Our journey to meet Maggie (Patreon)

 Hi guys, It’s Léa!

I’m once again taking over with our second development diary: Our journey to meet Maggie. Please note that this post is for Patrons only so don't share it!

If you haven’t done it yet, I strongly suggest that you read our first development diary on how we designed her loft! 

Finding our Art style

As you probably know, the Parafolks’ reveal  was a key moment in the development of Paralives. Being a very small team, we had to make some concessions. It was impossible for us to have characters as detailed as those in high budget AAA games, we just didn't have the manpower to produce them. So we decided to work smart and produce characters that are simple, accessible and detailed enough for players to have fun customizing them.

We knew that we wouldn’t be able to please everyone so we decided to focus on being inventive, original and recognizable. We wanted our parafolks to stand out, and for the players to be able to easily distinguish Paralives from other games. 

Here you can see some of our most important influences:

We were aiming for a hand drawn/illustrated look with a touch of classic Disney. For the shading, think Zelda Breath of the Wild, colorful and different from the environment, on its own layer. 

All the references we liked had marked pencil strokes, visible brushstrokes, or even watercolor effects. These are a little bit everywhere in our designs. For example, the details on the clothes are hand-drawn over the texture with pencil brushes. 

We are still working on our graphic identity, our shaders and the overall look of the game. It is very important as we need the players to be able to recognize the game immediately.

The importance of proportions

We worked for a few weeks on finding the perfect proportions for our Parafolks. The goal was to respect our 2D style while having something fun, close to what humans actually look like. Simple, yet stylized and expressive, with realistic proportions. We wanted something permissive, allowing us to have a wide range of features.

Here you can see a work in progress, where we compared different facial proportions and styles. We went from a cartoony vibe to a more realistic one, to finally have a stylized but realistic face. Keep in mind that it was a work in progress made a few months ago and not the final look for our male Parafolks.

Designing Maggie

Since Maggie is our first premade Para, she will be one of the characters to represent the game. So we wanted her to be fierce, educated and independent. One of our goals with Paralives is to be inclusive, which is why we chose to give her multiple ethnicities. She’s mixed with a golden skin and she has bright eyes. It was also important for us not to give her a specific sexual orientation. Maggie is single, she’s bold and lives for her passion. 

Along the way, we had to make specific choices for technical reasons. In order to properly showcase the body deformations, we noticed that a skin tight outfit was the best option. We also faced technical difficulties with her dress. In the loft video you can see the shadow of Maggie wearing the original dress, which was inspired by one of my drawings (see below). The fringe around the shoulders was time consuming to animate properly and we decided to redesign the dress to simplify our process and save time. 

In the end, it was important for us that Maggie appears as an engaging and inspirational character. She should have both the look and the personality of a human being. She needed to have her own life, while having enough room for the players to imagine her future. Maybe she will be your Para’s girlfriend, best friend, wife, or favorite neighbor! Her story is now in your hands! 

In conclusion, designing our first Para was a real journey. We still have a lot of work to do in order to improve and polish our style! Maggie’s reveal was a real success, we topped almost all of our Patreon goals in two weeks! We are very happy about it and forever grateful for your love and support! 

Love,

Léa