Making The Invincible: crafting its "painterly unrealism"

The most challenging aspect was clarifying my vision for achieving and enforcing the retro aesthetic. I sought numerous inspirations, with book covers from the era when Stanisław Lem was creating, serving as a natural path to shape the art style for the game. 

I further refined this by drawing inspiration from Chris Foss's illustrations, analysing the choices of 1950s designers, and even examining astronomy textbooks from the mid-20th century.

I aimed for warm, vibrant, and bright colours that would give Regis III in the game a painterly quality, a sort of 'unrealism'. Following this direction, we developed a colour palette that the entire team found quite natural to work with, achieving the desired effects. We were fairly confident about what we wanted to see in The Invincible world, and as we progressed, we became convinced that our chosen solutions were effective.

We had an important principle - we sought a lightness and naivety in form while maximising the functional realism of objects, costumes, and vehicles. I made a conscious effort to immerse myself deeply in the imagination of a person from the pre-space exploration era, someone living in a world without digitisation and lacking knowledge about it - envisioning how they would dream of a world from, for example, 2023.

I highly appreciated his imagination, stylisation, departure from realism, and the way he played with form while maintaining a keen awareness of colour.

We're thrilled that the game looks like it was created on Unreal Engine 5. We put in a lot of effort to achieve the current result, primarily influenced by our developed colour composition, material choices, and lighting. However, it's important to note that we utilised Unreal Engine 4 for the project. Heh, it's nice that the game gives the impression of being built on Unreal Engine 5. I believe the artistic team can be proud of their achievements.

Textures are an incredibly important hallmark of the style we've crafted - atompunk with heavy, manual machines. Unreal Engine 4 aided us in achieving an impressive material of sunlight-reflecting chrome, which mirrors the environment's cube map. 

This allowed us to obtain vibrant colours in reflections and a very tactile effect on the gleaming chromed surfaces, contrasting with the dry, matte sand of Regis III. This contrast is also foundational to the entire game's style. The brilliant illustrations of the genius Syd Mead were a significant inspiration for this effect.

Yes, it was an extraordinary experience. Having an engineering background, I particularly enjoyed analysing the technical aspects, in line with the spirit of hard science. I enjoy delving into the works and outlines that emerged during the creative process - many intriguing atompunk devices and robots.

In terms of the game's design? If I could improve something, I would focus on the character's spacesuits. It can be done better. When it comes to things that are closest to my heart, it would be the design of the robots, especially the Arktan. Personally, I would love to have a loader like that.

Designing Regis III… we constantly referred to Stanisław Lem's book The Invincible. We aimed to refine and imagine the image of the planet that existed in Lem's mind. 

We wanted to capture its eerie beauty, cosmic otherness, a certain warmth, and the stifling atmosphere. We focused on environmental storytelling, leaving traces of ships and abandoned machinery on the surface of Regis, as if it were seamlessly integrated into the planet.

The animation for the game was handled by another team directly under the game director. However I can say that a significant improvement in the game's animation creation process was the introduction of mockup technology.

We were searching for a distinct, characteristic stylised form that would resonate well with the art style based on book covers. It was a very good, creative process.