Citizen Sleeper

THE ART OF
GARETH DAMIAN MARTIN

GUILLAUME SINGELIN
© 2022 Jump Over The Age. Published by Jump
Over the Age. All rights reserved.
!!! SPOILER WARNING !!!
This book contains character images and text which hint at or discuss the fate and stories
of characters from the game. We advise playing the game before you dig into the book.
ROLEPLAYING IN THE RUINS
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
THE ART OF CITIZEN SLEEPER
SPACE SALVAGE
Salvage: the process of cutting up
something old to build something new.
Citizen Sleeper is a game built from

salvage. When I first came up with the
name it was a game about a stranded
spacer who could only be awake for
one day of every year due to failing life
support. That game never made it, but the
name lived on. I took it and bolted it to the
idea of a game about cutting up derelict
ships with remote drones to try to survive
on the edge of a galaxy. Then, I cut part of
that away and spliced in some of my own
experiences, years of gig work, of zero
hour contracts, of good friends in bad jobs.
The idea started to gain its own gravity,

it started to pull other things into its
orbit. Things like the opening sections of
▲ Salvaging concept art, Gareth Damian Martin
William Gibson's Neuromancer, or the

titular city of Sam J. Miller's Blackfish City.
Things like the atmospheres of Cowboy
Bebop or the downtime sections of a
Blades in the Dark TTRPG session.
The salvage grew. It was a hulking wreck

now, spinning in orbit, full of ideas and
atmospheres and things I loved. I was
starting to love this wreck, to think about
it all the time. I knew I had to make it. But
where to start? ▶
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 5
▶ I started with more salvage, more

chopping ideas up, combining them,
seeing what fitted together. I sketched,
built, made copious notes and something
started to emerge.
I sketched the image opposite in 2019.

This was the year before my first game,
In Other Waters, released, before I even
knew I'd get to make a second game.
But the idea for Citizen Sleeper had been
floating around in my head for years
before that: a science fiction game about
living, about making ends meet, about
a life in a place where people came and
went, where nothing was a guarantee.
A vertical space station? A docking

tower? The spoke of a wheel station? I
wasn't sure, but I had a place in mind, an
atmosphere, and a structure. A scrollable
city, one where you could flick through
▲ Space dock sketch, Gareth Damian Martin
the layers with a mousewheel and find

stories in every one. A game you could
live in, struggle in, one that felt like life, not
a fantasy.
A lot of my work begins with an image,

something I just can't get out of my head.
For Citizen Sleeper this was it.
-Gareth Damian Martin
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 6
7
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
▲ Docking strut concepts, Gareth Damian Martin
TOWERS AND SPIRES

With the idea of a scrollable city in mind,
I started to experiment with types of
vertical structure I could use. A docking
strut maybe? A structure jutting out of a
space station where ships could be safely
loaded and unloaded and stowaways
could hide. A tower above a city perhaps?
Where ships transfer passengers to
spaceships headed out of the system.
What about a space elevator? A vast
structure through which you could scroll
from the surface of a planet all the way up
through the atmosphere to the stars.
When I make something I'm always

looking for a central image that might
catch the player's curiosity, so with
Citizen Sleeper I did a lot of paintings and
sketches, trying to get at a setting that
would immediately feel interesting. I also
started to build 3D spaces in Unity, and
▲ Tower and strut concepts, Gareth Damian Martin
like with the images to the left, paintover

the results to test out which atmospheres
or ideas might work.
I don't always know what I'm chasing as

part of this process, but I always know
when I find it! For Citizen Sleeper, the
tower structure wasn’t quite working.
The camera was always too close, the
view too limited. I needed to experiment
further.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 8
▼ Game mock-ups, Gareth Damian Martin
MOCKUPS
User interfaces are incredibly important to my games, so when I am
trying out ideas I often pull images into photoshop and layer up graphic
elements over them. The above images also show visual styles I tested
out for Citizen Sleeper while I was trying to nail down the look of the game.
To me, the interplay between UI and 3D is incredibly important. Both need
to align to produce the right atmosphere and mood.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 9
▼ Station and UI protoypes, Gareth Damian Martin
EARLY PROTOTYPES
Those mockups became prototypes, as I started to build out basic ideas
in Unity with a working UI. In these, the "letterbox" UI quickly emerged as
a way of always framing the 3D station within the UI, to make it feel like
a window into a complex world. I really wanted that feeling of gazing out
of a window at a city and watching the movement and lights, all the time
imagining the stories of the people who live and work there.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 10
▼ Ring station prototype, Gareth Damian Martin
RING SCROLL
It wasn't until I tried a ring station that I
really felt the setting was working. While
the towers and struts meant the camera
felt locked to a limited view, a ring gave
a good overview of the station and more
importantly, felt fantastic to scroll along.
The moment I hooked up the mousewheel
to the ring's rotation I knew I was onto
something, and the project never looked
back since.
The prototype you see on the left also

