Haven is about two lovers escaping to a forgotten planet. Character Artist Koyorin joined our team to design the characters and their complete range of expressions. Their art is a perfect fit for Haven because they manage to communicate a lot of nuances in the characters expressions, even in a simple portrait.
Research for Yu and Kay’s everyday life on Haven – by Koyorin
Hi, I’m Koyorin. I’m a freelance character designer and illustrator, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with The Game Bakers as their character artist for Haven.
– What makes a good character design?
From a purely subjective standpoint, the most effective character designs to me are the ones that are not over-designed and mostly avoid functionless parts or patterns. While I’m not a purely function over form person myself, I do think there’s a threshold for that haha. A design being both simple and effective helps it to be more memorable, in my opinion.
– Can you tell us a little bit more about the design of Yu and Kay?
It was intended to carry the look of “researchers”, hence the primarily white outfits which were mean to be reminiscent of a lab coat, or people who work in a research environment. And yet, they also needed to have the look of “otherworldly” and “adventurous”, which were aspects I took into consideration when creating their overall designs. A few early drafts of them were even more otherworldly and even somewhat alien-like, but we reeled it back to keep them in more relatable territory.
When I draw people by themselves or interacting, I think subtleties say a lot about a character’s feelings and inner mood. A lot can be said with very little, and on certain occasions, even subduing things says as much about the mood as exaggeration does. Body language and gestures are very useful tools for this purpose.
– Who are your favorite character designers?
A few of my personal favourite character designers are Akihiko Yoshida, Hideo Minaba, Rui Tomono, Shigenori Soejima, Shunsuke Saito, Yusuke Kozaki, Yuya Nagai, and many more! I also love a lot of illustrators who don’t necessarily focus on character design (or even characters!) but the list could then go on for a long time haha.
Feel like changing your wallpaper? We will make the First Time Pictures available here in wallpaper format. The Pillow Fight is already available.
Check the timelapse video below to see how the art was drawn.
On April 4th, we released the Freedom Update for Furi: a free update available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and GOG.com. With the update we brought features and content developed for Furi over the last months to players on all platforms.
What to expect with the update:
More info here: https://www.thegamebakers.com/furi-freedom-update/
We’ve been amazed by the fan arts from this community. We can’t share them all, but thank you to all of you who drew or made something inspired by one of our games. You are so talented!
Rider by space_algae
The stranger – Graphiti by zillington, what_is_funk & sean.savant
Rider by demik109
Rider by gladiskstudio
The next From The Bakery could very well be about the music for Haven. Let us know what you thought about the format of this first one and what you’d like in the next ones by joining our Discord server! If you want to receive the next From the bakery directly in your inbox, you can subscribe to our newsletter!
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