Tintin is an unreleased prototype based on the famous belgian cartoon and developed by our studio Appeal in 2002 for publisher Infogrames.

{youtube}VoioNH-mkMw|768|432|1|{/youtube}

How it all started

After the Outcast II debacle (see the related article here), we were offered a share buy-back option by our publisher (Infogrames) in exchange of a new pre-production contract around a Tintin game. As we had to keep our studio alive, we bought back the shares at a nominal price and got the contract started.

We had developed some nice technology for the Outcast II game and, although it was still far from being complete, we had enough to protoype a Tintin game.

The budget was tight and the timing was short, so we tried to reuse a number of ressources from the Outcast II prototype and build on top of that. The game was to be fully 3D exploration with some action scenes and mini-games.

In the end, Infogrames did not manage to sign a licence deal with Moulinsart (The company that holds the Tintin rights), and we finally got banckrupt the same year and closed the studio.

Galleries

Various screenshots from realtime PS2 captures

Character rendering and facial animation tests

Level design

My contribution

Besides the obvious art department management, I did a few specific assets for the game. Most of the environments were made up of 3d tiles with vertex-based lighting. Here are some examples.

Three stages (wireframe, textured, lit) of tile models for the gate of the Moulinsart castle:

Same principle for a fountain at the back of the castle: