Restitched: Dev Diary | Restitching Stuffy

Hello! Welcome to another Developer Diary for Restitched! In this feature, we'll be exploring the several redesigns that Stuffy has gone through since their initial reveal in 2020.

Stuffy isn't just the face of Restitched - they are Restitched. They're your gateway into the charming and childlike essence of our fictional universe. That's why it's incredibly important to get the character right. In our second-ever Dev Diary, "Stitching Stuffy", we offered an in-depth look at the process of crafting the character. Well, that was over eight months ago now, and Stuffy has been completely redesigned from the ground up!

The conversation about updating Stuffy's design was not an easy one to start. We had already created several renders, a full rig, animations, and in-game cosmetics for the original model. Not to mention that that we'd already revealed them to the world - and the limited amount of content we had felt comfortable revealing up to that point usually featured the original Stuffy in some capacity.

However, over time it became obvious that a lot of us within the team felt the character could benefit from looking more unique. The original model, while we liked it, lacked something that was present in our original concepts. We wanted a more adorable and unique feel. For example, the original model's head was fairly square, whereas in real life, teddy bears are usually more round and plush. The original model also had their hands stitched on whereas real teddy bears usually do not have this.

Not only were these reasons valid, but we continuously found during gameplay tests that the original model felt too tall, bulky, human-like, and sluggish. We wanted Stuffy to feel nimble and easy-to-use for all ages within our levels, and this was the main argument for a redesign.

After these points were made, it was back to the modelers to create a mock-up of a brand-new Stuffy design. Here are the first pass concepts:

We added colored caps to Stuffy's feet. We felt this added a sense of visual balance from head to toe. Stuffy is made up mostly of a primary and secondary color: light brown and cream. The cream color is used on the ears, snout, torso, and now feet. Without it on the feet, the lighter colors stayed toward the top of Stuffy and created a sense of top-heaviness at a glance. An unintentional bonus was that the lighter capped feet help in judging Stuffy’s movement in the scene. It’s also helped to better resemble a traditional teddy bear and match our concepts for the redesign.

The concept art is something we revisited, as we had a new sense of purpose for the character and knew exactly what changes needed to be made. As such, new concept art was created by AlpineShowTime:

After the new art was revealed to the team, we immeditately knew this was the direction we were aiming for all along. With much delight in the new Stuffy design, it was time for our 3D Artists to rebuild the character from the ground up.

First, we wanted to test the waters by making the change as subtle as possible. Our goal was to keep the essence of the model we're all familiar with and not totally redesign Stuffy's established identity and charm. To accomplish this, we considered transplanting Stuffy's original head to a new slightly-edited body. Smaller attempts to rectify the elongated torso were made earlier in the year by shortening its length. This proved to not be effective enough, and so we moved forward with the aforementioned more drastic proposals on a redesign.

Early attempts at sculpting and modifying a new head for Stuffy are shown below. The first image is our attempt at modeling Stuffy to match the sculpted concept (first image of this post). 

The team simply weren't feeling the style of this new Stuffy model. We wanted it closer to the charm and style of the new teddy bear artwork by Alpine. One of the issues we ran into was keeping Stuffy from looking too much like a mouse, mostly due to the position of their ears (even a couple of inches makes a huge difference in presentation!)

One of our modelers made their own attempt to realize a new Stuffy model. The results of that are shown below:

This was still not quite what we were aiming for. We generally liked the direction it was headed, despite it being difficult to get old Stuffy out of our heads so we could see it from a fresh and unbiased perspective. After all, spending many months with a character only to have them entirely changed is not an easy transition to make.

Shown below, you can see the difference between the base mesh of Stuffy's newer model (early version) and the existing model. A big benefit to remaking the model was getting rid of some very creepy and specifically-placed eye indentions. This made it difficult to create new eyes for players to equip because they had to stay round and in the same position on the head.

Moving forward, we had another modeler/artist (Ozy) take over the task and properly bring our new vision of Stuffy to life. Until now, all of our attempts were merely conceptual - however, Ozy cracked his artistic knuckles and got busy with what would become our new plush pal.

We tried lowering the eyes based on team feedback and various concepts, but it didn't seem right and made certain cosmetics (such as glasses) difficult to place. So, we ditched the idea fairly quickly.

Another interesting thing to note about this version was the ear placement being lower and tilted back, as well as the nose and stitching size, and the feet caps being indented into the model itself, rather than just the skin/texture.

Further adjustments were made, and we finally got to the point of rigging the new model to see how it bends, how it feels with animations and gameplay, and what Stuffy's new range of motion is.

Originally, the old model had a limited range of motion that we didn't know about during the modeling stages. Stuffy couldn't reach toward their head very well, and the legs were significantly shorter in ratio to the torso. This limited their motion a lot, making it very difficult for animators and terrible in gameplay.

Making sure the character could contort in the right way was of utmost importance, as we'd learned from past mistakes during the start of development. Stuffy now seems to bend around in a way that feels more natural and charming, allowing for loads of expression in body language and gameplay actions.

As stated previously, we'd already developed rigs and cosmetic for the original model. This meant the costumes that we had thought to be finalized (Welsh Dragon, Blue Bunny, Posh Bee, Wolf, and Grim Reaper) had to be tweaked to fit the scale and dimensions of the new model - with many textures and assets being entirely remade.

While for some items this simply meant resizing (such as items for hands and feet) assets, other pieces of content required more attention and time. For example, shirts that were weight painted to the model had to be resized and readjusted on a vertice level. Luckily, we have a very talented lead modeler (Ozy) that guided the process to ensure Stuffy was done justice.

This did allow for some new freedom as we revisited older designs. Several outfits like the Posh Bee took on a new appearance once the cosmetics were completely readjusted. Whether it be unintentional changes to the style based on scale (chibi aesthetic), or purposeful new additions like the Posh Bee's skin now having freckles.

Seen below are the Posh Bee cosmetics directly imported to the new model without any changes. Notice the large scale of the items and how they don't appropriately fit this new model of Stuffy?

After some 3D artistry and magic from Ozy, the cosmetic models now fit Stuffy much better:

Seen below: The finalized 'Posh Bee' Stuffy outfit, minus the glasses.

And there you have it!

The new model was further adjusted and polished based on some final team feedback. The stitches on the eye patch were made smaller, the ears were repositioned slightly, the eyes were moved and resized, the patch had its stitching added back, the feet caps were lowered, and the overall texture had its UV scale adjusted. We've also tweaked the topology on Stuffy's mouth for more natural bending during expressive states (eg. smiling), and Stufy's thumbs and hands have been tweaked further.

Below is a work-in-progress render of the new Stuffy model smiling. The fuzziness is simply due to the rendering preview, and is not representative of the final effect.

New Stuffy is shown below standing next to their former self, ready to take over! Old Stuffy lives on in our memories and our hearts. <3

Stuffy redesigns throughout the development (since January 2020) are shown below:

...and that's it!

This has been a condensed walkthrough of the redesign process for Restitched's main character, Stuffy. As always, we hope you've enjoyed this peek behind the curtain of development. 

Changing the main character model after they'd already been revealed was a huge decision to make, and not one taken lightly. This was the result of much experimentation over a pretty long period of time. Many concepts were cycled through, including character model tests and 2D art of what a new Stuffy could look like. 

Overall, this is the direction we collectively decided to go in, and we're very proud of the result. Stuffy looks better than ever, and we're grateful to have received such positive feedback on the change. 

In the image below you can find our A-Pose reference sheet for the new model: