Toby Hynes Character Artist Blood and truth

Our favourite details hidden in the Character Art of Blood and Truth

05/09/2019

Hi, I’m Toby – Lead Character Artist at the studio! Over the course of Blood & Truth’s development, the team and I worked hard to drop in careful details that bring our characters to life even more. Everything from the clothes they wear, to the tattoos on their skin were carefully researched and considered so today, I thought I’d share some of these with you!

Blood & Truth ring.

Character Art Blood and Truth

If you look carefully at the ring worn by Nick (and you/Ryan later in the game), you’ll see that it has the Latin: Sanguis et Veritas inscribed on it, which means Blood & Truth! We also 3D printed the actual ring from the game to give to members of the team.

Deacon’s tattoos.

Character Art Blood and Truth

We wanted Deacon’s tattoos to give him a bit of back story, so we designed a Royal Marine Commando image on his right arm (as that’s the regiment he was in before the SAS).

The Latin text means, ‘action not words.’ On his left arm we created a flag of St Andrew inside a thistle design. This is because Bryan Larkin, the actor performing as Deacon is a proud Scotsman! I recall having a very surreal conversation with a friend of ours son who is a Royal Marine Commando. I was trying to find out whether they are allowed tattoos on their arms!

Deacon’s injuries.

Character Art Blood and Truth

When you first meet Deacon he’s pretty banged up from his interrogation. When you meet him later on we wanted to reflect that only a week or two had passed, so the injuries he has have only partially healed. Bruises are darker, the cuts are healing, with the bigger ones ‘steri stripped’.

Kayla’s jacket motif.

Character Art Blood and Truth

We wanted a cool design for the back of Kayla’s jacket so we designed this flag and skull motive. We wanted to allude to Kayla being ex covert US military.

Kayla’s tattoos.

Character Art Blood and Truth

When you see Kayla in a T-shirt later on you’ll notice she has a bunch of warlike quotes and Spec Ops lightning bolts on her arms. This is again to allude to her past and what it did to her.

Michelle’s tattoos.

Character Art Blood and Truth

We wanted to show a bit of a sleeve tattoo on Michelle. We discovered that Klariza Clayton, the actress who plays her has Filipino heritage so we went for a traditional Filipino tribal design!

Carson’s watch.

Character Art Blood and Truth

Carson is played by the mighty Colin Salmon. If you look very, very closely at the face of his watch you’ll notice the brand is: SALMON. 😉

Tony’s tattoos.

Character Art Blood and Truth

We wanted Tony to have some old school prison tattoos to allude to him serving time in the past.

We’ve given him a swallow and a quincunx on his hands. The reason why the middle dot of the quincunx is missing, is because a quincunx is meant to be 4 walls (a cell). The other is inside (the inmate). Tony decided he was not going to stay in prison or get caught again so he never had the fifth dot added!

Avatar hand details.

Character Art Blood and Truth

If you hold yours/Ryan’s hands up and flex your fingers, you should be able to see the skin wrinkling realistically as we created normal maps and mesh blendshapes for different poses. We also use bloodflow maps to simulate the pooling of blood under the skin, so when the hand is drawn into a fist for example; the knuckles whiten.

The avatar hands actually belong to me! We scanned my hands in various poses to make them look at realistic as possible.

Clothing deformation.

Character Art Blood and Truth

We also use normal map blends and mesh blendshapes on the character’s clothing to simulate folds and creases changing as they move.

Brands.

Character Art Blood and Truth

Our awesome Creative Services Group made a whole bunch of fictitious brands and designs to add colour and realism to our clothing and equipment!

Ronin helmet.

Character Art Blood and Truth

The cool helmet the armoured Private Security soldiers wear is actually a real Ballistic helmet we licensed from DevTac Designs in Japan.

Clint.

Character Art Blood and Truth

Last but not least, there is a character very early on in the game that works for the Marks family. His name is Clint, and he is an exact digital double of our very own Rob Thornley from the Character Art team. He’s the real break out star of Blood & Truth! 😉

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