demonstrates me settling on an art style,
inspired by the clarity and bold colors of
anime backgrounds and sci-fi comics.
I wanted something that looked clear
and crisp on a wide view, and used the
minimum amount of detail to give a sense
of density and complexity to the image.
Too detailed and the whole thing became
too busy, and too simple and the sense of
scale fell apart.
There would be many iterations before

Citizen Sleeper would come together in its
final form, but this was where I started to
believe it could get there.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 11
12
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
▲ Finished game screenshot, Gareth Damian Martin

FINDING A FRAME
CREATING THE SLEEPERS
MORE THAN ROBOTS

When Guillaume and I started working together, one of the first and most
important jobs was defining the look of the Sleepers. We both wanted to
try to stay away from andoird and robot cliches, and create something
distictive and "human", not cold and lifeless. Sleepers aren't mindless
automatons, and Guillaume did a lot of sketches exploring the mood and
feel of their bodies and poses, to try to find ways of expressing this.
▲ Early Sleeper sketches, Guillaume Singelin
CREATING THE SLEEPERS 14

▲ Early Sleeper sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▲ Sleeper class sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▲ Sleeper class sketches, Guillaume Singelin

THE EXTRACTOR
▲ Extractor sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
The look of the Extractor class is all about expressing the way the
Sleeper's bodies are tools for Essen-Arp; they are used up until they are
destroyed. Extractors are the Sleepers who, in particular, spend a lot
of time alone in dangerous places, so reference points were people like
saturation divers, who risk their lives welding together structures in deep
water environments.

THE MACHINIST
▲ Machinist sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
Machinists are tinkerers, diligently keeping AI controlled tech and

drones working in the field. While under Essen-Arp this means endless,
exhausting repairs, an escaped extractor has the skills to modify the world
around them, even modify themselves. This quiet, focussed power was
something we wanted to capture.

THE OPERATOR
The Operator is the Sleeper who is closest to the digital world of emulated
▲ Operator sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
minds and AI protocols. In Citizen Sleeper I wanted this to feel like an

almost paranormal space, as opposed to just a digital network, and so
operators are the game's mediums, in touch with the "other world" of data
and ghosts. This also means a frailer body, and less focus on their physical
survival, something we tried to reflect in the design.

CITIZENS OF THE EYE
CHARACTER DESIGNS
COLLABORATIVE WORLDBUILDING
The process of writing and designing characters in Citizen Sleeper was Guillaume's beautiful sketches often inspired me to shift a character,
a fluid one. Most started off as an idea, a handful of references and a or gave me new insights into their personality, and this way of working
starting scene. While Guillaume sketched out tests I would often be even meant some characters emerged from rejected sketches originally
writing scenes at the same time, and so as the character developed we intended to be someone else entirely. To me this fluidity is incredibly
would always discover new things about them. Characters changed jobs, important part of keeping the story feeling fresh and unpredictable and
genders, stories and styles as the process went on. the characters feeling like they are living beings in a living world.
▲ Emphis sketches, Guillaume Singelin
CHARACTER DESIGNS 22
EMPHIS
Emphis was the first character Guillaume drew for Citizen Sleeper, (I
▲ Emphis sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
asked him to do an art test after reading his incredible graphic novel
PTSD, and seeing the fan art of my last game In Other Waters) and I
knew immediately on seeing the finished design that I wanted to keep
working with him. Even now Emphis is a firm favorite design, with his
intense vibe, detailed cooking kit and intriguing scars.
▲ Sabine sketches, Guillaume Singelin
SABINE
Sabine changed many times in early development, from a Yatagan
▲ Sabine sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
enforcer to a doctor, moving from a female to a non-binary character

