Greetings! Founder of Broken Hammer here once again. I hope those of you in the US had a great Thanksgiving. Still have leftovers here.
Moving into December, I'd like to take a look back and give you a better teaser of our decal work that is right now very close to a final draft that will be presented to Muse.
November saw us not only get closer to our final decal designs, but it also brought us to the conclusion of the physical shipment side of the IndieGoGo campaign. As of Thanksgiving week, all the physical shipments from the IndieGoGo campaign were officially sent out. Those who haven't received one, please let us know right away.
That said, decals.
Decals have had a long journey that have their beginnings far back in our founding days.
We knew we wanted to go to IndieGoGo and we knew we wanted to make something for within Guns of Icarus (GOIO) that people who backed could display.
Ideas for that actually started with our "chibi" characters that we eventually used for the IndieGoGo page. Georgy had drawn them up in his spare time and we both agreed they might be useful for something down the line. Which they were.
The trouble with the "chibis" from a decal standpoint was, they just didn't work that great on the airship balloons. Despite their simplicity, they were simply too complex. Benefiting from both white and black colors to create them. This wouldn't work for the GOIO decals because decals in GOIO are one color and are often obscured by parts of the airship.
So as our IndieGoGo campaign got underway, we began our quest to develop a design that would be better in line with what Muse wanted, and also be something that would actually look nice on airships. Unfortunately we had to push back this design as needs for the campaign arose.
But thanks to Faith coming back to help concept, decal production started to get back underway.
At first we looked at the early "chibis" and then in a discussion with Ryan one night, he thought of the idea of a silhouette. Faith presented the same idea at practically the same time without knowing our conversation, and so we quickly asked her to draw up some concepts.
They looked great but, at the same time, it gave us more ideas. We thought of the faction flags in GOIO and thought of how we could implement them into the design.
Creating decals that would represent factions in GOIO, which players could use to show off their support for their faction of choice, was an attractive idea.
To further flesh out this idea, I took it to Conn who was interested in tackling it.
To the left is one of his early concepts. He worked in elements of the culture into the decal.
Unfortunately it was still a bit too complex and it also made us realize something.
That was that it lacked personality. This is where the limit of the silhouette started to stand out.
It would work for certain characters, but not all.
The image wouldn't quite work well with the balloons either. It relied too much on having to visibly see the main image to figure out what it was.
But ultimately, Conn wasn't happy with it either. He wanted to try something. So I said, go for it. Try something.
Next came the bomber paint style. Similar to the old decals that would be painted on WWII bombers that flew into battle.
This instantly hit it home on the personality. We saw right away that if we wanted to highlight the personality of each heroine, we'd need to ditch the silhouette style and focus on something more like this.
Conn worked in most of the elements that we were looking for and showcased a direction we wanted to see more of.
But he wasn't done yet. He wanted to try something else.
That something else is this...
A more perfect blend of the three ideas and where we found ourselves hoping to stick it on our balloons as soon as possible.
It meets all the elements we have been wanting to meet. It shows the faction, the character, personality, and it looks great on an airship.
Granted, the text will not be there in the final version due to limitations with the decals that Muse uses in the game, but that is where our process is heading into as we wrap up the month of November.
As of this day, about half the decals are approaching final design with only minor tweaks left. Once the decal pack is complete, it will be then sent to Muse for final approval for inclusion into Guns of Icarus. How soon that happens, depends on their patch schedule. But we will keep backers appraised as to how soon they'll be able to fly around with their special decals as soon as we know.
Once again I'd like to thank all our backers from the IndieGoGo campaign. Your support encouraged us greatly and we look forward to closing out this year and beginning a new one on Dust and Air.
Till next time! See you in the skies!!