Chapter 1 – Scale readability and occlusion planning

Chapter 1: Scale Readability & Occlusion Planning

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Scale Readability & Occlusion Planning for Creature Concept Artists

Scale readability is the craft of making a creature “read” correctly—size, threat level, role, mood, and gameplay intent—no matter where the camera is or what the player is doing. Occlusion planning is the companion craft: predicting what parts of the creature will be hidden by the environment, by the creature’s own body, by other characters, by VFX, by UI, or by the camera itself—and designing silhouettes, value grouping, and feature placement so the creature still communicates. Together, these skills keep your designs legible in first‑person (FPP), third‑person (TPP), isometric (iso), VR/AR, and marketing shots, while also making downstream teams’ lives easier.

This topic matters equally during early concepting and late production. In concepting, you’re choosing a scale language and feature hierarchy that can survive real cameras and real gameplay. In production, you’re refining those choices into consistent packages—orthos, callouts, paintovers, and scale charts—so modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, UI, audio, lighting, and level design can preserve the creature’s readability under constraints.

Readability is a Contract With the Camera

Every game camera is a set of constraints: field of view, distance, motion, lens distortion, depth of field, screen shake, motion blur, and the player’s attention budget. A creature that reads beautifully in a full‑body key art shot can become noise in a fast, over‑the‑shoulder chase. Conversely, a creature designed for a tight first‑person encounter may look oddly “empty” in marketing if it lacks mid‑to‑far detail structure.

Treat readability like a contract you sign with the camera. Your job is not only to design the creature, but to design how it will be perceived. That means building a hierarchy of shapes and signals that survives blur, compression, lighting changes, and partial occlusion.

A useful mental model is to design the creature in layers of information:

Macro read (0.5–2 seconds): silhouette, stance, mass, locomotion type, role (predator, support, tank, pet), and primary threat/friend cue.
Meso read (2–6 seconds): major anatomy landmarks (head type, limb count, tail shape), weak points, attack tells, armor vs flesh distribution, and material families.
Micro read (6+ seconds / close‑ups): surface detail, patterning, scars, pores, micro‑mechanics, and story texture.

Occlusion planning is ensuring that the macro and meso reads still survive when the micro read disappears.

Start With Distance Budgets: What Can the Player Actually See?

Before you design “more detail,” define what the camera will allow. A creature can be present in many distance regimes—encounter range, traversal range, background range, and cinematic range. The same model may need to read in all of them, or different LODs may be used. Either way, the concept should anticipate those regimes.

A practical way to think about it is to create a distance budget in your head:

Close range: the player can read facial planes, eye direction, mouth mechanics, breath, and tactile surface cues.
Mid range: the player reads head silhouette, limb rhythm, armor plates, color blocks, and large patterns.
Far range: the player reads only silhouette, movement cadence, and a few high‑contrast identifiers.

If you design a creature whose identity relies on tiny horns, intricate filigree, or subtle color shifts, it will vanish at mid and far range unless you promote that identity into bigger, simpler forms.

For production artists, this becomes a deliverable: a page that shows the creature at multiple distances with annotations indicating what the viewer should read at each size. For concepting artists, it’s a decision tool: it tells you which ideas are “real” and which are only close‑up fantasies.

Scale Readability: Communicating Size Without a Ruler

Players rarely get a measuring tape. They infer scale through comparison, motion, and environmental interaction. Your designs should help that inference.

1) Mass distribution and support logic. Big creatures need visible support: thick limb columns, wide feet, lower center of gravity, heavy shoulder girdles, or auxiliary limbs. If the creature is huge but stands on delicate legs, it reads as weightless unless the world and animation strongly compensate. In concept, exaggerate the load‑bearing logic. In production, annotate which bones and joints carry weight so rig and anim can reinforce it.

2) Contact points and deformation. Scale is felt when the creature interacts with the ground: footprints, crushed foliage, displaced water, flexing surfaces. Concept artists can suggest this with callouts (mud suction, dust puffs, snow compression) and by designing feet that “print” clearly. Production artists can provide contact‑sheet references: foot sole shapes, claw spread limits, and how the creature plants in different gaits.

