ASTRALIS

Project

Characters

Process

Documentation

✦ PROJECT ✦

Astralis is an interactive visual novel that explores a society divided. Throughout the game you are introduced to characters that welcome you into their community and share insight about conflicts that have come to exist within the city of Astralis. Our project employs choice to highlight pressures of conformity, placing emphasis on the ability one person can have to evoke change.
In Astralis, my role was as a character designer and lead asset designer. I worked alongside Benjamin Zock (Ben) to design all the characters of our story, including bases for the townspeople and the four main characters you meet along your journey. Ben and I also developed the art style and world of Astralis for Liliana Bauman (Lily) to then implement into a coded game. Once our character designs were completed, I transitioned to asset development for the game, where I illustrated, rendered, and named assets for Lily to implement into the game. Along with these assets, I created scene guides to tell Lily which character, eye, and background assets align with each set of dialogue. The two of us worked together to streamline the process of game development along with Ben and Kira Smith. Part of my role as asset developer was I instructed Kira on how to create the line art for our character (Kira helped me with line art for certain assets). Lastly, I refined some of the cutscenes Lily made to make them smoother and more realistic.
Game Link:
https://astralisgame.itch.io/astralis
Password:
Citali2024

✦ CHARACTERS ✦

The Drey are scholars of magic and utilize ancient glyph techniques to perform everyday tasks. Magic-use requires heavy study and practice however, which has encouraged many to pursue a more modern, technological approach with their methods.
I designed the Drey alongside Ben Zock, who designed the Wiran (our technological characters). For our process, we began in our own art styles and developed shared art boards. We then created iterations to compare and decide on a collective style for our characters. We determined the Drey would appear more formal, uniformed, and elite while the Wiran appear more scrappy, intuitive, and hands-on.
Once we finalized our character designs, Ben transitioned to backgrounds while I developed character assets and props for Astralis. We continued to collaborate to ensure the art style remained consistent and our world felt alive.