IP DEVELOPMENT – DIABOLI CASE STUDY
A collaboration between our Artists, Art Directors and Storytellers, Diaboli is a One Pixel Brush Studio IP created to show the the way we think and how we approach IP Development. Mixed in you will see videos showing the conversion of concept art into a VISUAL SLICE built in Unreal Engine 5 as well as VIRTUAL FILMAKING where we use our 3D assets to direct and animate moments from your IP. — This page will be periodically updated. Stay tuned to our OPB socials! INSTAGRAM / TWITTER / FACEBOOK
Diaboli Treatment PDF
Godric Rides through the countryside marvelling at the natural wonders God has provided the rightous! -- The purpose of these early shots was to show the bounty and beauty of the world the characters live in, so that later when it all "goes to hell" we can really visually feel what they have lost. An images like this can also start conversations about the color script, perhaps saving the golden yellows for God and the muted blues for the Devil.
The biggest advantage of a 3D based workflow is that lighting is fast and easy to change. In this example we quickly tried a variety of lighting scenarious to vet which ones would best suit the story moment.
1. Treatment Part 1 / 7
1280 AD – At the height of the Holy Crusades, Christians battle for Jerusalem and the world becomes a more dogmatic and dangerous place. A Priest stumbles into a village with both of his eyes burned out and claims that he was praying in solitude and saw the Devil in a crevice.
Francis, the atheist son of a devout fisherman, has 2 younger siblings Henry and Gisela, who inherited their father’s piety. The youngest, Henry, is a gifted soldier and is eager to join the fight to reclaim the Holy Lands. In a tournament joust Henry accidentally injures the King’s nephew Godric. The Bishops see it as an assault on Gods anointed family and sentence him to death. Godric strongly protests, but to no avail. Francis watches his little brother’s execution and vows vengeance on Godric and the church.
Over the next month natural disasters become mysteriously more frequent. Severe earthquakes and volcanic eruptions wipe out many cities. This leads to hunger, starvation and mass migration of millions of people. The religious leaders invariably agree it is God’s wrath but each faith is unequivocal about the fact that OTHER is to blame. The entire continent mobilizes their respective militaries to fight for what resources remain.
At OPB our Concept Art strives to serve a story purpose. As fun as it would be to do another epic "lava concept" we brainstormed with the writers to try to find not only an environment but a MOMENT that would be dramatic. We settled on a rescue, and as dangerous as this type of rescue would be, we imagined perhaps she could have survived on a stone well until her rescuers used VERY carefully placed boards to save her.
The poses of this and the prior image seem obvious, but it took many iterations focused on JUST the posing necessary to really tell the story of what is going . The handing off of boards from one solider to the next needed to clearly read and so great care was taken to use the elements in the environment to silhouette the action... Without LOOKING like we're silhouetting the action.
Another huge advantage of our 3D based process. It was relatively quick to do this close up shot in the same environment since we had most of the assets already built in 3D.
002. Fire Escape
In this 17 min episode we break down the arduous process we go through to try to get complex narratives to read while still maintining an impactful image that pushes well beyond just showing a cool environment. We go through several of the versions along the way that led to Daniel Dana’s amazing final shot.
Millions of refugees leave their charred lands and migrate across the continent to the surviving cities.
A second more "cinematic" shot of the people escaping land devastated by the volcanoes. The word cinematic is an ambiguously defined to mean "generally good" but what is specifically means to US is that we are SACRIFICING elements that could look visually interesting, to make a more simple more "dumb" (in a way) composition. The previous shot above is arguably a more interesting but choosing to give up some layers of depth in favor of a focus on the 3 simple elements the shot needs to tell the story, grass, people and lava, makes the second shot more impactful and therefore more "cinematic." This is why talking to Directors about the STORY of every shot allows us to make informed compositional choices that cut what might be "cool" in favor of narrative clarity
One of the NEW services we offer. Helping clients create what we call a VISUAL SLICE of their game or film. Instead of providing just a piece of concept art we provide a playable UNREAL 5 SCENE! -- of your project.
2. Treatment Part 2 / 7
As the city is squeezed the people become desperate and volatile. The anointed Queen, fearing revolt, uses the faith to implement draconian religious authority. Francis and his father are subjected to severe taxes and harsher punishments as people are dragged from their homes and crucified for any perceived slight against the faith. Francis’s father falls ill and is near starvation when the church discovers Francis is hiding food for him. As punishment his ailing father is brought out for a brutal lashing. Tensions in the city are at a breaking point.
Meanwhile, with their main army occupied in the north, Godric is prematurely appointed to lead a battalion to fight an enemy in the south. All of the city’s fighting age men are drafted to serve under Godric, but he remembers Francis, and promises that out of recompense for his brother he will protect him. Regardless of this, having never lifted a sword and with a deep resentment for the cause, Francis knows his days are numbered.
