作者：Jo-Annie Gauthier

当Thunder Lotus Games的创意总监Will Dube让我编写《Sundered》的艺术方向相关内容时，我发现这个任务比想象中简单得多。

或者至少是直接得多。当你的学习经验是受到其他艺术家的启发时，你便很难去明确你的灵感来源到底是哪里。

我发现《Sundered》是观看了来自迪士尼，梦工厂，吉卜力， Don Bluth与莱卡等等公司的电影而学到的一切内容的结合体，我也发现了来自这些电影中的一些风格。我所认识的许多优秀的艺术家都在某种程度上影响着我的作品，即不管是在作曲，颜色的使用还是设计方面，但只有少数资源是《Sundered》中一些概念的最初推动力量。

Eschatons(from gamasutra)

Eschaton（那些会在涌向你之前朝你大吼的怪人）便是一大挑战，因为他们既需要保留模糊的人类感同时也需要具有奇特性。把脸藏起来去创造不安感的做法已经过时了，而Eschaton的面具灵感是源自《千与千寻》中的无脸男，即能够传达这个角色的神秘感，即通过带有非人类的身体去传达一种惊悚感。但我们也必须说，即在他们承受命运之前，并在变成自己的影子之前，他们的面具其实也是一种敬畏与和平的标志。它需要能够传达这两种极端。

Valkyries(from gamasutra)

Valkyries是进步的体现。他们是伴随着有问题的技术，不能控制自己的意志并会对Eshe发动进攻，没人能够制止他们。不管是游戏，电影还是书籍等科幻媒体在过去几年里都非常盛行，所以我尝试着在设计这些内容时去内化它。这是伴随着巨大的枪支，重甲战士以及演戏的强大军事力量。

《Sundered》的整体配色方案是设计师设定好的，所有派系都拥有自己的颜色代码，包括环境及其障碍区，在这些群组中每种类别或难度层面也都有不同颜色。（游戏邦注：例如你应该提防所有绿色，并且游戏会鼓励你与那些紫色进行互动！）《Sundered》最初的灵感其实是源自电影《异形》中的悬疑感，我们知道我们想要通过使用充满活力的颜色去保持前进并尝试着避免颜色的限制使用。

透过环境设计和艺术形式去传达故事是我们一直在努力做的事，而当我们真正能够做到这点时我们便能够最大化玩家的体验。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Sundered: Art Direction and Visual Storytelling in a Hand-drawn Indie Game

by Jo-Annie Gauthier

When Thunder Lotus Games’ Creative Director Will Dubé tasked me with writing about the art direction for Sundered, I figured it would be simpler than it turned out to be.

Or at least more straight forward. It’s hard to pinpoint one or two inspirations when your your learning experience boils down to being inspired by other artists.

Sundered is certainly an amalgam of everything I’ve learned from watching movies from Disney, Dreamworks, Ghibli, Don Bluth, Laika, (and many more!) and I’ve retained things from every one of those movies in terms of style, as well from studying 2D animation. Many great artists I know have influenced the work I do in one way or another, be it composition, use of color, design, but a few sources were key to give the initial push to some concepts in Sundered.

An Eschaton Cultist.

The Eschatons—those strange tentacled people that screech at you before they swarm you—were a challenge to work on because they needed to retain a vague human feel to them while being monstrous. The idea of hiding the face to create uneasiness is as old as time, but the Eschaton’s mask was inspired by No Face (Spirited Away) for its uncertainty, for its slight creepiness once paired with an non-human body. But it must be said that before their fate was bestowed upon them and before they became only shadows of their former selves, their masks were a sign of reverence, of peace. It needed to be able to represent the two extremes.

The Valkyries – Technology gone wrong

The Valkyries are designed to appear as the embodiment of progress. They’re the ones with all of this technology that, somehow, has gone wrong and seems to be acting out of its own volition and attacking Eshe, with no one to reign them in or shut them down. Sci-Fi media, be it games, movies, books, (etc.) have been affluent for the past years, so I tried to internalize it all when it came to their designs. A large military force with big guns, big mechs, big drills!

Wakey, wakey!

The overall color schemes in Sundered are very intentional; all factions involved have their own color coding, including the environment and its hazards, and within those groups are different color tiers for each class or difficulty tier. (For example, you should probably be wary of anything green, but you are encouraged to interact with those purple!) If what prompted the initial spark for Sundered was the Alien movies for their suspense and feel, we knew that we wanted to keep going with our signature use of vibrant colors and try to avoid limiting our palettes.

A shrine from the Sundered underground.

Telling stories through the environments’ designs and compositions is something we are working hard to achieve so that we may maximize the player’s experience when discovering the regions. After all, I hear the people who once lived in there had a lot to report on what happened in this eerie underground world…(source:gamasutra)