as they did. My heart is very close to Sabine, and they were one of my
favorite characters to write. Guillaume's wonderful costume design skills
really came to the fore with Sabine, setting the standard for a lot of the
techwear-inspired fashion of Erlin's Eye.
▲ Ankhita sketches, Guillaume Singelin
ANKHITA
▲ Ankhita sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
The idea of a hardened mercenary who would have to reckon with the
realities of their career as a soldier-for-hire was one I had in mind for
Citizen Sleeper from the start. It seemed like the perfect way to explore
the intersections of violence and labor that haunted the game. But
Guillaume really brought Ankhita to life, making it easy for the player
to fall for her gruff attitude. When things do finally catch up with her,
Guillaume also managed to perfectly represent her shift, without under-
cutting the character.
28
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲ Ankhita sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
ASHTON
I spent a lot of time with Citizen Sleeper
trying to think about ways to flip sci-fi
tropes on their heads, or examine them
further. There is so much easy violence
in sci-fi, so many excuses made for killers
and soldiers.
However, I didn’t want to present some

kind of moral position in the narrative,
I just wanted to muddy that clarity, to
explore how little people have a choice
to do “the right thing” when they are
tangled up in systems much bigger than
themselves.
Ashton is about as muddy as they get.

In another story he might be a hero or
a sidekick, the cool-headed sniper with
the distant attitude. But here his and
Ankhita’s violence is real, and it doesn’t
just affect those that they enact it on. It
turns back on them and traps them in a
labyrinth of fear and anger. Ashton sees
an escape route towards a different life,
Sleeper Zero as I came to call them, and
tries to follow it out, any way he can.
But the thing with systems is that those

in thrawl to them, that suffer for them, are
so often the ones that enforce them the
most fiercely.
NEOVEND
▲ NEOVEND sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
"Haunted Vending Machine" was the original pitch for NEOVEND, and
developing that idea into a visual that worked was a fun challenge. A core
part of the process was finding a shape that felt like a person or being, not
just a big flat cabinet. Guillaume's tendency to layer every character with
beautiful details really became a big part of this design, with the layers of
wiring, stickers and damage telling the story of this object.
▲ NEOVEND sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Dragos sketches, Guillaume Singelin
DRAGOS
Dragos, the first character I ever wrote in Citizen Sleeper, went through
▲ Dragos sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
quite a few different looks before we settled on something that worked.

His ambiguity (is he a friend or foe? Can he be trusted?) was so important
to capture in the design, and in the end it was the drone-operator implants
that allowed us to mask his intentions. In a way Dragos is there to test the
player's approach; his opacity encourages them to make their own call on
helping or ignoring him.
TALA
Citizen Sleeper is a game inspired by bars, both working in them and
▲ Tala sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
hanging out in them, and so we needed a good bartender to make sure

that came through. Tala is the best of bartenders, funny, loyal, slightly
off-kilter and tough as hell. We kept the character design simple and
grounded, after all Tala's story is an old one, and helping her run the
Overlook is something of a palette cleanser from all that sci-fi.
▲ Rabiah sketches, Guillaume Singelin
RABIAH
Yatagan are a group that I really enjoyed writing into Citizen Sleeper. Their
▲ Rabiah sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
story is my take on some of the contradictions (street gangs with high-

tech corporate implants) that cyberpunk stories often present. Rabiah
had to represent Yatagan; aggressively loyal to a community, and driven
by a sense of continuity and history. Guillaume's design, which combines
tradition and technology captures that perfectly.
YANNICK
Yannick went through a few iterations in both text and imagery as the So his distinct design is there to give a sense of loss, a feeling of someone
game was in development. He would come to play such a short and yet powerful, intriguing and intelligent emptied out to a husk. When Guillaume
vitally important role in shaping how the player understood Yatagan that suggested taking inspiration from the "sapeur congolais" style of clothing I
I wanted to try to express a lot of ideas with his design and behavior. In felt we hit on something that captured a sense of what Yatagan might be,
the end he is perhaps the most tragic figure in the game, and the “real” a community in the process of remaking itself on its own terms.
Yannick is someone the player never gets to meet.
▲ Yannick sketches, Guillaume Singelin
39
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲ Yannick sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
LEM AND MINA