Before he leaves for war, his father’s dying wish is for Francis to let go of his anger. He gives him his golden cross and tells him “Man is sinful, but GOD is good” but Francis is too overcome with grief to hear it.
It's forboding to see a disaster from far away which is analagous to how most of us see disasters in our daily lives. On TV from a distance. We thought this shot would be a nice way to invite the viewer to understand the chaos afar first. That it would contrast nicely later when we get into the thick of it. We show that this is not just happening to our protagonists but to the WORLD.
3. Treatment Part 3 / 7
On the road to war the real toll of the damage comes into focus. Godric’s Army is surrounded by thousands of refugees desperate for food, but Godric barely has the provisions needed for his own men and when he refuses to feed the people they attack. The army has no choice but to slaughter hundreds of civilians. Francis is horrified at this so-called “Christian” behavior and for his abstention is mocked and harassed. He snaps back and insults the soldiers and their God to the point of heresy. Only by Godric’s grace is he not killed by his comrades.
The opposing armies finally meet and line up across a field as the ground begins to shake. Both see it as a prophetic of their inevitable victory. Godric gives an impassioned speech to his men about the inevitability of God’s justice but Francis thinks about his brother, father and imminent death in battle, he can no longer bear it. Another explosion from a nearby mountain draws everybody’s attention and Francis seizes the moment. He runs up to Godric in a rage and stabs him.
In the chaos the armies run at each other, but another tremor is followed by a catastrophic volcanic eruption. Both armies are in shock as debris and huge rocks crush hundreds of men… but the worst has yet to begin. Another massive rumble reveals something enormous emerging from the volcano. Nobody can believe what they are seeing as it is some sort of thousand foot tall seemingly molten creature. Horror and panic sweeps through the armies who are now trying to escape the eruption with their lives.
This was one of the original concepts that spawned the whole IP. The idea that the leader of this army was reviled to the point of being murdured by one of the soldiers.
The first big reveal of our bad guy. I guess you could call Satan incarnate... a bad guy? The goal here was to FEEL THE SCALE and there are 2 tricks to that that aren't so obvious. One is to make sure there is a clearly readable ground plane that goes BACK into the shot. Ideally with a scale cue like a person so that when you see the CLOSE person and the FAR person you get that the far person is far. The second is the "GREEBLES" a made up word that means little bits of detail. For an image like this it's critically important to look at real volcanos and make sure the smoke greebles are the right SIZE to match their distance and size. It's such a simple thing to pay attention to but is so often overlooked.
A huge advantage of concepting in 3D is that color and feel is easy to iterate one. Considering that this was the arrival of Satan we played a few more dark options, but since we're going for a very grounded IP, and that so much of it would be moody and overcast, we decided this shot could stay bit more sunny to contrast the drab that will come later.
What often ruins a piece of Concept Art is the urge to put TOO MUCH in the shot. The huge advantage of 3D based concepting is that that once you have a base shot it only take a BIT longer to do alternate shots to help tell your story. The previous shot was about the reveal with SOME hint of the devil, but this is the shot where we really see him. But even then not too much! For the main scary baddie it's always more impactful to just show a little bit of leg first instead of the full monty. This shot is purposely cropped give us a substantial TASTE of what's to come without ruining the mystery.
Francis runs for his life in the insane chaos. We tried to capture a frame that had the protagonist as a focal point but still told the story of everything chaos unfolding around him.
We iterated a LOT on this concept and similar to the discussion of GREEBLES above, water splashes like this are very dependant on the SCALE of the water matching the SIZE of the intended explosion. From watching reference videos we noticed that at this distance water splashes don't really look like water anymore but rather large volumetric froth shapes. Notice the less attended splash in the image above to see the difference. We also took great pains to show a proper GROUND PLANE that leads your eye into the frame and with splashes and people at various distances as scale cues.
An overhead shot like this removes perspective ON PURPOSE. The goal here is to force the viewer to focus on only one thing. The radius of the damage and and destruction.
4. Treatment Part 4 / 7
Godric is seriously injured but able to stand and he is the first to realize what they have unleashed. The literal Devil Incarnate. SATAN HIMSELF.
Francis too has come to the overwhelming revelation that everything his father told him was true. The Devil and therefore God…is REAL. And he just tried to murder a man. Godric tries to rally the army to flee but is horrified to find that 75% of his men are dead already. Most are burned alive and merged into the Devil’s enormous body. As Francis sees an enemy run at a crippled Godric, he feels overwhelming guilt and comes to his rescue. Francis fights off the attacker and slings Godric onto the back of a horse. Together they ride back to the city.
