Neo Cab -  Characters

I drew inspiration from the fashion trend Athleisure for our character concepts. Fitness wear has a very futuristic but functional quality to it. By adding light emissive details it I was hoping to find a fresh take on the cyber punk aesthetic that didn’t include unbelievable cybernetics, but felt more plausible and relatable.

Radix Biker Concepts

Radix are a group of pro-bike anti-car anarchists who act against the Capra Corporation. They are a grass roots organization, that Savy falls in with, who oppose self driving cars. There ended up being only one Radix passenger, Azul, but their presence is felt throughout.

I drew inspiration from the Latinx youth I saw protesting in the streets of LA around 2016. Rather then design them to look militaristic and typical, I wanted them to be colorful and vibrant.

Style Ranges

When designing a visual style I find it helpful to start out with the same subjects and play with different aesthetic ranges. We toyed with a simplified graphic approach for our characters but ultimately made them look more distinct and specific. Having a more detailed style made each character feel more unique, individualistic, and relatable.

These duotone explorations were a real turning point for the style of the project. I was trying to capture the moody drama I was reading in our early sample stories.

I then expanded the duotone style into full color. It was really important that the character’s expressions could be read cleanly so players could know how the conversation was going. This style allowed for a lot of clean readability in the faces. The lighting design was still dramatic and the neon palette gave the style a futuristic quality.

Lina

For our main character we wanted a blend of approachability and toughness. Her best quality is her empathy but her job also puts her in some difficult situations. The only people that request human drivers in Los Ojos either want a human connection or don’t want to be tracked by the Capra Corporation. Overtime she has had to guard herself against awkward situations, but also make her passengers feel comfortable as she carries them to their destination.

This 3/4 shot is Lina’s final design as it appears in game. We only ever see Lina from a few angles, however I did this semi head turnaround to help me figure out how her hair was shaped.

All of our characters are built in Spine out of several different layered meshes that we can move and animate. Using meshes allowed us to give our 2D assets an illusion of depth. Lina is designed to have enough head movements to make it plausible that she is driving during the conversation.

Lina is Mexican-American but her family has lived in the states for generations. I designed her to be a bit ambiguous regarding her racial identity. This was drawn from my own life. Most of my life people have asked me “Where are you from?” which is then usually followed by an incorrect guess about by lineage. This ambiguity has opened up a lot of interesting conversations, which made me realize I could draw from this experience to make Lina seem more approachable.

Lina gets to exit the car at select points in the game. There are only a few locations but it was an interesting challenge trying to reuse our character rigs in different settings. This usually meant designing a new lighting setup and body for them to fit the location.

Savy

In contrast to Lina, I wanted Savy’s look to be bold and capture her loud and fickle nature

This is an example of the animation system Laura Sly , Patrick and I built for our characters in Neo Cab. Each character has a set of idles and reactions. This system we built allows us to blend different emotes on top of these movements. These emotes and reactions are driven by the scripts of each ride so the character's expression can give you insight into how your conversation is going.

Warning this is bit of a spoiler: Eventually Lina finds where Savy is hiding out. For this location we had to build a Holographic laptop for her to be messing with. The laptop HUD is a fully animated sequence that responds to character choices.

Additional Characters

One of our earliest characters created by Paula Rogers. Fiona is on her way to a date and is dressed up to match her favorite social media filter. She worries about showing up to the date as her true self. Lina can sway her to go ahead as is or to let her hair ( and guard) down.

Azul is a non-binary member of Radix who had their arm amputated after an accident with a Capra Car. Their arm was inspired by Claudia Mitchell the first woman to have a bionic arm. There are electrodes connected the nerves in Claudia’s chest that control arm movements. The wires send signals down to the prosthetic limb allowing her a more natural control over her robotic arm.

I chose to base Azul’s arm on something more realistic and unfinished as it seemed more befitting of their DIY spirit. Maybe they didn’t get a good payout from their accident so they had to use different parts from older model prosthetics. This also gives Azul some serious Furiosa vibes. You can see some early arm takes that felt more anime influenced, but ended up looking to futuristic and typically cyberpunk. Maybe these arms exist in Los Ojos, but Azul couldn’t afford one.

Gideon is an an affluent anti-establishment member of the Los Ojos Elite. Her family is concerned for her safety so she is only allowed outside if she wears her “Kinder-mech” branded safety suit. Through your encounters with Gideon you can assist her to be freed of the suit, or convince her that her parents have their best interests at heart.

LOPD Officers

The Los Ojos Police were designed to be a faceless threat in the world of our game. We wanted to explore how technology would affect a police force in a well funded town like Los Ojos. Like a lot of things in our world we wanted to depict a future that felt within reach. Back in 2018 we looked at the increasing militarization of the police in America and tried to cast forward 20 or 30 years. This preceded the protests of summer ‘20 as well as the mask wearing cops in HBO’s Watchmen. Like a lot of our designs the future caught up to our vision much faster than we ever imagined.

I wanted their visor to serve two purposes. First to serve as an internal and external HUD. I imagined that the inside of their visor displayed all sorts of pertinent information on the person they were questioning. In addition they could display commands and information to citizens.

Second as a way to hide their identity, this way they could be protected from retribution.

In game they have holographic badges and their visors display information to Lina about her traffic stop. They intimidate and hassle Lina during her journey through Los Ojos as they search for Savy.