Lem and Mina came surprisingly late in the process of Citizen Sleeper, This gave me the chance to explore optimism in the face of the vast and
especially given their central role in one of the game's endings. While dehumanizing systems that drive our lives. In this way Lem and Mina are
the struggle to get on board the Sidereal Horizon was mostly planned inspired by refugee families everywhere. Design wise, while Mina takes
from the start, Lem and Mina were introduced to humanize that struggle, a few cues from my own daughter, their design is meant to capture their
to make it mean something to the player. Lem is the most optimistic differing experiences: Lem's protective instincts and fatigue, and Mina's
character in the game, and that's because he has Mina. eagerness to embrace the world.
▲ Lem and Mina sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Lem and Mina final art, Guillaume Singelin
42
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲ Mina sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
ADULT MINA
These designs are part of a post-credits
scene that never came to pass. I often go
back and forth between leaving things up
to the player's imagination and playing
them out for real, but in this case it felt like
the player should be given the freedom to
imagine this ending. However, I included
these here so that you can have a picture
of how Mina might look at the end of the
Sidereal Horizon's voyage to Celis 1. ▲ Adult Mina sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Castor sketches, Guillaume Singelin
CASTOR
Backgammon, Tabla (or Tavla in the world of Citizen Sleeper) is a game
▲ Castor sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
rich with symbolism. The board represents a year; each side contains 12
points for the months of the year; the twenty-four points represent the
hours in a day; the 30 checkers represent days of the month; the sum of
opposing sides of the die represent the 7 days of the week; the contrasting
colors of each set of checkers represent day and night. If a character could
touch all those things, could hold dice in his hand in a game driven by dice,
who would they be?
▲ Castor final art, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Bliss sketches, Guillaume Singelin
BLISS AND MORITZ

Bliss and Moritz are the key characters of the Hub, and I wanted them
▲ Bliss sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
to capture what is different about living in the microgravity of the Eye’s

center, a placeless place reliant on improvised systems and makeshift
repair work. Bliss is a master of improvisation and adaptation, while
Moritz is searching for a place he can settle. They form a temporary
support structure for each other in a place that is always flowing, where
you can lose anything that isn’t strapped down.
▲ Moritz sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Moritz final art, Guillaume Singelin
RIKO
Riko combines so many things: Ideas
that never made it into In Other Waters,
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed,
Anna Tsing’s wonderful book, Mushroom
at the End of the World which had a huge
influence on everything in the game.
Guillaume said she reminded him of his
mother, and I think the emotion of that
comes through his designs so beautifully.
She carries a whole life, a whole network
of ideas with her, and I hope that shows.
▲ Riko sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
HARDIN
Hardin's design follows a certain kind of logic about who we see (as a
▲ Hardin sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
society) as trustworthy, as a figure of authority, as a site of power. He has

arguments for his actions, has a certain seriousness about himself and
the world, and is exactly the kind of person we should be imagining when
we think of the reasonable face of evil.
FENG
Feng’s design owes more than a little to the operator "Tank" from The
▲Feng sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
Matrix, both in his boundless enthusiasm and his swagger. There are
strands of Cowboy Bebop to his character too, and he is certainly the
most pulp sci-fi character the game has to offer. But beneath the attitude
is someone with a strong belief in putting people before systems and
institutions.
54
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲Feng sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
ETHAN AND MAYWICK

Bounty hunters are a regular fixture in sci-fi, so much so that we rarely
question what their work actually is. With the player on the opposite
end of the equation for once, Ethan and Maywick were a chance to
explore that a little more than usual. What does the prototypical hero of a
cyberpunk story look like from the perspective of their quarry? The answer
is terrifying, chaotic, and in pain.
▲ Ethan sketches, Guillaume Singelin
56
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲Maywick and Ethan sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
57
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲ The Stray sketches and final art, Guillaume Singelin
GODS AND GHOSTS

Part of being an “emulated mind” in Citizen Sleeper is that the cloud of This was partially inspired by how William GIbson, in writing books about
networks and systems that we usually think of as separate from us, as the internet before it existed, imagined it as a psychic and supernatural
digital and inhuman, become a kind of “spirit world” for sleepers. So when space, rather than one ruled by data. This approach also extended to
designing the entities and protocols, both sentient and semi-sentient, that Guillaume's designs for these creatures, and we explored ways of making
exist in this space, I wanted to think of them more as gods and ghosts them feel like spirits.
rather than typical AIs.
▼ Protocol sketches, Guillaume Singelin
59
CHARACTER DESIGNS
▲Hunter and Killer protocols final art, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Navigator sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Gardener sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲Gardener final art, Guillaume Singelin
A LIVING RUIN
ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
SCALE AND DETAIL

