Discover how Beyond A Steel Sky got its updated art style with this dev diary
Beyond a Steel Sky is the next entry the iconic series, and has been quite a while since the series has been around, so Microids and developer Revolution Software have released a dev diary about the next entry, specifically around the art of the game, check it out.
Art Directors Dave Gibbons and Sucha Singh detail the artistic intent and process behind Beyond a Steel Sky. “What we’ve done is to give it a comic book look, because we felt it was really appropriate to the game” explains Dave Gibbons. To achieve this distinct comic book style, Revolution wrote a custom cel-shading tool, ToonToy, which emulates Dave’s hand-drawn comic book style in real time. As well as achieving an aesthetic objective, this visual style helps focus the eye on key, important background objects that are important for gameplay.
The game’s visual design developed from the close collaboration between Dave Gibbons and Revolution Software’s art team, thanks to a fruitful iterative process where each fed off the other’s expertise, both technically and artistically. “It’s a very fluid process, providing very fast feedback as well. I can do a couple dozen drawings and I’ll get feedback that same day.” adds Dave.
The game will launch November 30 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles and Nintendo Switch.
