In this post, we share how we made a new kind of hero to help celebrate Left to Survive’s birthday: a zombie hero. We share details behind our process, from brainstorming and backstory creation, to final render and icon design.
Hi all! In our shooter Left to Survive, characters occupy a special place – the plot revolves around them, each has their own backstory, nature and unusual abilities. Creating each character is a long process that requires the collaboration of many specialists.
In this article we will tell you how we created the zombie hero Matthew: how we came up with his gameplay features, backstory and worked out his appearance. The following people took part in the creation of this hero and writing the article: Mariia Shabanova (Lead Game Designer at Left to Survive), Darya Matveeva (Senior Game Designer at Left to Survive), Maksim Karpov (Senior 3D Artist), Egor Danilov (Concept Artist), Elena Koroleva (Lead Concept Artist), Gennadiy Roginskiy (FX Artist), Kirill Shatalov (Developer at Left to Survive).
The hero’s background and abilities
While the idea of a zombie hero had been periodically circulating within our team, we were holding it until the perfect moment. But, with the game’s birthday rolling around, we wanted to do something special to let our players celebrate it with us.
When creating characters, we must make sure all the features, abilities and characteristics of the hero are interconnected: their backstory should be reflected in their appearance, and the gameplay abilities should be logically derived from this origin story. To make sure everything is consistent, our team closely communicates with other departments; we make many decisions about our characters as a group and are constantly discussing them with each other.
In terms of process, the creation of a new hero usually begins with the development of their gameplay features. For example, for our zombie hero Matthew, we decided to take something from our backlog of ideas: the “Plasma Explosion” ability, which allows players to charge and fire a plasma projectile. This ability would be our starting point, but we remade it in accordance with our new hero’s backstory. The result was “Boiling Blood”, an ability where the plasma turns into a poisonous liquid that flows through Matthew’s veins.
Simultaneously, we came up with a hero concept that fit with the ability: we decided that Matthew was the result of an experiment to bring zombies back to life, and thus, only able to survive thanks to an ingenious life support system.
Here’s an excerpt from the original biography we used when developing the concept:
Who said that zombies can’t get their mind back? They can… But, well, not everything went smoothly – a couple of stitches here and there, a special muzzle and a life support system… His thirst for life and high initial indicators were helpful during the process of regaining control over his body and… at least part of his mind… And now, thanks to his life support system, his body accumulates plasma, which deals a healthy amount of damage to the area where his projectile has been fired.
With the “Boiling Blood” ability, we were conducting a double experiment: first, the cooldown was noticeably reduced compared to the abilities of other heroes – this allows players to frequently deal damage to one target. Second, the ability can be “charged” by shooting enemies several times with conventional weapons – this increases the number of targets and adds the chance to cause periodic damage.
The team really liked the idea of a zombie hero and an experimental ability, so we moved on to the next stage: preparing the visual elements.
Creating Matthew’s concept art
To solidify Matthew’s visual design, we met with the artists and 3D modelers to discuss his history, character, and appearance. We wanted to demonstrate a character who had gone through the process of transforming into a zombie, but at the same time, had managed to retain a sense of humanity as a result of the experiments that had been conducted. At this stage, it was important for us to formulate the general appearance of Matthew and his characteristic features.
Creating Matthew’s appearance was a real challenge for us: we had to emphasize his zombie side while simultaneously showing that he had retained his humanity. During the early stages, he was too similar to a “normal” person, so we started looking for ways to emphasize his zombie side. In particular, his life support system (which actually keeps Matthew from going full zombie mode) helped achieve this.
We spent a lot of time developing the mask – we wanted its design to make the hero look both mysterious and dangerous.
We had many options for implementing this system, but we had to abandon most of them because they contradicted the hero’s story or did not coincide with the setting. For example, we wanted to add body armor and protective plates to the tubes, but decided that it didn’t make sense – since the hero is “half dead”, he doesn’t feel pain nor are bullets scary to him. We also thought of adding a mechanical arm or amplifiers under his skin, but we decided against it in order to avoid any associations with cyborg designs.
