Claire ThomasHi everyone – Claire here! I know you all saw the concept art for this Phantom in Sera’s last post, but the one of the exciting parts about game development is that eventually things start to move and take on a life of their own. Grimlee has come a long way since Sera’s original drawing, including getting a name for itself, so let’s take a look at where they are now!
Look at them now! All grown up and three dimensional and all that. Of course, Grimlee didn’t get that way without some help, so let’s backtrack a bit.
First, Sera makes a turnaround of Grimlee for my reference. The drawing includes notes about shape, form, and how certain aspects of how the creature moves. I then use this reference to sculpt Grimlee in Blender and paint their face on in Substance Painter. After this, I take some time to give Grimlee some bones in a process called rigging, and create animations for them.
We wanted Grimlee to be very bubbly and squishy – they are a Joy Phantom after all! Many of their animations were focused on being comical. Our goal is to make every Phantom convey their personality through their animations, and Grimlee is specifically a mischievous trickster.
You might notice that Grimlee has an aura glow around them. All Phantoms glow in the color of their inner energy, determined by their type. All Joy type Phantoms will have this orange glow around them, whereas a Sadness type may have blue instead, and so on! Phantoms can change between their aura form and physical form at will – when you encounter them in the wild, they will simply be glowing balls of light until you engage them in combat.
And that’s Grimlee! There will probably be much more to discover about this Phantom as you continue your adventure… who knows, maybe this Phantom will be your Kindred! Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to leave comments down below or reach out in our discord server!
This little character is really cool.