How an enemy gets made: Art from concept to final model

In our upcoming mobile sci-fi action game, Morning Star, the nasty character featured in the teaser trailer is but one of many bad guys that players will encounter as they venture through the game. He won’t be the guy you battle against the most, but his presence in the game will set much of the tone.

Recently, we broke down the visual evolution of our main spaceship in the game, so now we thought we'd share the directions we went in for an enemy character-- this particular one is called the Dust Ascended. The reason for the “Ascended” moniker is that there are various classes in the hierarchy of the game's enemy culture, and the Ascended occupies the middle of the road. On top of that, the Ascended are broken up into 4 sub-classes, and players will be pitted against all of them in the game.  Here, we’ll take a look at the base character and some territories we explored for his design…

Morning Star Dust Concept

Morning Star Dust Concept

The story calls for the character to be vampiric, but not of blood or life force– of other things that one who plays the game will learn over time.  Early on, we took more “monster”-ish designs and combined them with some concepts that read more mysterious, ominous and “vampire” in the familiar sense.

Morning Star Dust Concept

Morning Star Dust Concept

Morning Star Dust Concept

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Dust Ascended GIF

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Morning Star Dust Ascended

Morning Star Dust Ascended

…and here, with a final close-up replete with a better look at those nasty teeth (Q: wait– why isn’t that cyber-stuff inside this one’s mouth? A: Just wait and see).

He’s come a long way in a few months– and that’s just one of the baddies players will come face-to-face with in Morning Star. The evolution I outlined here forced us to answer a lot of questions about this race, what they do (and why they do it), and how players will interact with them. As with all lengthy concept-to-ship processes, it led to a ton of cascading effects for the rest of the game that changed it in unexpected ways.