Cd Projekt Red

The Polish studio behind The Witcher series tells Tom May about its move to sci-fi and why it’s the fans that matter

CD Projekt Red is the Polish games studio that’s best known for The Witcher series of fantasy role-playing games, based on the monster hunter series of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s also moving into the world of sci-fi in the form of Cyberpunk 2077, an open-world role-playing game based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop role-playing game system that’s due for release next year.

With all this creative activity, a wide variety of artists are needed at the Warsaw-based firm, says character art director PaweÅ‚ Mielniczuk. “Our artists’ specialities range from concept design, to organic and hard surface modelling, to level design, to cinematic and gameplay animation, to promo and DTP art,” he says.

At time of writing, the team is working on designing and delivering all characters, weapons and vehicles for Cyberpunk 2077. “Characters are mostly painted and photobashed, weapon design mixes 2D and 3D art, while vehicles are designed entirely in 3D from the very beginning,” explains PaweÅ‚. “Designs are then forwarded to character, weapon or vehicle artists to be further defined and polished during modelling stages.”

WIDE SPECTRUM OF COLOURS

Artists work across a range of visuals styles, but one common characteristic is a strong focus on colour. “In both The Witcher’s dark fantasy setting and the dystopian world of Cyberpunk 2077, we believe the spectrum of colours should be just as wide as our characters’ spectrum of grey morality,” says PaweÅ‚. The studio also takes pains to get the look of its characters right. “Until we create a character that we truly love, we keep working on them,” he stresses. “When it comes to character designs, we never have deadlines.”