Dev Diary 3 : characters creation

Bringing ARTE Riff Mountain to Life: Characters, Voices & Animation

Welcome to ARTE Riff Mountain: in this third Dev Diary, the episode shines a light on a key pillar of the experience… its characters, and the voices that bring them to life.

Discover Dev Diary 3 Dive behind the scenes of the creation of ARTE Riff Mountain’s characters

Bridging the game, metal, and players

The characters are presented as essential: they connect the game universe, metal culture, and players, and help make the experience accessible to everyone.

A creative challenge… and a technical one

Creating characters is described as a technical challenge. To achieve this, the team notably uses MetaHuman (Epic Games) to make it easier to integrate and animate certain characters. For others, they need to find tips and techniques to ensure they are optimized for the game.

Animating: two complementary approaches

On the animation side, two techniques are used:

  • a “traditional” approach: keyframe animation with a control rig in a sequencer, in UEFN;

  • and an approach using the studio’s markerless motion capture (Captury).

Pappy Metal & the Grolls: two key figures

Pappy Metal is the first character players meet: he represents the soul and memory of metal culture, holds the knowledge of the Riff Mountain, and symbolizes an intergenerational link between young players and the first metalheads. His voice is performed by Pierre-Alain de Garrigues, a French voice actor.
The Grolls take their name from “growl” (harsh vocals). They are trolls that caricature metalheads (long hair, dark clothing, masks referencing iconic bands). As a people from inside the mountain, they are also guardians against the threat of mainstream music. At first, their dialect growly is incomprehensible, but quests will later allow players to understand them.

Discover other articles

Follow our news and discover the latest articles about our business, the market, the tips we offer you…

Charger la suite
See articles

PROJECTS

Would you like a quote?
Tell us about your projects? Receive more information?
Grab a coffee?

CLICK HERE !

JOBS

Love the startup mindset? Do you thrive around creativity, thoroughness and sharing? For information on internships, permanent positions or assignments…
CLICK HERE!