Enemy profile: The Spitter

Howdy folks! It's been a while, so we figured we should post a new update. Let me present a new monster to you - The Spitter!




Designing a character always begins with a sketch; an illustration or just a rough scribble. This particular monster is supposed to be a half-snake and half-human. It spits corrosive acid, hence the name. Our character designer, Vesa-Pekka did the rough sketch, and I made the painted version above. The illustration gives you a basic idea of the character; its poses and the general colours.


The snake which inspired this monster is an adder, which can actually be found from the Finnish nature, and it's one of the only venomous species we have in here. Although Kalaban is set in a fantastical alternate universe, it should be grounded in reality somehow. I like to compare the game's fictional lore to Watchmen, which clearly mirrors the political atmosphere of the era it depicts, but also takes many liberties, like adding sci-fi and comic book elements. Our game deals with a simpler story of course; mutant outbreak in nineties Finland.



Unlike the animations of our main hero, Bob, the enemies will be done in 3D, and then prerendered into 2D sprites. It would simply just be too laborious to animate all the in-game characters by hand. That's why I built this hi-poly model of the character. I posed the model for the animations and then shot it from different angles. I tried my best to simulate the painted, hand-drawn look.


Thanks for tuning in! We've had a long break from Kalaban partially because we've been working on Neurotron, our pocket RPG for Android devices. And also because we've done a huge rehaul to the game overall. All the previous code was essentially scrapped. Now that Neurotron is moving along nicely, we can also get Kalaban back on track.