The arms were left open to emphasize the connection between the life support system and the hero ability, as well as to show where the zombie virus infection originated..
As a result, the hero still had mechanical elements on his arm (tubes sticking straight out from the elbow joint) which we intended to emphasize the experimentation conducted on the character, and the fact that he had been brought back to life with the help of science.
One of the interesting details in the hero’s appearance is the broken mobile phone on his arm. So, according to the game’s story, in order to revive Matthew, the scientists had originally created a life support system, but it was too unstable and needed to be controlled somehow. Since these events took place during the zombie apocalypse, the scientists didn’t have suitable technologies; they could only use what they had on hand. Thus, the telephone acts as a “detonator” that controls this system.
Although it wasn’t originally planned, when creating Matthew’s face and hairstyle, we were guided by the tastes of the audience, so we decided to make him look younger.
The character’s equipment and clothing are also very important: we knew they shouldn’t have somehow blended with the hero’s skin, nor should they have had similar color schemes as other characters.
Left to Survive heroes
During a long brainstorming process, we found an option that met all our requirements and desires, and this concept art became the basis for the 3D model that eventually entered the game – the hero was beginning to shape up!
The hero modeling process
During the 3D model preparation stage, we continued to improve our character and added several important details to help further develop him: for example, we added signs of damage to the mask, as if Matthew was fruitlessly trying to wear it down – the intention was to evoke associations with a muzzled bulldog.
We paid special attention to the development of the mechanism on the hero’s back, since this is this part of the body that the player sees most often during gameplay.
There was also a lot of discussion about the placement of the zombie bite. Initially, we wanted to place it on the back of the neck, but this area was ultimately covered with a chip (like Otto Octavius from Spider-Man 2). As a result, we moved the bite to the right shoulder – an area that players have in view most often. It was important for us to make the bite look contagious and dangerous, but not gross or off-putting.
Intermediate version of Matthew’s in-game model
When developing the character, the veins in the arms and the life support tubes were further highlighted and merged in color to more clearly illustrate a clear connection between them.
Every detail was carefully worked out by the modeler
We illuminated the eyes – making them ominous – to show Matthew’s “otherworldliness”, and we added dynamic effects to the elements to enrich the image further.
The old push-button telephone survived all modeling iterations and made it into the final version – the phone looked extremely organic, even when contrasted with the hero’s high-tech appearance.
Preparing the final render and ability icon
The final rendering and choice of pose for the store is a separate (complex and painstaking task) for our artists and game designers. This pose and facial expression is critical because it communicates the hero’s nature to the players.
To do this, the artists relied on the hero’s biography; given the layout of the interface elements, an additional challenge was showing both the transformed zombie hand and while leaving the other bright elements on the character’s body uncovered.
Intermediate art of the hero pose
As a result, the picture began to shape up and the hero seemed to come to life while looking at us with his burning eyes.
The final hero pose
Another important detail when preparing a character is creating an icon for the active ability; this icon usually depicts effects of the ability in a stylized way. But this case was different: each ability is activated with the help of some expendable items (which are also present on the character model).
So, it took us a while to find a suitable idea for the hero’s ability icon. To attack, Matthew uses liquid from his body, so we decided that the hero cannot simply shoot it from his hands – he must draw it into a container. We abandoned the idea of a flask, and decided to use a blood bag. Although, the first versions of the icon looked like packets of baby food.
To move away from this association, we decided to repaint the bag red. However, this was too obviously associated with blood, and that didn’t suit us.
In the end, we moved towards orange – and we’re completely happy with the result.
Accomplishing this meant carrying out some difficult (but awesome) teamwork, so shoutout to everyone on the team! According to the data, we can safely say the players liked the hero. Already in the first days following release, more than half of the active audience had added Matthew to their collection!
