Restitched: Dev Diary | Crafting Cpt. Stuffy

Hello, and welcome to another Developer Diary! In this feature, we'll be exploring the process of turning 'The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy' from concept to comic!

There had been murmurs among the Project Leads for a Restitched comic for a while, but with everyone on the team being so busy with their respective areas, it was never fully initiated.

The first ever suggestion of a Restitched comic was by Director Billy Anderson on July 6, 2021 when discussing a slight refresh of trixel+ benefits, as seen in this message sent in the private #directors chat in the Trixel Creative Discord server:

As you can see, the original proposed name was Stuffy's Day Out, though this title was never re-used in future proposals.

Afterwards, discussion of a comic fell silent until the majority of the narrative of Restitched was somewhat firmly set in stone. At that point, Anderson thought that the writers could set themselves on a new project. A large motivational factor towards this idea was the response from the latest trixel+ survey at the time. Many of you commented that you would like to see more content, and this is what pushed writer Billy Anderson to conjure up a a proper proposal.

Logo Creation

For his proposal, Anderson asked fellow Director Halston Stephenson to create a logo. Below is the concept image that Anderson sent Stephenson on July 8, 2021:

As you can see, at this stage, the comic was titled The Grandiose Adventures of Cpt. Stuffy. The 'Adventures' would be changed to 'Tales' during this logo creation process on the advice of Stephenson, as 'Adventures' could not be formatted in a pleasing way for the logo, as well as concerns that the name would be too convoluted.

Below is the initial draw-up of the logo by Stephenson. As you can see, while Anderson's mock-up had all words besides 'Grandiose' and 'Cpt. Stuffy' in lower-case, Stephenson decided to capitalise 'Tales' also.

Slight adjustments were made here, primarily to the curvature of the logo and the placement of the wooden sword.

Colouring was then applied. Anderson requested the text outline to be the same colour as the Restitched logo in order to strengthen the Restitched identity.

Textures were then applied, resulting in the final logo which we know and love.

Proposal & Team Building

Once the logo was finalised, Anderson set about writing the proposal document on July 15, 2021. The proposal outlined a basic narrative, character bios, and the pros of launching such a project. This was sent to the other Project Leads, and was eventually given the go-ahead. A small extract from this proposal is displayed below - but much of this document is still confidential!

The next step was to get the right people involved. Initially there were talks about bringing a new member on-board for the comics, but we decided to reach out to one of our designers, Ari, first. After a short conversation with them, they were extremely happy to be the artist for the project! All of the concepts and comic strips you will see have been drawn by our amazing Ari!

If you can believe it, that's everyone currently dedicated to working on The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy! Though, as per usual, the discussion channel for the comic is hosted directly within the main game's development Discord server. This means the rest of the Restitched team can see the comic's creation process, and are encouraged to comment at any time.

Character Concepts

After reading through and editing plot points for the narrative, the next step was to draw up concepts for our characters. Below are these concepts:

Cpt. Stuffy

After Ari drew these sketches, feedback was given and a concept was chosen. The next step was to create a colour palette.

As evident here, we chose #2. This process was then repeated for every character:

Puddles

As you may be able to tell, the Puddles in the image below is actually a mixture of all of the concepts above - the elements were hand-picked by Anderson.

Charlie Dior

Eloise Dior

With our line-up chosen, some brief edits were made to our characters (such as Puddles' glasses) before being displayed together in the 'Character Lineup v1', displayed below:

Some brief edits were then made to our Stuffy characters to ensure that the proportions were correct to our in-game Stuffy. Puddles remained mostly unchanged, but Cpt. Stuffy received a new nose design, a rounder shaped head, and an elongated torso.

These changes were then applied, as well as some subtle colour changes to Charlie and Eloise Dior, for 'Character Lineup v2'. These colour changes were implemented to provide a stronger visual connection between the humans and their Stuffy counterparts. The pink rocket on Charlie's hoodie was altered to be the same colour as Cpt. Stuffy's bandanna, and the colours of Eloise's shirts were changed to match Puddles' fabric and backpack.

Story Finalisation

While the narrative of the comics had been written, it was now time for Billy to outline the comic pages themselves.

Test Strips

With our character designs and page contents finalised, it was time to create test strips. The test strips for the first two pages, which have been released this month (October 2021), are displayed below:

You may notice some familiar faces on the first page - Charlie's friends are indeed the other concepts for Charlie and Eloise that were not chosen!

Key Art

Last but not least, it was time to create the key art. This stage was potentially the most important for us, as this would be the first anyone would see of Cpt. Stuffy - and we really wanted to sell the concept of this comic to everyone.

Furthermore, the key art has to be flexible: it was decided that the key art would also be the cover for the comic, but it would also need to be presentable as a square, as banners, and more.

So, Ari set about to brainstorm some ideas:

After much discussion and debate, Billy and Halston both whittled the selection down to five...

Then three...

Before eventually settling on the top-right concept. This concept was then re-created by Ari in more detail, so we could really get a feel of the artwork.

More detail and colour was added...

Ari would then finalise the design, with additional overlays added by Halston Stephenson. 

The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy was announced to the public on September 10, 2021 using the Key Art!

...and there we have it! We hope you have enjoyed this Developer Diary. Cpt. Stuffy's adventure has only just begun, and we can't wait to take you along for the ride!

Now that you've seen the creation process, why not read the full story so far?

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