Designing the Treble Thieves
- Treble Thieves
- Mar 27
- 2 min read
By Kris Deising
When creating a game that revolves around jazzy music during the early 1900’s with many playful elements, it’s important that the playable characters reflect the soul and spirit of those intentions. In order to do so, the character designers in Alto Interactive took to research—what kinds of people were involved in the early development of jazz? What did their clothing look like? What cultures and social classes do we need to consider? How could we incorporate musical elements into these concepts? We also took care to consider how people were portrayed in Art Deco portraits or drawings, drawing from those elongated and elegant proportions when finalizing character concepts.
Once we had finished our research, we picked up our pencils and began to create fast iterations for what our cast was to look like. A character to represent each of the thieves: Trumpet, Piano, Drums, and Saxophone. Through these quick iterations from multiple different people, our team gained various perspectives and insights into potential character designs—each designer had something interesting to add or share with historical, cultural, or social inspirations in their designs. Due to the history of jazz within the United States, our cast ended up featuring a diverse cast since the musical genre found its roots in marginalized communities—mostly being African American communities—and that was then reflected in the designs we came up with.
Another important aspect to designing the Treble Thieves was personality—how each of them acted and identified. Their personalities would be reflected in their clothes and body language—and eventually in their animations within the game—so it was an aspect that couldn’t go unconsidered. This was where a lot of the fashion research came into play, after all, a person usually expresses themselves through what they wear and how they wear it! Each of the personalities of the thieves were determined through the instrument that they were based on: Trumpet is peppy but with a homey and familiar feel since trumpets are a staple for jazz music, Piano is elegant and has a more mature air about her due to the piano’s long standing presence in most forms of music, Drums is excitable and energetic but is still uniform to represent a steady rhythm, and Saxophone is cool, confident, and collected with the saxophone being the most recognizable (and arguably most adored) instrument within the jazz scene.
Finally, each design was put up to team-wide vote to make a decision on which character designs to go with through the rest of the project. This way, we could make sure that our designs were interesting and enjoyable to multiple different perspectives and schools of thought instead of only being decided on by the people who were making the designs. Not to mention, as this game could only be made through a team, the full team should have a say! Through collaboration, discussion, and research, our team reached a conclusion for four designs that we felt best represented our team’s vision, needs and the historical relevance of those who helped establish the jazz genre.
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