3) Environmental borrowing. A creature feels larger when it borrows the environment as a prop: ducking under doorways, brushing ceilings, pushing trees aside, dragging chains, clipping signage. Concepting can establish signature interactions (tail knocks over streetlights; wing tips scrape canyon walls). Production can specify “clearance rules” to level design.

4) Perspective and lens expectation. Camera lenses distort size perception. Wide FOV makes near objects feel huge; long lenses compress depth. Don’t fight the camera—design features that survive it. In FPP with wide FOV, close‑range head and hands dominate. In iso with a distant camera, top planes and readable dorsal shapes matter more.

Occlusion Planning: Designing for What Will Be Hidden

Occlusion is not an accident; it is predictable. In gameplay, creatures are often partially hidden by:

Terrain (rocks, grass, walls)
Other characters (crowds, party members)
Their own bodies (arms crossing torsos, wings folding)
VFX (dust, fog, particles, screen splatter)
Lighting (backlight silhouettes, dark interiors)
UI (health bars, reticles, damage numbers)

Occlusion planning means choosing “anchor features” that remain visible even when half the body disappears.

Anchor Features and Readable Landmarks

An anchor feature is a large, simple, high‑recognition shape or motion cue that persists across angles and occlusion. Examples include a tall dorsal fin, a hammerhead‑like crest, a glowing chest core, a distinctive tail silhouette, or a unique gait rhythm.

When choosing anchors, prioritize:

Height above common cover (peeks over grass or debris)
Edge clarity (reads as a shape even in low contrast)
Motion signature (recognizable through animation cadence)
Angle resilience (still identifiable from front, side, and top)

A common mistake is placing identity in parts that are frequently hidden: lower legs, small facial ornaments, subtle patterns on the belly, or thin tail tips. If those are key to the creature’s brand, promote them upward, outward, or into motion.

Self‑Occlusion: Your Creature Hides Itself

Creatures self‑occlude constantly—especially quadrupeds with large shoulders, winged creatures with folded wings, and bulky armor designs. Plan around this by:

Ensuring the head silhouette stays distinct even when the neck is tucked.
Keeping “face readability” independent of small eye detail (brow ridge shape, muzzle silhouette, jaw angle).
Designing shoulder and hip masses so they don’t erase the torso’s identity.
Making wing folds create a secondary silhouette that still looks like the creature.

In production, provide “fold states” and “combat states” in your concept package. Show what changes when the creature is idle vs sprinting vs attacking. These state drawings become guardrails for rigging and animation.

Camera Modes: What Changes Across FPP, TPP, Iso, VR/AR, and Marketing

First‑Person (FPP)

In FPP, the creature is often encountered at close range, partially cropped, and viewed under high motion. The player’s attention is split between aiming, navigation, and survival.

Design implications:

Cropped readability: assume you’ll see head + shoulders, hands, mouth, or a flank sliding past the camera. Make those regions carry identity.
Telegraph surfaces: attacks should have readable wind‑ups that are visible in partial views (shoulder roll, spine coil, jaw spread).
Near‑field scale cues: texture and microdetail matter more here, but they must support—not replace—the macro read.

For concepting, include close‑range “camera crop” thumbnails: what the creature looks like when it fills 60–90% of the screen. For production, annotate where weak points and danger zones appear in this crop.

Third‑Person (TPP)

TPP cameras are typically behind and above the player, with the creature competing for attention against the player character and UI. Occlusion is frequent because the environment sits between the camera and the action.

Design implications:

Over‑the‑shoulder silhouette: the creature must read when framed beside the player character. Avoid similar silhouettes if the creature is a companion or friendly NPC.
Verticality: features that rise above waist‑high cover read best.
Back and top planes: many TPP views favor dorsal readability—spines, back plates, shoulder shapes.

For production, include a “TPP readability page” that shows top‑down and rear views, plus silhouettes at typical encounter distances.

Isometric / Top‑Down (Iso)

Iso cameras compress depth and often rely on clean value grouping. Characters are small on screen, and the player reads motion and color blocks more than anatomy.

Design implications:

Dorsal iconography: the creature’s top silhouette and back patterning are effectively its “face.”
Simplified limb readability: too many thin limbs become visual noise; group limbs into clear rhythms.
Color block hierarchy: use a small number of bold material/value regions.

For concepting, do iso‑scale silhouette tests and top‑plane paintovers. For production, specify how patterning should be simplified for far LODs.

