Behind the Scenes: Designing Bildit!

Before we get into the art… I want to quickly mention that our Kickstarter is in its FINAL WEEK! We’ve hit nearly every stretch goal, but there’s still a few left and time’s running out. This game will be possible thanks to the incredible support of our fans and friends. If you’re excited about the project but haven’t kicked in yet, now’s your last chance!

This week it’s time to talk about Bildit, the final starter we finished! This one took us on a wild ride… hold on to your butts!

Greg: This first drawing was done by Tia Rohrer in reaction to an early prompt for what eventually would become Servace - a “high energy net attacker”! It was Alexis’ idea to potentially use a Bilby for that prompt as an uncommon hopping/jumping animal that might leap and spike the ball. 

Tia: As I was looking through some of the established prompts on our list of ideas for Beasties, I saw how much this one didn’t have an exact feeling down besides energetic. I wanted to give a sort of spunky, go-getter feel from something that appears so small! It was a fun concept, and it’s super cool to see where it went next.

Greg: Later on Twarda asked if she could pick up the idea. She wanted to combine Bilbies with Aardvarks to highlight their digging abilities! These designs were really charming but didn’t have that energetic personality we were looking for…

Twarda: I really enjoyed the simplicity of the concept Tia did and I was eager to try out the attacker-theme. However soon I realized the blueish fur colour of bilbies is just too cool and we agreed to move on with it as a starter.

Greg: At this point we had ideas for an amphibious (pink) Spirit starter and a bird (yellow) Body starter, but no (blue) Mind starter - which we’d been thinking should be a mammal to round out the starter roster. These sketches fit the box perfectly, so we decided to rethink them as a 3-stage Mind starter!

Greg: With the other starters being themed around musicals and sports, we needed a strong theme for this one too. We thought making them “nerdy” would be a good way to distinguish them, but it was hard to find a visually inspiring theme in that category.

Alexis: I really tried to come up with some kind of interesting math-based inspiration, but I don’t think I’m enough of a math enthusiast to pull that off right now. Plus it felt like something that could be really really cool, but it would be cool in a sort of subtle way; which didn’t quite feel right for a starter Beastie.

Greg: We landed on gaming - ie. Chess and card games, as a visual theme.

Greg: These were Twarda’s first ideas based on the “chess” theme. We imagined the bilby as a little pawn! Naturally they’d become a bishop/knight and a queen/king as they matured, which all felt like a strong visual direction to build on.

Twarda: On top of that, we also had some ideas how they would use their ears as a startle display, or to communicate with their kind. First drafts sprouted a timid, but smug, little guy with flashy ears. Their closed eyes emphasize their focus on listening to their surroundings.

Greg: Because the pawn theme felt like it wasn’t giving us enough, we mixed in some other ideas. We thought about styling them as an Entomologist - a studier of insects. We imagined they would live in a hierarchical underground society similar to an ant colony, and we gave them ear patterns that were meant to mimic moth wings, while also suggesting card suits (with the diamonds). The ear patterns were always either red or black, signifying the card suit theme further. At this point, at the time, we felt the design was complete.

Greg: …But after a lot of reflection much later on we decided to revisit it. The Chess theme hadn’t been sitting right with us, for the simple reason that bilbies are an Australian species that are endangered (or in the case of one bilby species, extinct) due to colonization. So it didn’t feel right to have a bilby creature whose theme evoked European royalty, even vaguely! We went back to the drawing board with the chess/gaming themes discarded.

Greg: We looked for ways to make them “nerdier” - give them glasses-looking patterns around their eyes, and change their focus to be on drawing and note-taking. We thought they might use their ear as a pen to catalog information. That’s also why we had the ears made much bigger, so they could reach the ground to scratch notes in the dirt.

Twarda: I explored various brush-like and pen-like options, but none of them either looked plausible or made sense. At one point Bildit was wearing an unfold-able turban made out of its ears!

Alexis: Visually, I love these so much! I think the dip-pen ears are SO cool. But I couldn’t picture how they would actually use them in a practical way, and more importantly, I was starting to realize a bigger issue. We were theming these creatures around research, and visually communicating that theme with writing implements, implying that they have a written language of some sort. What would that language be? What do they write on, and where do they keep it? What do they write about? How long have they had a written language? Are they the only beastie who records things in this way? Why? It felt like it raised a ton of questions, and took this creature in a direction that didn’t really fit within the realm of what beasties are.

Greg: It still didn’t sit quite right. We had spent a long time trying to combine bilbies with themes that simply didn’t mesh with them.

Alexis: We wanted to find a direction that celebrated the strengths of bilbies, and by this point I REALLY wanted to come to Twarda with a clear direction forward. She did so much great design work on these; the only reason they weren’t working was because of our prompts.

Alexis: I went off and did some sketches around the theme of digging, tunneling and construction, based on the shapes and colours Twarda had been using.

Greg: Twarda sent us this idea back after playing with Alexis’ design ideas. A strong new personality was starting to emerge with its nervous/anxious/overthinking energy that set it apart from the other 2 starters. The “digging” theme was harder to convey visually, but it was a much more natural fit. After going through so many iterations, it was hard to know if we were actually getting anywhere with it - but these drawings were exciting to us and felt like they could be the one!

Alexis: We also, importantly, had a clear idea for how their theming and story would play out as they grow!

Greg: I think it’s safe to say that Bildit was the most difficult Beastie for us to design so far. 

When you look at a final design, it’s easy to imagine that it simply popped out of the ether looking like that. But the reality is always much slower and harder and more difficult. On this journey creating Beastieball, I’ve been shocked by how many times we had concept drawings that looked great to me, only to throw them out and work our way to something even better. But, seeing so many folks falling in love with Bildit after we finally got to reveal them was hugely cathartic - and it definitely made all this thought and iteration feel like it was worth it. 

Thanks for reading!