Comm-Link:Lore Builder - Twenty-Three - Apparel & Approach
Hello and welcome back to another installment of Lore Builder, where we work with the community to develop previously unexplored areas of the Star Citizen lore. As always, if you are new to this feature, we highly recommend reviewing the updated caveats and suggested background reading described in this previous issue, so you can get a clear understanding of what’s already been established.
First off, let’s review last week’s mammoth topic:
CLOTHING COMPANIES
We need to start coming up with tougher topics for you all to create. This was another deluge of ideas. Picking a handful to highlight is always incredibly difficult.
from: Don Karnage
Company Name: Roughneck
Headquarters: Keene
Availability: on industrial worlds
Type: Working fatigues, jackets, gloves, padded knee guards
Persona: produced by a company that also handles contracts for the UEE. Made from the same uncompromising materials, utilitarian and uncomplicated. These are outfits that are designed to be comfortably lived in.
from: Sengar
Company Name: RAMBLER
Headquarters: Terra
Availability: Selective
Type: Outdoor and leisure clothing company with an intergalactic reputation for the design and build quality of its backpacks/rucksacks, outdoor clothing, and footwear. The company’s clothing is among the most popular in the leisurewear market, with products including jackets, fleeces, trousers and windproof/waterproof shells. Their line of backpacks/rucksacks has a particular reputation for durability and reliability in harsh conditions.
Public Persona: Highly desirable, RAMBLER products are not the cheapest but are considered good value. The company design, pricing and marketing strategy is geared to place their products in the highly lucrative middle ground — affordable enough for most people if they are prepared to spend a little more than usual for the quality; but not in any way considered to be too cheap to those with enough UEC not to have to worry about the cost of anything (and to whom they also cater for additionally with their famous Goldline range).
from: Zombie Moses
Company: Samsen’s
Headquarters: Cestulus
Availability: Wide, but not necessarily cheap.
Type: Sturdy, rugged outerwear for the blue collar worker, Samsen’s has a largely deserved reputation for being the go-to manufacturer of heavy-duty work attire. This includes a line of durable space suits specifically tailored for miners, salvagers and EVA maintenance crews, all of which feature redundant, self-sealing layers of protection against tears and punctures. All Samsen’s products feature an iron-clad satisfaction or money-back guarantee for which they are famously reliable in honoring. They are also the manufacturer of the iconic ‘UEE Environment Coat.’ the unofficial uniform of the fiercely independent Brown Coats organization.
Public Persona: Samsen’s is so ubiquitous amongst Human industrial concerns that wearing anything else is viewed as uncommon. In reality, they only own roughly 36% of the market share in this area, while the rest is distributed amongst a multitude of less expensive, though often comparable brands. Their traditional ads usually show dedicated, hard-working Humans plying their trades in a glorified, even heroic manner. Adverts in recent years have put a humorous spin on the product line, showing easy-going outdoors-men and space-walkers surviving presumably brutal punishment from natural dangers — completely unscathed, no less — thanks to their sturdy Samsen’s coats and space-suits.
In all seriousness and I know we say that a lot, but there’s some really great submissions in here. They will be incredibly handy when we start generating the various articles of clothing for characters to wear.
For this week’s main topic, I wanted to give you some insight into the general process here at CIG which will hopefully inform how we plan to use these submissions that you’ve provided.
So we’re going to talk about:
INTERNAL PROCESS
Let’s start from the top.
One of the goals that’s been discussed when it comes to items (ships, weapons, power plants, clothing, etc.) is that there is a consistency to the various manufacturers that make them. To invoke the oft-used term, there is immersion in being able to view these fictional corporations as more than just a stat or quality difference, to view them as being fully functioning corporate entities with design tastes and even internal ethics. If achieved, the player could conceivably walk up to a heavily modified ship and, based on the little flourishes and shapes that make that design specific, be able to guess who manufactures the various parts.
When a concept artist is given an item to design, ideally we want to provide a package of background material to consider when creating this new item. The basis of that reference package would be:
- Other items that have already been designed and attributed to that corporation.
- Visual style cues from the art team based on what aesthetic the item falls into. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with quality; something that looks very industrial (exposed inner workings, wires, etc.) could be top of the line.
- Lore background to give them a more specific sense of how the gun could look or how the corporation behaves. Apocalypse Arms, for example, has a very aggressive public persona, which would make their weapons more intimidating. Maybe they are going for a softer approach to downplay the fact that it’s a weapon? Does it look super sleek?
With this reference package, the concept artist would go to work and start building rough thumbnails based on the information in the package. With more information, they are able to play within the confines of what makes that item a product of that corporation.
Additionally, once the corporation’s design aesthetic starts to solidify, we can start imagining how these various corporate personalities could shift and change once the game goes live. Maybe a people-friendly weapons manufacturer might run into a dry-spell of sales, so they need to revamp their image into something edgier.
Next week, we will be out of the office for Thanksgiving, but wanted to make sure you had something to think on, so we’re going to try a new approach here.
YOU TELL US
What would you like Lore Builder to tackle? Please bear in mind when commenting that we aren’t able to discuss anything that requires heavy gameplay or design elements, as mechanics are still being actively developed internally.
So what are the non-gameplay-related topics that you’d like to dig into? Food? Music? You tell us.
That’s it for this week.
Until next time …