Design Contrast

Pod & Rodney's art direction is all about contrast in one way or another. The characters themselves are a strong contrast to each other in a number of different ways.

First to note is Pod and Rodney's color scheme. Pod is a cool blue and Rodney is a warm orange color. The colors are complimentary on the color spectrum.

The general environment tends to lean towards grays and greens. The green "factory basic color" is a tone directly between Pod and Rodney's dominant colors, also known as a "secondary color" in color theory.

The orange and blue color scheme is popular in marketing and media lately. While it may not be the most avant-garde, we're hoping it will create a sense of familiarity and charm for our characters and environments.

The character silhouettes are also of note, as Pod is very spherical, and Rodney contains a lot of right angles and sharp corners.

This image is a work in progress of the environment and characters, but it also shows off the technique used to pop the characters from the game environment. Set pieces have some detail to their textures with concrete grit and sharp lines for vents. While the two playable characters are mostly solid colors with sparse details. This and their stronger colors against the gray background helps the player interpret the scene better, so that they don't lose track of the character's locations in the puzzle.

This same color scheme and silhouette practice is found in the title graphic. You can even see the green secondary color used in the ampersand between the two character names. Pod's name is bubbly and soft, while Rodney's is sharp and rigid.

There has been a lot of attention to this in everything from character functionality to animation weight. We're hoping this attention to aesthetic detail will not only help the player understand the gameplay better, but also make the game more interesting to look at and play.