Design Insight: Uhlikti (Patreon)

It has been a while since I've shared an insight/making of post like this, and I thought it was long overdue. Today, we'll be sharing how the average Infinite Stars character comes into being. This post will contain spoilers of content that is still to come! So click away if you don't want to see anything not yet revealed in the game!

I tried my best to censor any nudity, but due to the nature of this post, it does contain some slight NSFW elements.

The first step is always a design brief.

The amount of detail varies from super specific to very broad. I like giving our artists a ton of creative freedom, as that's where the true magic happens. The Cephilusk were heavily inspired by squids, and similarly, the Uhlikti are inspired by slugs.

We started off with some reference images like these below:

Next, the artist takes those ideas and comes up with some concepts. Like the brief, the concepts can also vary wildly in number and look. For the Uhlikti, once we got the basic shape right, we set off to explore some variations:

We then take some time to decide what elements we like, and start to mix and match them together. Sometimes a single concept is so amazing that it doesn't need any changes. This happens more often than you would think!

After deciding on the elements we'd be keeping, we briefly explored what a male Uhlikti would look like before continuing to the final sketch for the female.

Once we had the body and basic face down, we started playing with colouring. Our artist Tae, being as amazing as she is, nailed the perfect colours on the first try!

We still weren't happy with the facial features, so we explored a few more options!

Finally, we found something we liked (on the left), and after a few minor changes, like the hairline, we settled on the final face:

Next up was to figure out an outfit for her to wear. We used a different brief document filled with inspiration and ideas, and the whole process started from scratch, working from left to right.

Next was colouring and finding a mask approach that we liked. We also had to tone down the detailing quite a bit to ensure it fitted with the aesthetics of Infinite Stars.

The mask still wasn't working, so we decided to experiment with some variations. We ended up giving ourselves room to manoeuvre by using different masks in different scenarios.

Lastly, the final touches– Expressions! Drawing the Cephilusk expressions was extremely difficult, but Tae managed to make it look easy with the Uhlikti. With the eyebrows being split on their own layer, our Uhlikti lady has a total of 126 nuanced expressions!! Here are just a few of them!

As you can see, the artwork can be quite intensive for Infinites Stars, especially when it comes to creating a new species. Now that we have the basic design locked down, the next Uhlikti will go significantly quicker!

I hope you enjoyed this post! It took much longer to compile than I expected, but if it makes you excited about Infinite Stars, then it was well worth it! Let me know in the comments! <3