Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Songbird Announced

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March 18, 2009 -

Steven Nelson (Senior Animator), Bryan Shutt (Art Director), Dave Phillips (Concept Artist) talk about the newly introduced Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 character, Songbird.

Steve
Being a Visual Effects artist in the game industry is pretty awesome. Being a Visual Effects artist on a game that has 20 some odd Super Heroes is a dream. Then you add on fusions to that…. Wow. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that fusions are BIG. They’re also a huge load of work as well.

The realism of the effects needed, combined with the amount of work there was to do lead us to having a pretty large effects team. We have a very large number of playables, each of which needed a unique suite of super powers. They also all needed to “fuse” with every other one of the playable characters while still retaining their own flavor each and every time. In addition, we have the effects for the enemies and boss battles, not to mention the environmental effects like rain and paper blowing across a level.

Considering those are only the big ticket items, I have no problem saying that this is one of the most effects-heavy games to date.

To help me illustrate a little bit what we do, I am going to talk about our newest revealed character, Songbird. My goal going into the visuals for her effects was completely based on my feeling that she was an under-appreciated character, especially given how badass her powers are. However, there’s no reason you can’t look your best while laying waste to some Anti-Reg extremists.

Dave
Songbird was one of the easier characters to concept since we already liked her design a lot and decided that we really didn’t want to change all that much. We had lots of great reference material but ultimately it was Marko Djurdjevic’s cover art from the Thunderbolts (series #111-121) that really resonated with us. We felt that his overall art style and costume designs perfectly suited the look we were going for – A kind of gritty realism with more subdued colors and a great attention to detail. The covers are very beautifully painted and we wanted some of that illustrative quality to come through in our models as well. Additionally, we liked how Marko gave Songbird a harder look rather than being just another pretty face: her expressions are tense and serious. Of course, we still wanted to make Songbird attractive, but we tried to choose a likeness that conveyed her underlying emotions in a more believable manner.

Bryan
If you want to see the primary inspiration for her costume, then check out the cover of Thunderbolts Vol 1 #115. We tried to get close to this look with a few minor embellishments here and there. We liked its sleek, streamlined design; the armor and the belt are more minimalist but we’ve also added some pink accent lights to hint at her powers.

Steve
When we’re concepting how the powers should look, we start by looking at reference material (in this case, the Thunderbolts trades from Civil War) and try to figure out how we can translate the look of the drawn comic book into the look of our game. We also need to figure out how everything’s going to look in motion. Once we actually have some assets created, we go into the game itself and start to layer in the effects. Once we get close to the look that we are going for, we have a peer review and throw out ideas on how to push the final visual even further.

As most of you know, Songbird solidifies sound waves into objects, which she can use for a number of purposes on the battlefield. Given that information, one of our concept artists, Dave Phillips, came up with a really stunning piece of art for her “wings,” and we ended up basing the look of her powers largely on that. We also spent a great deal of time looking at the Thunderbolts “Faith in Monsters” arc: Steve Mcniven’s art inspired a lot of the detail on our Songbird power effects.

Bryan
We all really liked Dave’s concept for Songbird, as well as his other character designs. He’s done an incredible job translating Marvel’s beloved characters from the printed page into detailed layouts that the modelers can then use to begin their work. From there, it’s a back and forth process to get everything just right. Character design was big responsibility for us, knowing that we had to please both Marvel as well as the discerning fans, but it was also a lot of fun.

Pink is a trademark color for Songbird, so you’ll be seeing a lot of different manifestations of “sonic pinkness.” She’s got these big, beautiful “wings” that sprout off her back that allow her to fly and hover. Steve Nelson got the wings to look almost exactly like the concept art; he really did a great job of capturing the pulsing, concentric sound waves, keeping an ethereal look while also making them look solid enough to support Songbird’s weight. Both the Fusions and the Effects teams have done an amazing job translating all of Songbird’s powers and abilities into fun, playable move sets. Like many of the other characters you’ll be hearing about, some of Songbird’s powers were inspired by the comics, and some are completely new ideas.

Steve
The entire process of developing the finished look for the wings ended up taking about three weeks total. This was a relatively large investment for a single effect, but we were completely satisfied with the result, and developing her wings gave us the know-how to create the rest of her visual effects, as well as many others in the game.

Steve
My logic for the particles emitting from wings was based on the idea that creating solid objects from sound would probably have some sort of by-product, much like how a car has exhaust (as if the sound wasn’t all being completely converted into usable mass). This effect is also noticeable in many of her other powers, especially the ones where she’s creating solid matter rather than simple sound blasts.

One of the other goals with Songbird was to have a strong female hero who was tough, but still really fun to play and (dare I say it), a little “girly.” I showed my wife Songbird, and those pink sparkly explosions of pain and destruction sucked her right into a co-op game.

Overall though, my hope is that our work on Songbird will push her up the list of peoples’ favorite characters. She’s definitely been one of the most fun to work on.