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Artist's commentary
Otus from Owlboy Expression Studies 1
This is a set of fan art of Otus from Owlboy. Owlboy is a 2016 indie action platform action video game. The game was one of the early indie games, notable for its long development cycle (almost 10 years). It was widely covered by the gaming media when it was released.
Owlboy used a silent protagonist approach, which means the player character does not speak during a conversation with NPCs. The player can then imagine whatever they actually want to say. It is supposed to enhance the player’s sense of substitution. This approach was used in games like the Dragon Quest franchise and the Chrono Trigger franchise. Owlboy took this idea a step further by making the protagonist Otus literally a mute. I think this was an experimental decision on the writing part.
Because Otus really can’t talk, every NPCs in the game, and even the player of the game, must guess what Otus is trying to convey from his facial and body expressions. Otus, therefore, has a lot of vivid in-game expressions and gestures. At the same time, the game has a serious, or even depressive tone to its narrative, so Otus’s pixel arts were less cartoonish and more realistic.
At the time I was inexperienced in drawing different expressions. I thought it would be helpful to study Otus’s pixel arts by converting them into normal arts, so I drew this set of pictures.