While Guillaume’s main focus during
development was on character work, I
wanted the world to feel consistent and
coherent at every scale. Because of this,
while building the station I asked him to
supply me with some drawings I could
use to help to feed my designs. While I
didn’t try to recreate Guillaume’s designs,
I tried to follow the shape language and
level of detail as I modeled Erlin’s Eye.
In Citizen Sleeper the game is viewed at

two distinct scales and zoom levels, with
a large difference between the two. One
of the toughest things to achieve in the
3D design of the station was a balance of
clarity and detail at both scales.
While the Eye is a ruin, I also didn't want
to make it overly busy with damage and
wear, and instead aimed to express the
history of the station through bold, angular
shapes and asymmetric arrangements
that break the corporate symmetry of the
original structure.
Guillaume’s work helped me to choose

basic forms that would be clear at a
distance, but then could gain detail and
complexity when zoomed into. This took
a lot of iteration and the following pages
show both Guillaume’s drawings and the
final 3D station.
ENVIRONMENT DESIGN 65
▼ Bright Market sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Lowend sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Shipyard sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Shipyard sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▲ Shipyard sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Greenway sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Spoke sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Spoke sketches, Guillaume Singelin
▼ Hub sketches, Guillaume Singelin
THE FUTURE
Citizen Sleeper is a beginning. There are so many stories of the Surrogate
Systems and the Core that have yet to be told, and so many characters
left to meet. While neither Guillaume nor I know exactly how this universe
will continue to grow and in what forms, we are sure that it will. So thank
you for being here at the beginning of this journey, and we look forward to
sharing the starward journey with you in the future.
▼ Early promotional art designs, Guillaume Singelin
THE FUTURE 83
THE FUTURE 84
© 2022 Jump Over The Age. Published by Jump Over the Age. All rights reserved.

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THE ART OF

GARETH DAMIAN MARTIN

Citizen Sleeper is a game built from

The idea started to gain its own gravity,

William Gibson's Neuromancer, or the

The salvage grew. It was a hulking wreck

▶ I started with more salvage, more

I sketched the image opposite in 2019.

A vertical space station? A docking

the layers with a mousewheel and find

A lot of my work begins with an image,

-Gareth Damian Martin

TOWERS AND SPIRES

When I make something I'm always

like with the images to the left, paintover

I don't always know what I'm chasing as

▼ Game mock-ups, Gareth Damian Martin

▼ Station and UI protoypes, Gareth Damian Martin

▼ Ring station prototype, Gareth Damian Martin

The prototype you see on the left also

There would be many iterations before

▲ Finished game screenshot, Gareth Damian Martin

MORE THAN ROBOTS

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 14

▲ Early Sleeper sketches, Guillaume Singelin

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 15

▲ Sleeper class sketches, Guillaume Singelin

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 16

▲ Sleeper class sketches, Guillaume Singelin

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 17

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 18

Machinists are tinkerers, diligently keeping AI controlled tech and

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 19

minds and AI protocols. In Citizen Sleeper I wanted this to feel like an

CREATING THE SLEEPERS 20

enforcer to a doctor, moving from a female to a non-binary character

However, I didn’t want to present some

Ashton is about as muddy as they get.

But the thing with systems is that those

quite a few different looks before we settled on something that worked.

hanging out in them, and so we needed a good bartender to make sure

story is my take on some of the contradictions (street gangs with high-

LEM AND MINA

BLISS AND MORITZ

to capture what is different about living in the microgravity of the Eye’s

society) as trustworthy, as a figure of authority, as a site of power. He has

ETHAN AND MAYWICK

GODS AND GHOSTS

▼ Protocol sketches, Guillaume Singelin

SCALE AND DETAIL

In Citizen Sleeper the game is viewed at

Guillaume’s work helped me to choose

▼ Bright Market sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Lowend sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Shipyard sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Shipyard sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Greenway sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Spoke sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Spoke sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Hub sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Hub sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Hub sketches, Guillaume Singelin

▼ Early promotional art designs, Guillaume Singelin

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