Idle Siege has a new commander to lead your soldiers to victory—Ana, a fierce one-eyed warrior and her menacing wolf, Limp! But she’s no ordinary hero. She was created by one of our Gamelofters as part of our internal diversity art contest!
Gameloft hosted the We Could Be Heroes art contest in 2021 to give all our Gamelofters an opportunity to get in touch with their creative side and think about diversity and inclusion in games. The goal was to create their dream inclusive character for the chance to be featured in one of our games!
The winning design was created by Florin Pop, our studio device manager at Gameloft Cluj and a self-taught artist. He joined us in 2016 as a QA tester while doing a masters in media communications but eventually dropped out to focus on his art. Florin is particularly drawn to concept art and character design, and he immediately envisioned a strong, female character when the contest was announced.
Creating Ana and Limp
According to Florin, Ana is “a skilled fighter and archer who lives by her wits.” She’s courageous above all else, and the scar on her face is a testament to that fact—she received it while trying to protect a group of wolf pups, which included Limp.
The first thing Florin did when creating Ana was to come up with her backstory. With this in mind, he then drew her portrait to visualize her personality and ironed out her features until they conveyed the emotions he wanted them to. After that, Florin brainstormed different outfits and poses before finally putting everything together and making small changes here and there along the way.
With Ana, Florin wanted to show that “characters don't have to be perfect from a visual point of view in order to be likeable and relatable.” He said, “I understand that women have it harder when it comes to being judged by looks, which brings me to another statement I wanted to make with my drawing—there’s always more to a person than meets the eye, and you should never judge a person by something they can’t control. I felt that making her scar evident by having the right part of her head shaved shows that she doesn't see it as something to be ashamed of or that needs to be hidden.”
From art contest to Idle Siege
With her battle-hardened look and hero-like qualities, we thought she would make a perfect commander in Idle Siege! Gameloft Kharkiv’s idle strategy game puts you into the role of siege overseer in a colorful, medieval-inspired world. Build military installations, upgrade your army with troops inspired by real-life soldiers, and find the best strategies and military formations to become the ultimate conqueror!
There are currently 25 commanders to choose from to lead your armies, six of which are women, and the game team were delighted to add Ana and Limp to the roster. They prepared a model and, once satisfied with the design, animated it before implementing it into the game. Then they created her game mechanics, sounds, and visual effects.
The team said the biggest challenge but also the most enjoyable part of this entire process was adapting her design for the game. They did their best to remain true to the original concept while keeping the design consistent with Idle Siege’s low-poly art style.
Ana, riding astride Limp, is an ice element and agility class commander in Idle Siege. On your command, she will launch waves of ice arrows with her ultimate ability, Icicles, which deals an incredible amount of damage and freezes foes. Nothing will be able to stand in the way of this dangerous duo!
The power of representation
For Florin, seeing Ana and Limp come alive in a game is a dream come true. He’s thankful for the opportunity and sees the value of having contests like We Could Be Heroes. “Diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry is an important aspect of the creative process because people from different backgrounds and walks of life bring new ideas to the table,” he said.
Recruit Ana and Limp today in Idle Siege’s latest update, which also features a new lava forge biome, units, and another commander: the sea adventurer Nautico!
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