[2023] Stellaris Dev Diary #287 - The Art of MSI

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

by Lloyd Drake-Brockman

Hi, I’m Lloyd Drake-Brockman, Concept artist on the Stellaris team. I worked extensively on the First Contact DLC and I'm excited to share some of the artistic journey that this pack took me and the art team on. Specifically we're going to be discussing the development of MSI, a new, non-player faction with a really interesting visual style. I was involved in designing most of their visual elements. I think we have ended up with a great set of designs that are quite unique in the world of Stellaris. I'm going to take you through some of my design journey working on various elements of this faction.



MSI Flagship​ The flagship was the first element of MSI that I worked on. It was a complicated design challenge and it informed the aesthetics for MSI as a whole. Not only were there quite a few gameplay requirements which restricted the design, it has a unique visual language which gives the player insight into the nature of MSI themselves.

‘Corporate Vaporwave’ was the brief for the ship’s general aesthetic. A combination of bright neon, classical architecture and modern corporate sensibilities.


MSI flagship early sketches by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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The first thing I had to nail down was the overall shape. It had to be imposing, beautiful, mysterious and ruthless. You can see here the sketch on the bottom right pretty much became the design of the finished ship, when viewed from above.


MSI flagship chosen sketch by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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From the top-view I worked out a side view of the design. I was very keen for the ship to involve some sort of central rotating element. This ship would move around quite unlike most of the other ships in the game and I wanted to show that it had some sort of unique drive system.


MSI flagship design development sketches over 3D by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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Happy with these sketches, I mocked the design up in 3D. Here you can see three stages of refining the shapes of the ship. Then it's time to take the concept to final.


MSI flagship final concept by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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Here's the final version of the concept art for the ship. The purpose of this image is to give the 3D and animation teams all the information they need to build the ship in-game. The concept was mostly built in 3D with certain elements such as the gold detailing around the edge of the marble panels added afterwards in Photoshop.


MSI Flagship In-game, modeled and textured by Tim Wiberg​

MSI Uniform​ After the ship the next thing I looked at was the MSI portrait. It was decided early on that we were going to use an existing species from the game and dress them in a unique outfit, therefore the only thing I had to concept was the uniform.


Initial sketches for the MSI uniform by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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I began with some sketches. I chose to sketch the outfits symmetrically, even though all the portraits in Stellaris are angled to the right. This helps me sketch faster and I have to think less about the process of drawing. I knew I wanted some kind of mysterious head-covering but I did not know whether to go down a more mystical, or corporate route. In the end the design for the robes was taken largely from a different piece of art, and the helmet that I sketched above was added to make up the whole uniform.


MSI uniform approved sketch by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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Once this sketch was approved I continued to refine it. We also required male and female variants, so I added another version of the outfit.


MSI uniform final concept by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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This is the point where I handed these concepts over to another artist who finalized the painting and prepared the asset for animation. A lot of work goes into each of these portraits, to bring them to a high standard and ensure that they work properly with all the game’s systems. I couldn't be happier with the final result.


MSI uniform finished portrait by Alec Beals​

MSI Diplomacy Room​ These characters needed somewhere to take their video calls of course, and it was also my job to work on the MSI Diplomacy room. This asset I worked on all the way to its final in-game state.

I imagined that the MSI representatives would be calling from onboard their flagship, but I didn't want to make it too specific in case they were somewhere else. Either way, given the design of their ship and outfit, an over-the-top opulent hall seemed to be fitting. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted the scene to look like. So my initial sketch was extremely rough. Just enough for me to see that it was going to work.


MSI diplomacy room initial sketch by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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From here I went over to 3D and built the whole scene, paying attention to the materials and lights to give the space the feeling of grandeur I was after. I also made sure that the pillars at the top of the room disappeared off the top of the image towards a distant ceiling, making the space feel larger than what you can see. The busts that flank the hall are not playable species - other than the human of course - but they do appear in other places in first contact, which I felt was a fun way to tie some of the elements of the story pack together.


3D development of the MSI diplomacy room by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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From this point it was back over to Photoshop for the final cleanup. As you can see most of the bright reflections on the walls and floor have been painted out. Although they were accurate they ended up being too distracting in the final image.


MSI diplomacy room final image by Lloyd Drake-Brockman​

Payback Event Image​ This is the last piece of art I did that involved MSI. It was great fun to be able to show the ship I had concepted in a scene. Some of you might recognise this as being similar to a shot from the recently released teaser trailer for First Contact. I'm proud to say that this image came first!

The brief I was given for this image asked that we see the MSI Flagship looming over a city in space. There was some confusion as to whether the ship should be out in space or lower over the city. Here are some of my first stabs at the composition.


Payback event image thumbnails by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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We settled on a variant of (A), as we could show the ship in space, but from the perspective of someone on the planet.

For this image I knew I was going to need some buildings. To make them I chose to use a new technique of projecting satellite image textures from real-world-Earth cities onto simple geometry, resulting in some pretty convincing looking buildings


Creating buildings by projecting satellite images onto geometry in 3D by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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As I already had a 3D Model of the MSI flagship, I rendered it with matching lighting and combined all the elements in Photoshop.


3D renders used to build up the final image by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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I had fun creating some alien script to add some life to the signs on the buildings. Most of this can't be seen in the in-game image as it's too small. But I feel it's still necessary to put in so that the final image has the right “feel” to it when it's scaled down. I was very happy with how the ship looks in the finished piece. All the dark areas are obscured by the blue of the sky, just like how you can't see the dark side of the moon when you look at it during the day.


Payback event image by Lloyd Drake-Brockman
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Well, that's all the shiny things I have to show today! Thanks for reading, and if you play First Contact I hope you enjoy seeing some of my art in there!