Hello robo-readers! This week, we’re switching things up a bit – rather than showing off new features or funny gameplay clips, we’re instead showcasing a behind the scenes look at the making of our RoboCo gameplay trailer. Here’s how we turned our vision into reality:
First, our team identified three key themes that we wanted to convey in our trailer. These are:
- Our robust and intuitive robot building toolset
- Funny interactions between robots and the humans of RoboCo
- A variety of challenge environments and objectives
With these goals in mind, our team began work on a brief script, which was then converted into a full-fledged hand-drawn storyboard by our wonderful web and graphic designer Tracey. This series of illustrations set in stone a shot-by-shot sequence of our trailer, cementing our vision for its content and editing style. Below is a short snippet which breaks down the opening moments of our trailer – if you’d like to view the full storyboard and see how it compares to the final cut, you can check it out here!
Check out the rest of our storyboards!
Next, with our finalized storyboard in hand, our team set out to capture all of the gameplay footage needed – 26 shots in total, showcasing 5 distinct game environments and a diverse set of robot builds. A particularly memorable moment from these gameplay recording sessions, though, was figuring out how to best capture footage of a walking human to add to our trailer end screen. Believe it or not, we ended up recording this footage entirely in-game using a wall of green blocks to simulate a green screen-style effect – a simple, yet highly effective solution!
How did we manage to add a squishy human walking across the end screen of our trailer?
Using green blocks to create an in-game green screen, of course!
With our script, storyboard, and gameplay recordings now ready to go, one final step remained: editing it all together into a cohesive package. Here, we enlisted the help of our audio and video director Josh Bartels, who not only did an outstanding job editing the trailer, but also composing a brand new song to boot! Check out the final cut:
Voilà – our RoboCo gameplay trailer!
And there you have it! We hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at the making of our gameplay trailer, and we look forward to sharing more RoboCo insider info with you all soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to help support our efforts, be sure to add us to your Steam wishlist, follow @RoboCoGame on Twitter, and join the rest of the RoboCo community in our official Discord server!