DEVELOPER BLOG: ART DIRECTION FOR SPIDER-MAN: NOIR
Q&A WITH THOMAS WILSON, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, BEENOX
The Noir universe is very dark. Why did you decide to choose Noir as opposed to other universes?
The recent development of the Noir comic book universe offers an incredible opportunity to present Spider-Man in a never-before-seen setting. Since the Spider-Man Noir comics were just released within the past couple of years, there may be comic book fans out there who haven’t heard about it yet. This gives a good opportunity to do something different, and create a gameplay and art style that is new to the Spider-Man games. There was no way we were going to let this one go and not give the player something truly unique. As a matter of fact, it is one of our favorite universes. With the Noir setting, we can offer players a grittier and somewhat more realistic experience while retaining the essence of Spider-Man.
What were your artistic inspirations?
We first looked to the recently released comic series as one of our main inspirations. From there we decided that the theme for the universe should be darker and have a desaturated color palette that you typically see in movies like The Spirit or Sin City. All the textures had to be more realistic, and because we wanted to introduce stealth as a core component of the experience, we needed to make the contrast between light and dark areas more dramatic. To emphasize this, we decided to give the light sources in the world a yellow tint to warm up the mood. As a finishing touch, we also added a full-screen film grain effect that’s reminiscent of old film noir movies.
How did that reflect on the character’s design?
The costume design for Spider-Man Noir came from the wonderful artwork of Marko Djurdjevic. I still remember how excited I was when we stumbled upon the early concept art for the comic. Even though we decided on a realistic approach to the the textures on the characters and the environment, we still wanted the universe to to draw inspiration from the comic books. In the game, you’ll notice that we use a hard white rim lighting on the characters when they are in the shadows. We definitely knew we were on the right track when we would pause the game, look at the screen and feel like the image was coming right out of a dark graphic novel.
Does Noir Spider-Man have a specific behavior? Does he act differently than other Spider-Men?
In the Noir Universe, Spider-Man’s personality is a little edgier…darker. We definitely don’t want to spoil everything about the gameplay, but we can say that playing Spider-Man Noir requires a stealth-focused approach that players have never seen in a Spider-Man game. In this world, relying solely on combat to defeat your enemies will get you killed very quickly. In order to truly take advantage of Spider-Man Noir skills, you’ll need to use shadows to your advantage and find ways to take gangsters down one by one. This will be the key to surviving the Noir levels.
Noir Spider-Man is originally pictured with a trench coat, but you chose to remove that for his in-game costume. What are the reasons for such a choice?
After looking at a few different designs, we decided not to have him wear a trench coat for a number of reasons. One was a technical reason: rendering a trench coat with an acrobatic character is always a challenge. You run the risk of having the trench coat pass through the legs of the character while fighting or climbing a surface. Removing the trench coat also allowed us to show off more detail in the character model. The third reason we went with this design was the fact that we wanted people to instantly recognize the super hero since it was such a departure from what people would expect from a Spider-Man game. We knew people would instantly recognize the Amazing Spider-Man model, so we wanted people to see the Noir version and immediately know it was the same character in a different time.
Additional Questions:
In addition to the stealth gameplay, does Noir Spider-Man have the same set of moves and animations as Amazing Spider-Man?
Although all Spider-Men share a similar combo tree, each Spider-Man moves and fights differently. In the case of Spider-Man Noir, his fighting style is more up-close and personal. Although he is still acrobatic, he is more of a street fighter than his Amazing counterpart.
Are the environments and enemies in Spider-Man Noir the same as Amazing Spider-Man, only with a Noir filter?
Each environment is unique and does not share similarities with the Amazing environments. As for the enemies, although they share a similar skeleton throughout the game so the player can recognize the type of enemy he is facing, they all look different, and they have behaviors unique to their world. For instance, gangsters with guns in the Noir universe carry torchlights and are extremely dangerous to Spider-Man.
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