Behind the Scenes: Designing Axolati

Every Beastie takes a ton of thought and iteration to design! Today we wanna show you our process designing Axolati, the spirit-focused starter Beastie. As this was one of our earliest designs, we learned a lot along the way about how we wanted to approach designing Beasties in general.

Greg: When we first recruited concept artists we had a long list of one-line Beastie ideas to throw at them. One which was special to me was “Musical frog! Handles the ball with its legs only?!” I didn’t really have a clear idea of what I wanted but I knew it had to be a frog.

Tia: I thought a bit about Flamenco and the strong poses associated with it, along with ballet. For more “vocal” like designs, I couldn’t choose between something that was excited and chirping happily like a frog, or a dramatic Opera singer, or one that sings so sweetly like an angel!

For the Tadpole, or stage 1, I had thought about it not having much vocal skill built up yet, but still liked musical things and dancing. So why not an energetic little guy that loves to bounce around, and maybe sounds like a maraca when it shakes? There’s also a few “unconfident” little tadpole concepts here to reflect the vocals not being built up enough yet, or overcoming its shyness to sing.

Greg: I fell in love with these sketches. Had it just been up to me, one of these frogs would have been put straight into the game as-is. But I had a lot to learn from this process. When making Chicory, we had made 100+ different animal characters, and I thought Beastieball would be like doing that again but with some extra color and animation. But in this game every creature has the potential to be someone’s “main character” and we realized we needed to put in a lot more effort to communicate strong themes for each one.

Alexis: Tia’s poses and designs are always bursting with charm! I loved a lot about these, but they all felt like they were missing specificity; they are all very appealing frog designs, but felt like they were relying too strongly on posing to communicate the secondary theme; which is understandable, since we hadn’t given Tia a particularly specific secondary theme! It’s a tricky balance to get right, even with a more firm starting direction. We want the Beasties to feel like natural creatures, but not just like cartoon animals; we also want the additional themes to be visible, but not so obvious that they make the Beastie look like they couldn’t have evolved naturally into that shape.

Greg: There are a ton more sketches that were done here as we chased something we all liked. We honed in on the strong “dancer” poses and tried out a ton of ideas in that direction. This is just one example of how weird it got on like, iteration #6.

Tia: When in doubt, throw some shapes down to figure things out. This one scares me a bit… But at least it would’ve had a strong silhouette! I actually am afraid of frogs and toads, but looking up images of them was an okay thing for me to do. Trying to find weird ways to stylize a frog can be pretty hard when they’re already so simple! 

Alexis: I had no idea you were afraid of frogs and toads!!! It was around this point that I felt like we definitely needed to come up with a stronger core theme before we continued iterating. This is my first time directing, so maybe someone more experienced would’ve recognised this sooner!

Greg: We all got burnt out on frogs and it went into hibernation for a while. But I later came back and put together a pitch of 3 designs based on sketches Tia had already done - altogether it would be an entirely new 3-stage Beastie with a singing theme. If it went well, I was hoping we could make them into a starter Beastie - a crucial milestone for us, because at this point we hadn’t nailed down any of those yet. At this point we also added Harlow to the mix on this design.

Tia: I was sooooo thankful and super excited to work with Harlow on this Beastie together. I was rather jammed up with this concept, and she really took it in a whole new direction and elevated the concept as a whole.

Greg: The “final” stage (which we don’t want to spoil yet) was the first one we completed. Its design went through its own lifespan of iterations building up from ideas Tia had first put down. Harlow piloted it, with the rest of us throwing in suggestions and sketches. Finally Tia and Harlow came up with their ultimate form together!

Greg: From there it was time to go back and re-think the first stage. Using some of Tia’s earliest drawings as a base, Harlow tried out a variety of ideas! We were still playing with species at this point - with “frog” as a starting point, it still felt on theme to branch out into tadpoles, axolotls, etc. Beastie designs are rarely inspired by just 1 animal.

Harlow: Tia is a tough act to follow! Now that we knew what we wanted Axolati to become, the next step was to find the key shape language that would bring out the creature’s personality, allowing all but the most necessary details to fall out of focus. A lot of the “evolution lines” in Beastieball are created with a general narrative/emotional arc in mind, so my experimentation here had a lot to do with trying to find that perfect “point A”. 

Tia: 3’s face still makes me laugh. It’s so happy and energetic! I absolutely adored the amount of personality that was pumped into all of these!

Harlow: 6a and 6b were, at the time, my favorite contenders. In retrospect it’s impossible to imagine an Axolati that is so shy and reserved, but the “stage crew/theatre tech” look felt so cute to me.

Greg: It was getting to the point where every drawing was fabulous and we were having a harder and harder time picking between them. The “singing” theme proved to be way stronger inspiration - for this variation we wanted to highlight that theme moreso with the character design details. Harlow did an awesome job integrating it! This was the final set of variations we tried out before saying the D design here was the one.

Harlow: When finding the final set of ‘accessories’ I wanted to find the right blend of cohesion and anticipation of what Axolati will become! Each of these final four concepts have a little of both, but D wound up being the best mix. I can’t say too much yet, but I’m proud of the little ways we tie this line together, while allowing each form to feel like their own.

Alexis: I did a little tie-down sketch, adjusting the proportions alongside the other (still WIP!) starters. It was important that they felt like they belonged in a group together, and like they were roughly the same ‘age’. Looking back, Kichik feels very out of place here! But we’ll get to that design later. 

Greg: The last step is coming up with the character poses.

Harlow: In my experience, the pose step is either the most fun or the most fraught. Making utilitarian poses kind of requires a familiarity with both the personality of the beastie and the physics of their body. Axolati was one of the easiest pose pages. (not only because they’re just a funny little ball!) Finding ways to express depth and chubbiness on such a simple shape is a fun exercise, and I spent so much of my drawing time grinning ear to ear.

Tia: When I first saw these, I gasped super audibly. The personality.. The strength and joy of this little Beastie… It all was shining through in such a spectacular way. It’s so cute! The Spike pose and Cheer fills me with joy. Every iteration that came from this collaboration was so cool, and something I certainly couldn’t have imagined at the end!! It was a lot of fun to see it come to life.

Alexis: I love these so much. The most important thing we try to do when posing Beasties is to communicate something about their personality with every pose, and Harlow totally achieved that here.

Alexis: We ended up making this Spike into the Cheer pose because it was soo cheerful, and coming up with a headbutt Spike instead. For the in-game drawings, I tried to keep all the charm of these, but for gameplay clarity I rotated them a little to match the angle of the idle.

Greg: I also want to call out the name Axolati, which I proposed at around this time. The “joke” probably isn’t very obvious, but it’s “axolotl” + “so-la-ti”... a solfege reference for our little singing friend. 

Harlow: I had no idea that was the reason behind the name until now. 0_0

Thanks for joining us! This was a journey that we took over months… hopefully it gives you some idea of just how much thought and effort we put into each concept. Axolati was the first starter design we finished. Next week we’ll look at Kichik, the one we finished next!