Our Design Process

Take a deeper look at how we design our characters and cards.

The Italian Man

Back in the 15th century, a young Italian boy with no formal education began doing sketches and paintings as a teenager. He would study various disciplines and then translate his learnings into artwork. He worked tirelessly doing this for about a decade before he received any serious recognition.

For example he even delved into designing robots, albeit mostly for creating toys to entertain wealthy patrons. He studied the anatomy of human corpses and taught himself how muscles and joints work to move bones.

Fig 1. Proportions of a Robot.

The quality of his research in kinesiology along with the artistic integrity of his drawings led to NASA adopting it in designing the Anthrobot, a robot hand with nimble fingers that carried out tasks on Mars.

That man’s name was Leonardo Da Vinci. We will return to his story in a moment.

Striking the Perfect Balance

So how do you breathe life into a new idea, and once you have it is and is that idea worth pursuing? One of the first things we recommend is to immerse yourself completely into the thing you’re creating.

This is similar to what you may have discovered about learning a new language. You could read and listen to Spanish audiobooks all day, but there’s nothing quite like moving to a purely Spanish-speaking country if you have the means.

Ask yourself quetsions about the nitty gritty details. Once you're totally absorbed into the universe of what you're building you find things start to make more sense and your creativity will start flowing. One of our writers went so far as to ask, "how do people brush their teeth in Lysafar?" We came up with an answer but of course left it where it belonged: just in the notes :)

And that's where this idea of balance comes in. You want to bounce back and forth between what you're imagining, and what's practical and relevant to your end product.

Our team at Two Robots has done this with each new robot, Hybrid, or Hero in the game. First we ideate about why something should exist and its backstory. Then we start out doing some rough sketches and compiling our notes. Next, we move to more polished sketches, before finally converging on the final product. In this case, a basic robot card.

Fig. 2. Initial concept and notes.

Fig 3. Cleaned up draft.

Fig 4. A colorized, digitized rendition.

Fig 5. Finished Electrical Robot card.

Electrical Robot Background/Lore

Besides the basic things like the origin and creator of each robot, we give a little more context by adding a quote or two said by relevant characters.

Origin: Lysafar, est. 50 RE
Created: by Dr. Edelstein and Dr. Tess, 60 RE

"The people of Lysafar, in the face of adversity, will always find a way to power through."
—Dr. Nikki Edelstein (60RE)

"Evaluate. Innovate. Create. It is the Lysafarian way. It is how we survive and thrive."
—Dr. Tami Tess (60RE)

We then provide a detailed snippet about how that robot was created, or why, within the Two Robots universe.

After having their communications system shut down by a series of unexpected power outages, The Lysafar Department of Energy called upon the scientific minds of Doctors Nikki Edelstein and Tami Tess to develop a backup power source capable of powering government buildings for extended periods of time. Due to the success of the project, the two researchers were given additional funding to repurpose their SafetyNETT High-Capacity Batteries for public use. Within a few months, a number of these Mobile Power Supply Units were rolling into each city, ready to supply residents power at a moment's notice.

TL;DR

While we certainly don’t have Leonardo Da Vinci working in our office (we welcome any visit!), we can learn from him that delivering a truly beautiful final product takes a great deal of effort and time. We have been deliberately putting every ounce we have of both those things to bring you something truly exceptional.

We are truly excited to share our universe with you. Stay tuned for more.

If you have any feedback for us please email us directly at tworobotsio@gmail.com or reach out to us via one of our social media channels.

Best, Omar