special "law" of this world is that there are two planes of existence that run parallel and sometimes intersect. This is the key concept for solving the puzzles. By reading the story and engaging the puzzles, the player experiences the theme of "splitting" in multiple ways.
This thoughfulness and harmony between its various aspects is part of what made Braid a really interesting project. Of course, my art was expected to translate the themes into yet another medium. In the case of the "parallel realities" world, I represented the theme by combining luxurious domestic objects (nice furniture and fabrics) with rugged outdoor objects (swampy water, rotting piers and nautical rope). The resuilt is incongruous, but intentionally so! Hopefully players will have two simultaneous reactions – "what a nice ottoman" and "what a yucky swamp" – again reiterating the theme of "splitting", or "staying or going".
In general, we've tried to avoid video game clichés like the "icy world" and the "lava world." We do have an "ancient ruins world", but it's not gratuitous!
CHARACTER ART THE GOOD, THE GLAD, AND THE LOVELY
This is Tim, the character controlled by the player. Although quite an active hero, he always wears a (somewhat rumpled) blazer and tie.
When I joined the project, character art by Edmund McMillen was already underway. Eventually, I re-drew the characters to better match the now-predominant style of the backgrounds. They remain based on Edmund's designs.
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MARKETING TEASING METAPHORICALLY
Originally intended for an ill-fated postcard, this piece of promo art may yet find a use. Rather than represent the game literally (for example, with a screenshot), we wanted to suggest its themes in a way that would provoke curiosity.
In Braid, the normal laws of time are broken and revived in fanciful variations. Sandcastles are ephemeral playful creations, and castles appear in Braid. This visual metaphor came to mind instantly but took longer to draw.
