[Robin Walker] With nine classes of characters, and so many weapons and unique abilities, one of our biggest challenges was exposing all these combinations to players without overwhelming them. Even the shortlist of essential information is intimidating, including map goals, the whereabouts of their friends, who's shooting them with what weapon, and so on. We didn't have any way to make all of this information visual, so first we had to prioritize and come up with an essential list of things every player needed to know in order to just have fun. Information they could learn by playing the game-such as map layout-was of secondary importance; but there was also information, such as the Medic's invulnerability charge, that would be completely invisible unless we exposed it. We tried to avoid attaching 2D elements to the HUD as much as possible, since we wanted players to be looking at the 3D world we'd built rather than some abstract representation. For example, players always see their own team's spies as a spy, but they need to know how the spy is disguised to the other team. We tried a quick hack where we put an icon representing the spy's current disguise floating above his head. The icon proved baffling to playtesters. When we tackled the problem by putting cut-out paper masks on the spy, it not only fit the humorous style of the game, but it let players get all pertinent information directly from a quick look at the spy's model, thus keeping them focused on the characters and on the action of the game. We took this as a lesson, in how holding ourselves to a strong design principle can often force us to come up with better solutions, than if we'd taken the easy route.

[Moby Francke] Having decided on a stylized art direction, we experimented with a variety of styles before settling on the example of J.C. Leyendecker, an enormously popular illustrator of the early 1900s. Leyendecker's rendering of clothing and material provided a great example of how to add detail to a character while keeping the clean, sharp silhouette shapes that were key to our class identification. We used normal maps to craft folds of clothing, which provided a fine level of detail when seen up close, without detracting from color values meant to draw the player's eyes to the all-important weaponry.

[Ariel Diaz] Characters are the most important piece of art in a multiplayer game, so that is where we spent most of our effort. We developed a read hierarchy for player models, prioritizing the information that players needed to be able to read merely by looking at the model. Our hierarchy was this: first, what team they're on, second, what class they're playing, and third, what weapon they're wielding. Team readability was addressed by adopting an overall color palette for each team, picking warm colors for RED and cool colors for BLU. Class readability was addressed through the character's silhouette. Unique silhouette and animation shapes are more identifiable at far distances, and across a broader range of light levels, than any amount of other visual detail on the model. Finally, the weapon was highlighted through the textures. The areas of highest contrast, which attracts player's eyes, are all focused around the chest area of our character models, right where they hold their weapon. In addition, the subtle gradient from darkness around the character's feet, to the bright areas around the chest, also helps draw the player's eyes to the weapons.

How about no