A moment of aftermath. The goal here was to show Francis surrounded by the horror of what has just happened and although it seems incidental, the man walking by him and consoling him by placing a hand on his shoulder requires VERY specific posing. Subtle narratives only seem obvious after they are accomplished but they are always a lot of work to make them read just right. And narratively someone who is "alone" is different from someone in "shock" so in order to feel the "shock" we needed another chraracter behaving in a way that contrasts Francis.
Once again the power of 3D concepting is that you can get ALTERNATE shots without much cost in time. This was an important zoom-in shot to show Francis's eyes what he's going through. It's also not particularly difficult for our artists to make the character look like an actor. In this case we imagined for the part of Francis being played by Riz Ahmed.
One of the first time we see the Devil in a moment of quiet, but we still want most of his body to be a mystery. It's always nice to NOT see the body of a monster and save the big reveal for the END. Once you see something fully it automatically becomes less scary because it's less mysterious. As is evidenced by the amazing reveal of the T-Rex in the first Jurassic Park.
After the battle we wanted a shot to re-clarify the stakes and who is at war, Man and Satan. Early on the idea came to us that it would creepy and amazing if the Devil was literally made up of the damned. A lone priest coming up to and unspeakably large pilar of a leg seemed very dramatic to us.
NOW the full scope of the horror comes into focus. Hell lives ON the Devil's body. Hundred's of thousands people living in enternal agony and a brave lone priest doing God's work.
5. Treatment Part 5 / 7
When Godric arrives at the capital he relays to the bishops the truth of what he has witnessed but they assume he must be delusional. Francis corroborates but as a low-born is quickly silenced. Godric grows weaker and despite the medicus’s best effort he dies.
As other retreating soldiers arrive, Francis is swiftly imprisoned for his thoroughly witnessed treason, and set to be executed after being “purified by pain”. In his cell Francis is still shellshocked by what he has seen. His father was right, “Man is sinful, but GOD is at least… real.”
On the following day Godric’s body is prepared for burial as his family prays around him… They carefully anoint his torso and dress him in fine linens, when his eyes… miraculously… open! His mother faints and the Bishop’s gasp. They lift his shirt to see his injuries subsided and for all in the room it’s clear that his resurrection is an act of God.
The Bishops bring this joyous news to the Queen but she sees his resurrection as an imminent threat to her already tenuous power. She claims heresy, and has the Bishops, Godric and his family arrested and jailed with Francis. Seeing Godric alive, Francis is dumbstruck as Godric looks at him with forgiveness in his eyes.
In a GAME version of this IP you definitely need some DAMNED to fight. In our IP development video 4 on the process page we discuss this in a bit more detail but the jist is that movies / shows and games all have different needs. In this case we tried hard to push the "zombies" in a different direction and thought of a few things. 1. that the damned are merged with people they have wronged in some way as eternal torture. 2. that their always SAD, desperate and pleading for help, but never "grrrr I'm gonna getcha" A surprisingly difficult thing to get across in a single image.
One of the pilars of our potential "zombiesque" baddie is that the damned are of course burned from an eternity in hell but they could not be so charred and black because then they veered into monster territory and the original idea is that these were SUFFERING PEOPLE. the literal DAMNED. -- This meant that in the design they had to resemble the people in their former lives. Perhaps it's not so believable that they would still have their clothes on in hell, but without their clothes on they would not read as former humans, especially in a game where you can't control the camera or how they are seen cinematically. BUT AGAIN in IP development these are the kinds of tricky back and forth decisions we can help you make.
And every video game needs BOSSES! - So depending on the IP it might be necessary to gloop the damned into glurps and figure out how this mass of suffering is going to defeated.
6. Treatment Part 6 / 7
The ground shudders and the Queen peers out a tower window and sees the unthinkable. A thousand foot tall creature is heading towards the city and he is preceded by millions of citizens desperate to get inside the city walls. As it opens it’s giant head everyone who looks directly into its eye goes blind. The Queen is overwhelmed and out of fear she releases Godric and the Bishops so they can form a plan. Godric pleads with the Queen to at least allow the women and children in the city, but she refuses to risk any more instability and thousands are crushed by the mob.
Watching this happen, Godric now knows that humanity is doomed but it steels his resolve. He tells Francis to take his fathers boat and flee the continent so that a WITNESS can live on, but Francis does not believe he is remotely qualified to represent the faith. Godric pleads with him and Francis relents. He says goodbye forever to the man who was in practice and in spirit, his savior.
