For this assignment, I decided to focus on one of my favorite games of all time: Hollow Knight. As a fully 2D Metroid-esq platformer, it’s not directly related to 3D design, but it has incredibly stylistic art direction that I think can be learned from. The base of Hollow Knights stylistic choices and world building elements comes from the fact that it takes place in a world entirely unhabituated by bugs and is primarily underground. Each area of the world varies wildly in design, from a lush mossy ‘forest’ like environment to a village made up entirely of spun spider silk. The character designs often pull from real life bugs, such as weevils, praying mantises, etc., which makes for striking silhouettes and adds a lot of visual interest. This choice directly influences the object and clothing design as well.
One notable object that the player-character carries with them at all times is the game’s main weapon: the nail. The choice to make this weapon a nail, rather than something more generic like a sword, reinforces the idea that the game takes place on the micro-scale a bug experiences, but the small crack that can be seen in the one the player wields implies a history of it being used. Another notable weapon, wielded by the character Hornet, is a needle. This again reenforces how small the world of Hollow Knight is, but this time it also implies something about her character. In the context of the world, Hornet was born to the ruling leader of a group of spiders known as the Weavers, which are gone by the time the game’s story takes place. Hornet’s needle and thread implies her spider origins to the player far before that bit of information is revealed and shows a bit of the Weavers weaving culture.
With the clothing in Hollow Knight, things get a bit more complicated. Using the two former examples, the player character is dressed in a loose, ragged cloak, implying that they have been away from civilization (which adds to the implications of the cracked nail). Hornet on the other hand wears a bright red cloak, which you can view in a few ways. As a feisty character, the red could easily be an indication of her personality, while the nicer cloak could imply her origins as a Weaver again, but this is mainly personal interpretation. A lot of the characters in Hollow Knight sport armor or appear to wear armor, but it’s simply a part of their carapace as a bug. These choices often imply the character is a knight, or a fighter.
Overall, Hollow Knight is a personal favorite example of art direction in video games, and I think the design of it and its objects is fascinating.
