Creating Details

Guide info#

Medium: 13-15 minutes

TLDR - What this guide covers#

• Details are individual features of objects. While you should know how to make them from GD objects already, you should know about their different uses. They can describe an object’s function to the player, tell a story or contribute to worldbuilding, or just exist solely to look cool.
• Details are best created by getting plenty of reference images. You can use these to get ideas for details, to help identify ways to create certain decoration, or study them to commit certain skills to memory.
• Less is more with details; while having more may get you praise in the GD community, it’s often not worth the extra time and objects. Focus on quality over quantity here.
• As you create, you’ll also hear a lot about styles. While these are useful to categorize levels, that is their primary use. Do not let a style define you or how you create.

1: References

Unless you’re a master of using shapes to make objects, you’ll need to build up this skill by analyzing the objects you wish to make. Only the most skilled creators can produce deco directly from their minds, and only with specific objects that they have studied. If you think you’re above using references, try building anything without them and see how well you do - you’ll see how much better you do when you have a reference.

The same way that you know what a solved Rubiks’ cube looks like before trying to solve one, you must have a clear idea of your goal before you reference things. If you’ve read the Creative Process guides in #main-skills, you’ll already understand how to make ideas and set goals for your levels. This is a necessary step before you can start decorating so I will assume you’ve read those guides and have a tangible vision already. If you don’t have a vision yet, then read them and make one!

Referencing Process#

Starting from your main idea, you need to find inspiration based on it. This will give you ideas for specific elements to include. For example, you may choose to create a cake inside a wedding-themed level. For a more abstract idea like “Glow” or “Modern” you should look at more abstract media like visual effects or motion graphics.

After you have ideas for specific elements, you should search for references based on them. Get as many references as possible; the more you have, the more detail ideas you can get and the more original your end result will be. Here I chose to search for wedding cakes on Google as I’ve already decided to use those in my level. If the reference images which show up feel too difficult to use, try adding “drawing” to your keyword, such as “wedding cake drawing”.

Finally, it’s time to actually reference; choose a specific detail or property from each reference image and use the skills from the last guide to remake that. You should now have successfully referenced an image. I strongly encourage you to combine multiple references and ideas when decorating, as it’ll help make your work more unique.

Example#

Here’s an example with an actual wedding cake, made by Sparktwee. At first, they attempted to make a wedding cake from memory without any references, which turned out quite unrefined and basic.

Afterwards, they got a reference for a wedding cake online. They noted the flowers and the shape of the cake, both of which would become details used later on.

One important thing about references is that you don’t need to copy them one-to-one. Note that the layers of cake aren’t separated here as they were in the reference image, and that the colors are completely different as well. I strongly encourage you to deviate from your references as necessary to suit your vision; those images were made with a different vision in mind anyways.

Past this point, it comes down to polishing. Sparktwee referenced the flower idea from the image as stated prior, and they also started adding other details of their own like the different frosting colors and the candles on the second layer.

The end result looks like this. Compared to the original cake made from memory, it looks significantly better.

Studies#

References are useful for making specific projects, but sometimes you’ll want to gain long-term skill instead of constantly doing Google searches for new things. This is where studies are useful; a study is like the referencing process, but the goal is to analyze a specific property or skill for yourself.

One of the most effective study techniques you can do as a beginner is to make copies of other levels and dissect them - look at what their creators use for their decoration and try to replicate it yourself. This will give you a plethora of techniques to employ as you create, far more than anyone can ever document or compile in one place. Studies also let you forgo references at times, as you’ll already have the muscle memory to easily make specific objects.

As you gain skill and advance through the grades, you’ll be asked to do studies which focus on concepts, not skills. For example, you’ll have to do studies of how light & color work with objects in the Grade 2 guides. Similarly, you’ll need to study movement and timing for the Animation unit later on. For now though, just focus on studying techniques to make shapes from objects.

2: Using Details

A detail is an individual feature or component of an object. You should know how to make these from the last section of this guide, but you may wish to create custom details of your own or combine details from different objects. When doing so, it’s important to organize your details properly and avoid an undesirable, messy outcome. You should know what types of details exist and why to use them in the first place.

Why Details?#

Details give context for what objects are. A laptop has a screen, a trackpad, and a keyboard, so those are some details of a laptop. Recall that without details like an object’s shape you’d struggle to identify them; that laptop could just be a folded piece of paper or something.

Knowing what an object is tells you how to use it, where it may have been, or just who’s meant to enjoy it. The laptop has buttons and a trackpad which you must use to operate it. Its color or any decals attached to it tell you something about the owner’s means of expressing themselves. The design of the laptop or additional details like keyboard lighting might signify the type of demographic who enjoys those details.

The laptop analogy also uncovers another crucial point about details: they must serve a purpose. It is common practice in the GD community to add details because everyone else uses them or to fill space and make your level seem more rate-worthy, but these are irrational and dangerous uses of details. It takes a lot of skill to use details solely to make things “look good” and actually succeed at that, and the skills for doing so aren’t ones you’ll learn until higher grades. Instead of getting ahead of yourself trying to make things “not empty”, first determine the purposes of your details before even placing them down; the categories below are a good place to start.

Functional#

Functional details are details which indicate an object’s function. The buttons on a laptop are one example; you push buttons to operate the laptop. Similarly, the engineering design of an object or text instructions on a manual are functional; you can decipher why each of those things exists.

In GD and other games, many of your functional details will be derived from gameplay. You need to make it clear that blocks and platforms should be touched, that spikes and hazards will kill you, and that orbs and other gameplay elements exist. These are the primary types of functional details in most levels; if you’re making a realistic environment, you will also need to include the functions of objects within it.

Here’s an image I took while playing Ghostrunner. This section has fans you should jump on, which have a distinct design and stand out from everything else in the screenshot. Similarly, the walls you should run on are a distinct orange which tells the player what the correct path is.

Themed/Narrative#

Narrative details serve to advance a theme by providing visual context. These are usually seen in levels with some sort of story or explicit message. As stated earlier, you may ask the laptop owner why they have a certain sticker on it and they could explain how it’s the mascot of their alma mater.

These are the least appreciated type of detail for one main reason. Narratives require media literacy to uncover and interpret, which is another layer of analysis that most players (especially GD players) will not undertake. The context for these details is usually internal to you as the creator, so it may make sense in your head but confuse others - and once again, that assumes they take the time to even do it in the first place. It is a good idea to attach your narrative details to an explicit signifier of the story or environment; for example, a king’s living quarters will have a larger physical scale than that of a peasant’s.

Here’s another screenshot from Ghostrunner. The main antagonist of the game is the Keymaster, an authoritarian despot who controls the “Tower” the game is set in. The graffiti on this wall indicates some resistance to her rule, with statements like “Down with the Slave-Master” and “Short live the queen!” clearly visible here.

Aesthetic#

Aesthetic details are created with the express purpose of making your visuals look good. Your ability to use these will improve in later grades as you learn more advanced skills, but I still mention them here as they are a type of detail - just one you can’t really use yet. With laptops, many companies create specific designs that don’t improve functionality but make them look interesting, like the rainbow backlights of gaming laptops.

Aesthetic details serve as the selling point of your decoration. Most people won’t think too deeply about the function or story behind your details, but they will think about what looks flashy and cool; if your detail is in a youtube thumbnail, that’s a good sign of an aesthetic detail. To this extent we can categorize aesthetic details as macro details which comprise the gist of your level’s environment, micro details which are most appreciated when dissecting specific details, static details which don’t move, and animated ones which do move and change color.

Different crowds will appreciate different types of aesthetic details; for example, people like level transitions with obvious, flashy details while others enjoy blocks with smaller, more nuanced detail. The types you emphasize in your levels will depend on your intended target audience. However, I suggest having the majority of your details serve a functional or narrative purpose first, then focus on aesthetic details later. Most of your aesthetic details can be discarded in a Low Detail Mode, while functional details will remain.

Compare these two screenshots, once again from Ghostrunner. The second one includes details like spotlights on the right and bloom on the light sources, which are absent from the first. These are aesthetic details; they don’t contribute to the story or serve a big gameplay function, but they look cool and that’s why they exist.

Simplifying#

A common assumption of beginner creators and the GD community is to assume that more detail is unequivocally better than less. This is not true. More details require you to have a stronger balance between what is and what isn’t important to your levels, and without enough skill you will fail to juggle everything. You cannot make up for this with planning; it is skill that impacts your ability to handle more details. As before, if you wish to disagree, try cramming lots of details into your deco and see how well you really fare.

One can make many arguments in favor of keeping your work intentionally simple. It makes things easier for people to understand, lowers the hardware requirement to play your levels, and helps keep your work recognizable (which is why every brand tries to simplify their logos nowadays). However, it is much easier to simply show you what I mean.

Take a look at these two screenshots.

I’m sure you think the second image looks better here, and that’s ultimately because the details on display are more impactful & have greater quality than the textures you can barely see in the first image. Even if you prefer the look of the first image, you should recognize that the more detailed textures barely contribute to that image’s appeal.

Ultimately quality matters more than quantity in art, so it is better to have a few details with a lot of effort in them than to have mass-produced, factory settings object spam. It is best to concentrate details in the most important objects, and leave the rest with less. There is a saying that you get 80% of something’s effectiveness with 20% of the work, and that absolutely holds true here.

3: Styles

Styles are one of the most popular talking points in the GD community. You may see other beginners talk about how they need a style to start creating, or feel like you need to find your style yourself.

Well, you don’t. Let me explain.

A style is the complete set of creative decisions you make in a level. You may choose to consciously do things like having realistic lighting or omitting lighting from your levels, but there are also implicit choices you make like what objects you use and the workflow you use as you create in the editor. Many commonly discussed styles refer to how individual creators make levels, such as Xender Game, Culuc, and Bli.

There are also general “genres” like “art” and “design”, which refer to the categories these creators can be put into. Genres lead to similar visual aesthetics from the levels which adhere to them. Granted, their names are misnomers; for example, it’s more accurate to call design “classic” as those levels normally use objects for their default purposes, and art “custom art” as those levels use objects for new reasons.

But why shouldn’t you care about style? There are several reasons. If you’re just learning techniques and objects to use in deco, you should not focus on finding a “style”. Your goal should be to learn the editor and gain experience first and foremost; everything else comes after that.

If you’re trying to form a style to make levels, you have things backwards. You can only form a style with experience, which mandates that you make levels to gain experience instead of trying to “find your style” without even being comfortable with what you make now. Furthermore, you likely lack all the knowledge you need to make informed creative decisions, such as the information on lighting, animation, and shape design you’ll learn at a higher level. If you lack all this knowledge, you’ll end up being dissatisfied with your decisions sooner or later anyways.

But overall, styles are arbitrary limitations. They’re just a visual thing which doesn’t have any bearing on your skill with the editor or your experience; at most they may affect your workflow, but that’ll be due to more fundamental things like detail usage anyways. You may see people reject useful advice because it wouldn’t fit their “style”, when it would unequivocally benefit their vision, which is a shame. Furthermore you may miss out on useful techniques in your levels just because you don’t think it fits “your style”. Ultimately, you should experiment with techniques and try to learn as much as possible regardless of arbitrary classifications like style, which have no tangible bearing on your standing as a creator.

Return To The Table of Contents here#

**Video: **https://youtu.be/3ofZI82lKQ8?si=a5bXL1ilq24c9C_N

Credits#

Created by @koma5