Believing in Godric’s singular divinity the Bishops prepare him for a final assault on Satan. They equip him with the holy relics and pray that he fulfills the prophecy of revelations by “throwing Satan into a lake of fire and sulfur” – It is agreed that the men must climb his 1000 foot tall body and strike Satan in his “eye”. An inconceivable task for a beast that size.
Francis prepares his ship, Godric prepares his armor. One is the last hope for spreading the word of God and the other is the last hope to defeat the Devil. BOTH must succeed to save the soul of humanity.
Godric ready for the fight. We imagined this character to be Jason Momoa and so tried to get a likeness in the concept art and this was one of the FEW images that rocked out the gate and got almost no revisions.
The goal here is to finally fulfill the promise of horror that's been built up. The basic idea for a "spiderish" design was arrived at relatively quickly but trying to depict it in a way that would really SHOW ITS SCALE was extremely difficult. One might assume something like this started with lots of design drawings but in a task like this 99% of what matters is SHAPE, and SCALE. So any drawing done without context of the scale is in danger of ADDING fussy and unecessary extras to make it more "interesting." Advances in 3D based concept art let us relatively quickly GET said scale and mood which allows us to vet the design in its FULL CONTEXT so that we don't need to give him a glowing RED EYE or some other over the top thing to make him cool. Just a dim devil's vagina / butthole that makes you go BLIND when you look at it! Now THAT is scary. -- In end we also needed the flaming arrows to push the scale. Interestingly something that isn't even part of the core design ends up mattering a lot. Art is HARD!:)
Post Gamo I think the worlds gross-tolerance went up. And here we attempt to nudge it a bit farther. Gore for gore's sake has no place but for a few seconds seeing the physcial horrors of what's going is important to understand the stakes of the story.
Iterating on this is a great example of how tuning an IP can completely depend on the story and tone. ONE off tone thing can make the entire story or game jump the shark. In this case our original brief was to have SOME visual effect of people going blind do to gazing into the Devil's open... facehole? -- But this was a much later version that was trying more and more to keep it subtle and natural leaning much more to a skin disease than to something supernatural.
Here were the other options which are both valid depending on the tone of the IP. Something else that needs to be considered is that what looks a good in a still image gets WAY more over the top when animated. For this IP dealing with a REAL LIFE supernatural element we opted for the above classier DEVIL BLINDNESS.
7. Treatment Part 7 / 7
Godric and thousands of men ride out silently to one of Satan’s enormous legs covered in writhing tortured bodies. Thousands try to ascend and thousands fall to their death. After a 4 hour fight and climb Godric reaches the center of Satan’s head. With his last bit of strength, Godric attempts to strike Satan with the holy relic. The ground erupts and the clouds part. Godric succeeds! Golden rays of light shine onto Satan’s body as he crashes into an enormous lake of fire and sulfur. Godric returns as the savior of humanity… but it is a bittersweet victory, as there is no food in the capital and the surrounding lands are a lava-covered waste. Humanity’s clock is ticking.
After weeks at sea nearly everyone who escaped by ship was killed by violent storms or dehydration. Only a few including Francis make it to a seemingly verdant undiscovered land but upon arrival a group of pagan hunters kill and eat most of the invaders. As a last desperate effort Francis pleads the word of God to the heathens… to no effect. But when their leader notices Francis’s father’s gold cross, they trade his token for his life.
The capital city survives until the last of the food runs out and Godric can finally rest. Emaciated but content, he lays down in a golden light and reunites with his maker.
Across the ocean Francis becomes the only surviving prophet and although the human species is set back 10,000 years, in the barren waves of lava small tree sprouts from the cracks. A tiny insect drinks nectar from its flower and the planet is reset in God’s image.
Godric is backed by God (rays) and the glint of red in his eye hints at the horrific evil he is about to face. The key here was to feature him AND the holy relic he will use to destroy the Devil.
If the Khal can't save humanity from the Devil nobody can:) Again an alternate shot is relatively cheap and easy to do once we have the base worked out.
This was one of the most fun shots to do. Of course to feel the drop and drama Godric had to be positioned on an "actiony" 45 degree angle with his back to the drop. It was also important to SEE all the way down so although we wanted some fog we did not want it to obstruct the DISTANCE. Also we felt that climbing something that is actively fighting you, in a game, would a fun "shadow of the colossus" moment.
Again the value of 3D is we can create a series of shots that focus on different things. The last shot was about the drop, this one is about the fight with the damned.
...And this one is about Godric's mental and emotioinal state. We can't do all 3 in one shot and each images talks about an entirely different facet of the same situation. Going from external to internal struggle.
Ironically the most turmultuous storm was also the most turmultous image to create. We must have been through 25 revisions of this image to try to get the SCALE of this giant wave right. It was a combination of carefully attending to the wave grebbles and carefully placing scale cues like the ships.
