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- Dev Update #8: What the Truck?
Kia ora hungry hungry gamers,
What do burgers and ice cream have in common? That’s right: it’s Frosty Games Fest! Specifically, Frosty Mini, which kicked off today, with Burger Bois featured in the Steam event.
To celebrate, we’re bringing you a bunch of exclusive never-before-seen concept work of our beloved Burger Truck.
Introducing ol’ reliable
When you win a prize, you generally tend to assume you’re getting something shiny, new, and exciting.
The truck Patty wins is only one of these three things. Though worn around the edges, this faithful burger-steed will be the secret ingredient to Patty & Fry’s attempt to take the world by storm. She may lack pizazz, but she makes up for it by oozing charm (and perhaps some kind of vehicle fluid).
They say “you get what you pay for”, which in Patty’s case, was nothing.
Designing the Truck
There were so many different directions we discussed for the truck design.
Burger shaped? No - too OTT after just designing Patty & Fry to look like their namesakes.
Caravan-conversion? Naw - that’s what Patty would have done if she’d started it herself, but this is acquired from someone else.
Kids-toy inspired? YES. [Cue heavy breathing from Sylvanian Families/Calico Critters-obsessed art director Jess]
Believe it or not, this was the first time our artist Jackal had ever designed a vehicle! Fortunately, they found exactly the advice they needed in the Etherington Brothers’ How to Think When You Draw books. (Highly recommend checking them out!)
Our initial sketches focused on exploring different cabin and body shapes to see what felt right, as well as exploring motifs like the dorsal fin, awnings, menu signs, and the crooked exhaust pipe..
There were features we loved from each of these! The honky tonk cabin at the bottom left was an immediate favourite, but it felt a touch detached from the rest of the body. From here Jackal explored making the body more asymmetrical, integrating it with the cabin, and exploring what kind of decorations it might have.
The burger sign and the rectangular tail flag were clear winners for us, so we combined them and began exploring colour. The initial green (top left below) caught our eye, but didn’t feel right with the Burger Bois logo, so we explored a number of options inspired by both classic VW Beetle colours, and fast food tropes.
Sometimes in art, you’ve gotta explore your options to see what you’re missing, and in the end, the answer was green all along! It turned out all it needed was bumping up the saturation, and giving contrast to the interior (bottom right).
On the road
Sucker that she is for cute tiny models, Jess realised we now had an opportunity on our hands. What if we could 3D print the truck and give it away as a lil gift for people at events!? (...and also keep one spare for her desk.)
After recruiting Connor from Toroa: Skycall (also part of Frosty Mini!) to model the truck for us, and Jess’ husband to do the printing, we ended up with this:
Turns out Jess isn’t the only one excited about silly lil minis. People like Ryan (left) were delighted by their new acquisitions - and we recently received photos from Vee (right) of her post-apocalyptic makeover version! 🤩It’s SO cool to see these trucks out in the wild.
‘Till our next visit
Would you want a mini Burger Bois truck? We’re thinking about doing a bulk order sometime, ‘cuz we’d love to see more of what people do with them! If you received one of our trucks last year, send us a photo - whether it’s in its original form, or had a makeover. We’d love to see them. 🙏
Until next time,
Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony