Dispatch's character and concept artist was picked up on ArtStation 'as a last resort', a temporary solution 'to get us through the pitch phase', before defining the entire game's artstyle
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As far as Telltale-likes go, Dispatch is one of the prettiest. Lovely animation, some great character designs, and a strong visual artstyle. It might surprise you to find out, then, that the main character and concept artist for Dispatch, Lap Pun Cheung, was picked up on ArtStation as a last resort to get developer AdHoc Studio through the pitching phase.
That's per a Dispatch panel at this year's GDC, attended by PC Gamer's own Christopher Livingston. "At the very start of things, we needed some good looking art to play in the pitch deck," explains co-founder Dennis Lenart.
"But," continues Nick Herman, "We had no artist in-house, and as we went out to raise money for a game (that we only had the script for) we needed some help. We started with a shotgun approach, working with a bunch of talented artists to help us find a style that felt right."
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This process of discovery led to a realisation on behalf of the studio, Herman says: "What we were after was threading a very tight needle between comedy and drama." Shopping around, however, both devs realised they weren't striking that balance in time for pitching season.
"Some styles lended themselves really well to the comedy," says Lenart, "but we had a hard time seeing how the dramatic beats would land, while other approaches explored a more serious and mature tone, which felt right for parts of the story, but didn't really capture everything we were going for."
So what's an indie developer in 2022 to do? "So as a last resort, we did what every artistically challenged indie developer did," says Herman. "We went to ArtStation."
For context, ArtStation's a station, as you might imagine, for artists. It's been a little skewiff since the advent of AI made looking for art online horrible and annoying ("I don't know if anyone's goin' there anymore," Herman says in an aside) but you can think of it as a slightly more professionally-angled DeviantArt.
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The team "thought [it] would be a temporary solution to get us through the pitch phase. But our co-founder, [Pierre Shorette], found this artist Lap Pun Cheung, who was doing some cool stuff."
Lenart chimes in: "We thought he might be able to do some quick and dirty concepts for a few characters we've been kicking around. And all these are the actual first things he drew," before showing a concept for the game's most-shared promotional image: Robert Robertson III sharing a quiet moment at a urinal between Phenomaman and Royd.
I'm reminded of how Clair Obscur, another gorgeous looking game, found several of its most important creatives on Reddit and Soundcloud. Honestly, I'm half expecting the next great videogame to come from a visionary picked up on Bumble—still, it's great that the AdHoc team found Cheung, because they set AdHoc on the right foot to one of the most successful games of the year.
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.
