YERBA BUENA DEVBLOG - Art Direction

Hi, I’m G.H. Pratillo, Art Director for Mad About Pandas’ upcoming title: “Yerba Buena” and in this devlog I will be going over the art direction and creation of our game!

“Yerba Buena” is a puzzle platforming-adventure, developed by a small team of about 30 people, with the art team ranging from 5 to 13 over the course of about 3 years.

You play as an NPC in an abandoned videogame production that's set in the 1970s in San Francisco, with gameplay revolving around solving puzzles using a unique Copy-and-Paste mechanic that lets you manipulate the gameworld.

It comes out on May 26th on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, and you can play our demo on Steam right now!

Choosing the artstyle

After Mad About Pandas’ last project “Hitchhiker: A mystery game”, my goal was to maintain our studio’s identity: creating a 3d style that draws its main inspiration from 2d illustration.

As an illustrator myself I was sure that with a good understanding of materiality, color and shape we could attempt to translate the painterly into the interactive.

During this time, it just so happened that cartoony 3d animation was taking over the entertainment world with projects like ‘Spiderverse’, ‘Arcane’, ‘Love Death and Robots’ or ‘Entergalactic’, so I began studying what made for successful translation and stylization for texturing, LODs and vfx. Our main challenge however, was that by giving players the agency they needed we could not use as many tricks as the animations we were studying - but the challenges didn’t stop there.

Early concept art/3d models of 2d vs 3d

Visual identity - how three ideas became one​

“Yerba Buena” is characterized by a grounded yet colorful interpretation of the 1970s San Francisco on one side, and the surreal elements of a videogame world that was then abandoned on the other, while making both cohesively function as a fun and challenging puzzle game. Blending these three ideas into one is what gave the game its unique identity.

Early moodboard for crazy architecture+painterly style and exploratory concept art

To create a convincing representation of the time and place the game is set in, we researched everything from clothes to cars, telephones and even office chairs.

We experimented with what an “abandoned video game world” would look like, one that would be visually striking without being confusing to players.

Lastly and most importantly, we needed to make sure that the assets relevant to the gameplay were readable, from the smallest coffee cup to the largest buildings, no matter which of the many environments they were in.

Creating ”the glitch” and making it readable ​

The initial direction for special effects in the game was a realistic approach that was meant to break with the cartoony stylization of the world, but that quickly proved to not be as readable and striking as we had hoped, so we switched to more stylized and hand-animated approaches for vfx.

Early designs for how the ‘glitch’ interacted with the world drew inspiration from bold surrealist and brutalist architecture, magazine print and comic style halftone as well as pixelation, vertex displacement, and sketchy outlines. Many of these experiments proved to be either too strong, too subtle or too situational.

Images of glitch tests

Eventually we ended up choosing effects that adapted based on distance to the player so they would become more obvious when viewed far away and less overwhelming when viewed up close. We also added color coding for different copyable and pasteable attributes, and a scan effect to highlight puzzle elements. Once those elements were established, we referenced them to create little flourishes and extra vfx for the rest of the game, like the smoke from a motorbike, robots that shoot lasers, fake invisible walls etc.

Crafting a world

When creating a level for a game, we usually start with a concept and a blockout: you want to be able to envision a visually and narratively cohesive space and you want to start creating compositions in 3d as soon as possible in order to test how they feel to traverse.

In Yerba Buena the gameplay heavily relies on where geometry is placed, so artists worked on concepts and designers worked on blockouts: this way we could prioritize the player’s experience and our environment’s functionality.

While level designers block out the level, we usually have an idea for what small assets are needed for it. If a narrative beat requires specific assets, like Russell’s crashed taxi for example, we first find references, create a 2D sketch and then the 3D gets iterated both in shape and texture, before being tested in the engine.

Image of concept to 3d model

Once enough of a blockout is present, we start looking into making an “art pass”, meaning converting the blocks to finished assets. Sometimes that means converting unexpected shapes into awnings or bus stops of specific height and size to accommodate the puzzle gameplay. To fill in the gaps between a functional and a believable environment, we looked at street views of the mission district, referencing specific buildings and even signage for our city environments, as well as archival footage of what it looked like at the time.

For cutscenes and dialogue, we had to come up with a way to animate about 30 minutes of narration in a somewhat flexible and iterative way. The solution: a modular system of expressions and poses that could then be mixed and matched to assemble cutscenes alongside a lip-sync tool that enabled animators to focus on key moments and shots.

The beginning and the end​

Crafting this world started with a lot of ambition, from a gameplay, a narrative and an artistic perspective. It required a lot of iteration and collaboration between a remarkably talented and complementary team of people that trusted they would get to where they wanted, even if it tends to happen pretty late in the process.

Image of convenience store concept art, urp and hdrp tests

I remember being overjoyed the first time I saw one of my character concepts in 3d. I remember how proud I was the first time I textured a 3d asset and it tricked one of our coders into thinking it was 2d. I’m sure many of my art-team coworkers felt the same way when it all started to click.

On the other hand I recall my initial texturing style to have been too realistic and that I was stubbornly opposed to the use of ambient occlusion for some time. I am glad to have been persuaded and that we adapted and changed course when needed. Looking back on it now, this process reiterated for me that making games (with other people) requires learning, trust and humility.

As we near the release, all of these individual pieces have fallen into place and I’m proud of how we managed to achieve such a unique identity for Yerba Buena. It’s a game filled with lovingly crafted pieces, made by people who cared and came together to assemble them in a totally unique way!

G. H. Pratillo

Art Director at Mad About Pandas

The art team:

Lead tech artist - Cansu Aydin

Tech artist - Noah Garcia

Storyboarder, tech artist - Kateryna Pinchuk

Lead animator - Vanessa Hermann

Animator - Mino Stratmann

3D Character artist, prop artist - Christopher Bukal Chilicuisa

Lead environment artist, concept artist - Alexander Tilly

Environment/prop artist, concept artist - Maresa Althof

Prop artist - Pia Redeker

2d animator, concept artist - Maurice Crossier

UI - Grit Schuster