In order to understand ‘Quill’ and both how and why she was designed the way she was, I decided to collect research on the studio who created her game. ‘Moss’ is a video game developed by Polyarc; I was able to find different articles and videos of the development team talking about how they contributed to creating ‘Quill’ as a character.
In various interviews with the games animation director Rick Lico he brings up details that I found important, the details helped both the concept artist and the animators create the games protagonist ‘Quill’.
Quill uses realistic animation gestures so they chose to use a more anatomically correct design of a mouse rather than a cartoony one - this plays a role in how the player interacts with Quill as she will respond to actions with sign language.
Quill’s body language was more of a focus than her facial features - her movements are subtle to define a more genuine personality and give her autonomy.
Moss Protagonist 'Quill' moving and using ALS (American Sign Language)
Quill will interact and have eye contact with the player, making her eyes an important part of her design; this design being led by art director Chris Alderson. In interviews he details many inspirations for the character ‘Quill’, from the journey of the hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkin’s books, to games like ‘The Legend of Zelda’,the films of Studio Ghibli such as ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’ and even how his own pets would emote and interact which led to design decisions like the size and shape of her ears and eyes.
The reason ‘Quill’ looks and acts the way she does was to compliment the VR technology by making a character that the player can emotionally interact with and would want to invest time in, protect, assist and form a bond with.
The story of Moss allowed the developers to use size and scale to their advantage in both gameplay and design - with small characters and structures built for these characters in contrast to the big dangerous world around them.
Quill’s design was developed around VR technology and the studios desire to create a small diorama-esque world; I believe that we can see how this aspect of size and scale mixed with VR has influenced other details of ‘Quill’s’ design with the choice in the colour of her fur and her red scarf help her design stand out against the earthy colour palettes of the different environments and to help the player see hear more easily when running and climbing on platforms.
The keywords and themes that I regularly see being used to describe the look and feel the development team wanted to evoke in the game’s design are - comfortable, inviting, exploration, immersive, adventure, friendship, emotional, a storybook fairy tale.
I feel gathering this information has given me more insight on the development of concept art within a studio and how concept art can be influenced and enhanced by the contribution of disciplines outside of art.
Research Reference:
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/336325/Road_to_the_IGF_Polyarcs_Moss.php
https://twitter.com/Foofinu/status/892916386162331650
https://www.mcvuk.com/development-news/when-we-made-moss/
https://blog.vive.com/us/2018/06/29/exploring-process-behind-polyarc-games-moss/
https://blog.threadless.com/the-immersive-worlds-of-polyarc-games/
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