A mysterious phenomenon has drained all the color from the world, and only Pizza, a dog with a borrowed magic paintbrush, can restore it. In this charming video gameโs one simple but wildly versatile mechanic, you use your cursor to splash hues across Pizza’s world, causing different magical effects.
In other words, itโs literally a game about digital painting! Chicory was released for PC, Mac, and consoles in 2021 — and you can indeed play it on your computer with a Wacom tablet.
Not many people could pull off a game about flatting lineart, but if anyone could, itโs the team behind Chicory.
The entire gaming experience โ design, programming, and writing โ was done by Wandersong creator Greg Lobanov. Night in the Woodsโ Em Halberstadt worked on sound effects, and Celeste composer Lena Raine did the music — there are multiple official soundtracks on Spotify. Backgrounds and level design were by comic artist and illustrator Madeline Berger.
And the character artist was Alexis Dean-Jones.
From Brisbane, Australia, she moved to Vancouver to work in animation, working on the Tom and Jerry reboot and Netflixโs The Hollow before starting on Chicory, her first game.
She has a simple, cute, but striking visual style, with impeccable simplification, stylization, and taste, not to mention composition and color palettes.
At the time, she did all her work on a 13-inch Wacom MobileStudio, using Clip Studio Paint for still illustrations and Adobe Animate for character movements in-game.
But the reason I sought her out for this interview was her recent drawings for the Chicory teamโs Australian wildfire relief fundraiser. The designs exemplify her simple, effective, and completely adorable work, and they were done on the fly to buyer requests. So I wanted to talk to her about how she did that.
Do you have a #1 rule of character design for cute characters?
Not exactly, no number one rule โฆ But I guess the main thing that I keep in mind is to try to convey a feeling. With these fundraiser drawings, if I wasnโt given a prompt by the person, I would try to think of something like โcozyโ or โchillyโ or something like that, and just try to convey that with the expression or the pose. I find thatโs usually a really good place to start with a character design.
Was that also what you did for Chicory, or did they give you more defined prompts?
Itโs often just like that, yeah. It depends on the character. Sometimes there will be characters we need for the story that have well-defined personalities that I need to say something specific [about], other times itโll just be, โWe need a certain number of people for the setting,โ and Iโll try and come up with a couple of unique people.
What advice would you give to people who struggle to stylize things in appealing way?
If youโre trying to stylize animals, for instance, I would really recommend sketching from life or from videos as a starting point, just going through videos and pausing. Videos in particular, I find a lot more helpful than photos, because you can really quickly get to grips with how the animal moves in 3d space, how its face looks from different angles, and what its proportions are. A photograph can really skew things a lot.
Do a few sketches, and then look at those sketches and see what you can emphasize. Like, if its eyes have a particular diamond-y shape, you might emphasize that; or if itโs got kind of a little pointy nose, give it a really little, pointy nose; find out what its head shape is and try to push that.
So itโs like animal caricature.
Basically, yeah!
How much reference are you using during the actual drawing? Or do you have a large enough visual library of animals at this point that you can just go for it off the top of your head?
It kind of depends on the animal. A lot of animals, Iโve drawn a lot already, and Iโll have an idea about how I want to go about drawing it. But if I donโt have a really clear one, or if Iโm doing sketches and theyโre all looking kinda samey, or like a design that Iโve seen before, thatโs when I go back to reference the original animal and try to pull something different from it.
Did you use them for clothes and poses too?
Yeah. I like to draw people in cafes and Iโll often reference those drawings for outfits and stuff. If I need something a little bit different, I’ll go and look for photos online. But usually itโs from life.
What Clip Studio Paint tools do you draw with?
The Real Pencil for the lines โฆ I like how scratchy it is. And then their standard Oil Paint brush for the colors.
Is the sketchiness an aesthetic choice or a timesaving method?
Itโs a bit of both. [Laughs]
For these sketches, I wanted them to look unified and I wanted to restrict myself: I have a bit of a tendency to get too stuck in the details, and I wanted to make sure I could keep going at a reasonable pace. I made sure to stay zoomed out — I didnโt allow myself to zoom in or out — and I gave myself two layers. On the first layer Iโd do a white sketch, and then Iโd do a black sketch on a layer above that to clean up, and then over the white sketch, Iโd do one to three colors.
And that was starting from a midtone background color?
Yep! I just made a little gradient: Kinda orangey in the middle and kinda green on the edge.
How long did they take?
Most of them were 15-20 minutes. Some of them were a little bit quicker, some were a little bit longer if it was an animal that Iโd never drawn before. [Laughs]
Like the crab?
Yeah, the crab and the turtle eating pasta. [Laughs] I had to redraw that one!
Does Chicory have a style guide, or do they just let you do your thing?
Kind of, yeah. I came onto the team really early, when it didnโt have a look yet; I started designing the main character, and went back and forth with Greg on [his] design, and once we had it nailed down, we formed the next couple characters, what their proportions would be, and what scale they would be atโฆ
From there, I designed a couple more characters, and once I had a few — anytime I design a new character, Iโll open up the enormous file that has all the existing characters in it and make sure theyโre fitting in with the world.
How many characters are we talking about?
A lot! [Laughs] Theyโre not all done yet, but I think the last time I counted, weโre up to about sixty now, and thatโs definitely not all of them.
And finally, why did you use the Wacom MobileStudio?
Not having a home office, I work in all sorts of places. The MobileStudio fits easily in my regular backpack, so I can just have it with me all the time. It’s small enough that it doesn’t take up much table space, but still big enough to draw comfortably on. It’s really easy and convenient to take travelling; I’ve used it to draw at the booth when we’re demoing Chicory, and also as a screen to display a reel of the game when I tabled at an art show.
Chicory was released for PC, Mac, and consoles in 2021 to rave reviews. Check out its website here, and consider giving the game a try!
About the Author
Cameron โC.S.โ Jones is a West-Philly-based writer and illustrator whoโs been contributing to Wacom for three years now. You can see more of his work, including most of his contributions to this blog, at thecsjones.com, or follow him on Instagram or Twitter.
