![]() They’re gonna want their favorite animals occultist. Everyone’s gonna want their favorite animal. James: I wanted to make as many people happy as possible. Did you kind of just go to town with animals and creatures that you wanted to see in the game? Or did you kind of look at it look at and go like, Okay, someone would want, for example, a cult full of fish people and unicorns? There’s also this whole customization of the cultist that you can do. Justin: Okay, so you’ve managed not only to create all these NPCs and bosses that run the gambit from adorable to terrifying. So I think that was one that I really liked, and it came together nicely and was super fun and tricky to animate as well. So it was quite cool to sort of bounce ideas between the two of us, and he did this weird sort of squid thing, and then I liked the idea of him sort of hiding these massive tentacles underneath his robes and then having all these multiple arms that will have different weapons in it. He designed those four bishops, and then I did the mini-boss version. And those four bishops were a bit of a collaboration between me and Julian, the creative director. I think Kalamar, Who’s the third boss, the boss of the water area, where he has lots of tentacles. Justin: Did you have a favorite character, creature, or boss that was your favorite to design? So once we decided that, the programmers would come up with prototypes for the bosses, see what was fun to fight, do the art over top of that, and consider how they would look as a follower. In reflection, it would have been nicer to tie the follower and monster designs to different animal types. So then, at that stage, it kind of started bearing in mind when designing the monsters. So initially, I was just doing the monsters and the bosses. That was an idea that I think came at sort of midpoint in the project. So did you find yourself designing both of those simultaneously? And was there one that was more difficult to find that balance with than the others? Justin: speaking to like the bosses, like you mentioned, after we beat a boss, it turns into basically like a cute version of that boss. And then, when you fight the mini-bosses and beat the bosses, you recruit them to your cult. So it kind of made sense for the monsters you also fight to be animals, but the kind of monstrous twisted version of those. So we kind of ended up basing everything around animals, which went well with the themes. So yeah, we were very kind of very wary of going to far into that sort of demonic, gory, gruesome, monstrous designs. So we do have the kind of rituals and curses and sort of magic stuff, but we wanted it all to sort of fit within that kind of pagan, very naturalistic direction. So some of the bugger inspiration were, of course, the film Midsummer, and also Wicker Man, and those kinds of pagan, Wiccan, folklore vibes. And we wanted it to be a little bit more grounded in reality. But we kind of realized we didn’t want to go too far down the gory or gruesome, and we tried to find the balance. So we kind of had a bit of push and pull there. So I would draw things, and then Julian and Jay, the other two directors, will be like, it’s too cute, make it eviler, and more monstrous. So there’s definitely a struggle early on. I’ve always leaned towards the more cute and colorful stuff. Okay, so were there any designs that leaned too far one way or the other? That juxtaposition really started to sort of pop. But while still keeping our eye on our signature cartoony style was a plan early on when we landed on the theme of cults and the kind of idea of starting a cult with worshipers and then having the kind of dark world that you kind of got to explore. So we always wanted to bring in the horror elements and a darker side to layer on top. And I think that may be limited our audience to a degree. With adventure pals, one of our previous ones, we had a lot of people saying that it’s a kids’ game. James: I think we’ve kind of always had quite a cute sort of cutesy cartoony art style to all our previous games. Justin: So what’s the plan always to kind of strike this mix of the cute and macabre? ![]() ![]() Our main character, the Lamb, is the perfect example of this, so when given the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with James Pairmain, Art Director at Massive Monster, regarding Cult Of The Lamb, I jumped at the opportunity. Finding The Balance Between Cute And Horrifying: Cult Of The Lamb Interview With James Pairmain Art DirectorĪfter playing Cult Of The Lamb, one thing that stood out to me, and I’m sure everyone else, was this incredible mixture of dread and cuteness in almost every element. ![]()
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