“Harold Halibut” has taken years to complete—using real materials, everything has been lovingly crafted, molded, welded, woodworked, sewn and painted by hand, and the exceptional detail is apparent in every floorboard and face. “The beginning of the project very much revolved around an enthusiasm for world-building and fantasizing together about what this place might be, and what the story could be that we tell there,” art director Ole Tillmann says. “There’s something about having paint strokes and fingerprints in there that one connects to.” Every physical element was then 3D scanned to be animated digitally to achieve specific motion and lighting.
To fill a city-sized spaceship and the alien planet beyond, an ensemble cast and many, many props are needed. To save time, the team could’ve borrowed furniture from a dollhouse, or nicked some bits from a miniature train set. “That logical step didn’t even cross our minds,” Tillmann says. They were having too much fun experimenting with tools and materials in the workshop. Instead of sourcing an existing tile to cut to size, for example, Fabian Preuschoff (original team member and set designer among other things) made a terrazzo floor from scratch. Costume designer Holle Schlickmann joined the team to design and sew all the clothing from finger-achingly tiny patterns. “We had a lot of fun building things,” Tillmann says. “I think enjoyment is surprisingly an often overlooked factor for why we made a game this way.”