How Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids’ Character Designs Evolved

Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids is bringing in all manner of design elements and inspirations to craft an all-new IP. The team behind Chip ‘n Clawz recently spoke with Game Rant on how the title’s designs came together.

Published by Arc Games and developed by Snapshot Games, Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids follows a young inventor and his robo-cat sidekick in a mission to repel an alien invasion. Players will be able to control the duo in single-player or in co-op while mustering up armies of machines to beat back the Brainioid menace. Game Rant sat down with key members of the game’s development team, including game director Julian Gollop, game designer Nikola Petrov, and art director Rossen Tzvetanov, who detailed how the game’s designs took shape.

How Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainioids’ Characters Came To Be

The Design Process For Chip ‘n Clawz

In discussing the art direction for Chip ‘n Clawz, one inspired by sci-fi comics, Tzvetanov spoke about the process behind creating characters. Tsvetanov highlighted how the process was directed and why certain drafts were favored over others:

“The minions have a very big role in the game. It was very important for us for each minion to be easily recognized by players. The biggest factor was readability on the battlefield. For example: when you see a big gun, that’s a ranged bot that is going to shoot you. The artillery is a huge rocket with legs that does tons of damage to buildings. Designing the minions and the buildings that spawn them was driven by these simple rules.”

With the game translating RTS tactics into a three-dimensional space, similar to Minecraft Legends, clarity in that space is incredibly important. Whether controlled by the player or the Brainioids, minions will constitute most of the character designs that the player will see, and will be at the beating heart of the title’s gameplay.

Gollop, who previously created the X-COM franchise, also added to the matter, speaking on some of the specifics relating to the artistic process. He mentioned that “There are usually 3 or 4 iterations at the concept art phase of the design before we commit to 3D modelling. When we had all the minion types and their buildings built in 3D, we made some further revisions to make certain buildings more distinguishable.”

Character Design for Chip, Clawz, and the Brainioids

Chip ‘n Clawz gives its main duo top billing in a manner similar to games like Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, or Banjo-Kazooie, so it’s no wonder that the pair has gone through some design changes. Petrov spoke on how the characters evolved during the design process, noting how animation managed to bring Clawz to life and how the team differentiated between the different Brainioid bosses. He went into the most depth with Chip, the game’s main protagonist:

“As for Chip, we initially had him look way more modern and trendy—he had rocked a sporty vest, frizzy hair, and showoff sneakers. However, we couldn’t help but think that the vibe was somewhat wrong for his personality. After some experimentation, we took inspiration from our own world. We see the ruins of an ancient civilization all over the early parts of the game, as well as the collectible comic books. We asked ourselves—what if a descendant of these ancient people is now a modern-day boy interested in robotics? And that was the “Eureka” moment.”

Gollop added more to this description of the iterative process, shedding more light on the Brainioids’ inspirations. He specifically cited Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! as an aesthetic and tonal influence, and mentioned how “The brain-in-a-jar thing was somewhat inspired by a book I had read with my children called My Arch-Enemy Is a Brain In a Jar by David Solomon.”