How Clash: Artifacts of Chaos Uses Traditional Techniques to Look Like an Animated Illustration

You can create an individual look with video games using many styles. You can find more information here. Clash: Artifacts of ChaosFrom the very beginning, we knew that we wanted a colorful and unrealistic one. We did this to distinguish it from other titles in the genre. To stylize and exaggerate animation and colors, and also to be able to mirror the punk-fantasy illustrations that inspired creation of the game.

A powerful tool to highlight that is stylistized rendering “What to draw?” and “How to draw it?”These are two completely different questions. This is the third time we have visited the surreal world of Zenozoik and its primitive humanoid animal inhabitants, but it is the first time we are approaching the “how to draw it” with a really different technique!

We could go many different ways, so we tried several before settling on this one. You can achieve very different results by deciding what you simplify and what you exaggerate. The painterly thick brushstroke style (above) was one of our favorites. This allowed for very expressive shapes and a chaotic, almost impressionistic style. It was definitely very different.

Because of its excessive simplification, we eventually rejected this style. Artists always desired to include more detail in characters and places. These details would be lost in the impressionistic style.

Crosshatching, also known as hatching or crosshatching is the rendering style that we chose. This drawing style creates shading by using closely spaced lines. A darker area will be created if the lines are closer together. This is a common style used for traditional illustrations, comic books and illustration. This method allowed us achieve an illustrated style without losing any detail.

Separating the information about lighting and conveying detail mostly using ink pencil linework allows us to treat color as an independent layer. It allows us to utilize more artificial color schemes that would not look right in an actual rendering style, yet still fit the illustration’s aesthetic. Violet and orange skies, characters with blue or yellow skin, orange dirt, cyan and green mineral deposits in the mountain walls… we intentionally use saturated colors, or color combinations hard to find in nature to convey this is a different world.

It was important to test the hatching method at different distances. You don’t just need to draw lines across the surface. What works well for small details may not be as effective for large mountains. Some features, such as character eyes that are the focal point of attention and need to be kept sharp and defined must also be maintained. It is important to maintain consistency in the linework so that it appears as though everything was done with one tool.

Even though we created the exact look we wanted for the game we chose to give players options to modify it. The game allows players to choose between a more clean look and add or remove effects. Even though it isn’t the most readable mode for reading, this is very fun to use!

Clash: Artifacts of ChaosS or Xbox One.|S and Xbox One. If you are interested in keeping track of all future news, devs blogs and trailers, don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or join our official Discord server.