Rita Kaczmarska

POSTMORTEM
“AND I MUST SCREAM”

I was an artist responsible for the concept art, characters, textures, 2D animations, some
props and UI at Stitched Mouth Studios. We made a PC/Android game called “And I Must
Scream”.

Our team started off by thinking together of a game idea and a genre we are interested in
making. It was to be a stylized horror, narrative-driven game with serious undertones (grief).
Quickly after that I began working for a few weeks on gathering mood and art references, as
well as drawing different concept art, for the characters, enemies and locations. When it comes
to inspirations, there were way too many to count, but for me most important ones are: The
Void from “Dishonored”, “Limbo”/”Inside”, “Stranger Things” and “Silent Hill” series.
 I was helping the other artists with design ideas and took it upon myself to also design some
environments, including the panopticon prison tower with the enemy looking out for the MPC
from the middle that our team sticked with to the very end.

At the start we planned for the environment, as well as the characters, to be more interactable
and change in the middle of the playthrough into their “real world” version. The whole idea was
to have the contrast of what really exists versus what our main traumatized character perceives
it as; and that is exactly what dictated most of my design decisions, even when a lot of them
didn’t come into fruition. Overall though, I can say that my concept art gave my whole team
clear direction on where we should take our ideas, and I was the main artist responsible for
overall mood and “look” of our game.
 As on all my previous teams, I had been showing and discussing each sketch/design with
my teammates and we had been deciding on the favourites. After that I began modeling the
characters, so the technical artist was able to efficiently start making animations. First was our
protagonist, Max, then the main antagonist, Delilah.

Max is an orphan whose poverty I tried to show by giving him an oversized black coat. The
color of the coat was dictated by the flowing scarf that was supposed to change color, depend-
ing on one of the two special powers that the player can use. I designed Maxes of different
ethnicities and races before I knew that the plot takes place in Scandinavia.
 Delilah, on the other hand, is a giant female spider. The design decision is dictated by the fact
that in the original narrative she was Max’ caretaker. In the end, when our team resigned from
making the plot overcomplicated, she became more of a symbol of Max’ guilt about the death
of his mother (in some way resembling what Pyramidhead is to James in “Silent Hill 2”).
 Next came the common enemy that was also supposed to be part of the time-dependant
boss (that’s why the limbs of the common enemy are so elongated), and Zoe, one of our two
NPCs (the other one got cancelled due to approaching deadlines). The common enemy is Max’
alter ego since the game is about the protagonist’s trauma. Zoe, on the other hand, was orig-
inally supposed to be Max’ childhood friend that is close to nature but became more beastly
in the design process, taking over the role of a guardian that leads you through the forest area
(last stage of grief).
 I worked on texturing the charac-
ters as efficiently as I could. From
the very start I planned to hand-paint
them in Photoshop, instead of using
Substance Painter, to achieve the
desired effect of stylization. I also
personally think that the majority of
games tend to lose the “expression-
ist” feel of the original concept art,
and I tried to confront that.

To better imagine the final look

of each textured character, I pol-
ished some of the concept art
pieces. They proved to be useful
as well for the final posters and lo-
gos for our team. Each title, logo
and most of the typography used
in UI and the poster were actually
paper cutouts that I sprayed the
black paint through, creating the
“less technical”, more grotesque
but not overly complicated feel.
 After texturing the characters, I started working on the props. I designed, modeled, UV’d and
textured both version of each object that is to be “channeled”. These objects were supposed
to be tied to the plot, which was to be discovered only by using the “channel” power. In the end
the objects’ purpose is obscure to the player since the plot is read aloud as a poem in the back-
ground, no matter where the main character is situated or what they are doing. The problem
with the props was that the producers on my team required a lot more of them but changed
their mind mid-process, which made a lot of the effort put into creating it practically useless.
 Similar thing happened with all the 2D keyframe animations cutscenes (all four/five of them),
that I was working on for a very long time. They weren’t working properly during the Play Day
and I can only hope that they will be implemented properly before publishing out game. First
cutscene is the head of Lily, Max’s mother (9 keyframes), the second is the same but bloodied
and ominous, the third is of Max feeling guilty about what happened, standing there with his
hands bloodied (24 keyframes), and the last is the ending cutscene that is divided into three
scenes (230 keyframes): first is Max standing above his mother’s grave with a bouquet, then
putting bouquet in front of the grave, then emotionally looking up at the sky, finally finding his
own peace with what happened to him. There was supposed to be another cutscene that I was
told to make the day before Play Day, but after seeing the other ones not implemented in the
game, I lost the will to create more.
 The biggest problem on my team, despite the fact that I am very happy with how our game
turned out overall and with the team dynamic most of the times, was that the producers changed
the whole game design basically four weeks before deadline. It was a decision that would make
our game definitely better but put too much stress and work on artists especially. I feel that any
problems that our game will have (a lot of bugs, design and gameplay shortcomings) is coming
just from that very fact.
 Top contributions
- I worked efficiently and communicated with the whole team about my progress, as well
as asked for opinions on my designs
- I have been openly voicing doubts and opinions during team meetings, even in place of
other team members that I knew were in distress over producers’ decisions
- I helped other team members with their art/design tasks
- I came up with a lot of design ideas that we sticked with to the end
- My concept art gave my team clear direction on how the final outlook of the game should
be
- I pressed the team to stick to the “forest” level as a final, concluding sequence that
would play well in contrast to the rest of the game content
- I prepared the models quickly and a lot of them to have modular pieces reused in the
environment
- Every outside-of-work team activity came from my initiative
- Good files organization

Top obstacles
- The producers changed the whole game design idea after GDC (so, a month before the
deadline), despite my objections; this resulted especially in heavy work for artists and miscom-
munications
- I should have had more Unreal art implementing experience and be less afraid of doing
it myself (in case I mess something up for the engineers)
- Environment and level designs were coming together pretty slowly from the other artists
and I had to think of them as well for that reason, which often made me distressed and working
for much longer time than I should have been working
- We should have had more team activities (trust-building “chilling”) and I would like the
initiative to come from different people as well
- I need more experience in Zbrush, which might improve my work process on the next
projects
- I need to more often make sure that assets are being implemented correctly, as well as
make sure that the producers won’t change their mind about my tasks
- I need to take less work upon myself, because I felt like I often work day and night for the
tasks that shouldn’t have been mine, or the assets that the producers resign from soon there-
after
- Our whole team overscoped; the producers gave too much attention to the game ideas
that weren’t as important as the others to finish the game (like push/channel mechanic or a
pure narrative that was becoming way too complicated for us to explain in such a short time)
- I wish I had more time to polish my concepts, as per my initial plan