PlatinumGames’ Transformers: Devastation Gets Lovely Art, Game Director Explains the Style

PlatinumGames’ Transformers: Devastation has a very particular and absolutely lovely art style, and today Game Director Kenji Saito gave quite a lot of details on it, following the release of a batch of concept artwork on the game’s Facebook page.

Check the Transformers Game facebook page to see some of the concept art we made for Transformers: Devastation https://t.co/oKsq0I9y4z

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

These outline sketches are first and foremost designed with an 80's cartoon or anime feel.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

After that we revise the concept so the in-game model will have the right proportions and level of detail. https://t.co/oKsq0I9y4z

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

The three heads come from the designer experimenting to see just how much detail he might be able to fit.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

You'll see detail increases going left to right, as does the robotic feel. (Still not the level of detail of an actual robot, though)

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

You'll see detail increases going left to right, as does the robotic feel. (Still not the level of detail of an actual robot, though)

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

We chose the leftmost head for our model, however. https://t.co/6egKNHmHsp

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

The reason for this relates to the "wakame" shading I mentioned before.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

In order to bring out the effect of this shader as much as possible, we actually limited the detail we used.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

We then colored the concept similarly to how we use our shader to determing just how much density we wanted in the design.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

Original design for Optimus Prime https://t.co/nALnj5Nzqz Final design for Optimus Prime https://t.co/8injHlSSSZ

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

If you compare the two images, I think it's interesting to see how the design evolved.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

Our original design had a sharp, slim design similar to robot anime in Japan now.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

The design we ended up on gives Optimus Prime much broader shoulders and a well defined upper body.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

These changes were mostly inspired by western cartoons and toys. https://t.co/oKsq0I9y4z

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

One area we paid special interest to was the fingers. Robots from the 80s are known to have rounder fingers.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

This took some extra effort polygon splitting for in-game. It's easiest to tell on characters like Devastator.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

There are concepts like these for each of the characters that appear in Transformers: Devastation, I hope we get to show you them all.

— 齋藤 健治@saito kenji (@PG_saito) August 17, 2015

You can check out the actual artwork in the gallery below. Personally, I find it absolutely lovely, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Transformers: Devastation will release on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 6th, 2015.