VR / AR

VR and AR change everything because the player can look anywhere, depth is real, and scale is visceral. A creature that looks “cool” can become nauseating, overwhelming, or too physically close.

Design implications:

Comfort and personal space: design encounter distances and creature behaviors that respect comfort thresholds (especially for large or fast creatures).
Real‑world scale honesty: the creature’s size must feel plausible; fake scale breaks immersion.
360° readability: the creature needs identity from all angles, including above and behind.
Motion sickness risk: avoid designs that demand constant rapid head tracking (e.g., tiny fast flyers swarming at eye level) unless the game is explicitly built for it.

For production, work closely with design and UX. Provide “comfort variants” or optional settings (reduced swarm density, softened proximity behaviors, toned‑down screen effects).

Marketing / Key Art / Trailers

Marketing shots often reintroduce long lenses, dramatic lighting, and heroic staging. The creature must hold up under scrutiny and represent the brand.

Design implications:

Hero silhouette: a single iconic pose must read instantly.
Detail believability: micro detail matters here, but it must remain consistent with what appears in game.
Story texture: scars, wear, and material storytelling become high‑value.

The trap is designing “marketing‑only” complexity that doesn’t exist in gameplay. The goal is continuity: marketing should amplify the same anchor features and scale language the player experiences.

Composition Thinking: Designing With Occlusion in Mind

A creature’s readability can be protected by designing the body like a composition.

1) Clear negative space. Create intentional gaps—between legs, under wings, between horns—so the silhouette doesn’t become a blob when backlit or compressed. Negative space is especially important for iso and far‑range reads.

2) Big‑medium‑small shape rhythm. Give the creature a few dominant masses, a handful of supporting masses, and restrained micro shapes. Too many medium shapes create noise. If everything is “interesting,” nothing is readable.

3) Value grouping as armor. Even if the final asset is fully shaded, you can concept a value plan: which regions are meant to be light, mid, dark. Strong value grouping prevents the creature from disappearing in cluttered environments.

4) Edge control. Hard edges and crisp silhouettes read; soft edges blend. Plan where the creature should have crisp boundaries (head crest, claws, armor plates) and where it can be softer (fur fringes, membranes) without losing identity.

Occlusion Hotspots: Plan for the Most Common “Losses”

Certain parts of creatures are disproportionately likely to be hidden.

Feet and lower legs are often lost to grass, debris, UI, or camera cropping.
Tail tips are frequently off screen.
Small facial details vanish under motion blur and lighting.
Thin appendages get eaten by compression and distance.

That doesn’t mean you can’t design those features—it means they can’t be the only identifiers. If the creature’s “cool thing” is a tail tip lantern, also design a larger tail silhouette and a motion cue (tail sway pattern) that signals the same identity.

Threat, Friendliness, and Role Must Survive Occlusion

Many games rely on rapid threat assessment: “Is that dangerous? Is it mine? What role is it playing?” Scale readability is part of that, but so is category clarity.

Threat reads often live in posture (forward lean, low head, predatory stalk), in weapon placement (claws forward, mouth wide, stingers raised), and in sound/VFX cues.
Friendliness reads can live in rounded shapes, visible eyes, open posture, slower motion cadence, and non‑weapon silhouettes.
Role reads (tank, support, scout) should be embedded in mass distribution and locomotion.

Occlusion planning means these reads must survive when only the upper torso is visible, or when the creature is backlit, or when the player sees it for half a second.

Practical Tests You Can Run While Designing

You do not need engine access to test readability early. You can build small habits that mimic real conditions.

1) Thumbnail distance test. Shrink your canvas until the creature is the size it would be on screen at mid range. If the identity collapses, simplify.

2) Silhouette pass. Fill the creature with a flat tone. If it becomes generic, strengthen anchors.

3) Occlusion mask test. Cover 30–60% of the creature with a rough shape (simulate a wall or foliage) and see if it still reads.

4) Motion blur test. Smear the silhouette slightly (or squint). Does the creature still look like itself?

5) Angle set test. Draw front, side, three‑quarter, and top silhouettes. If the creature only reads from one angle, it will fail in gameplay.

Production artists can formalize these into a “readability QA sheet” included in the final package. Concepting artists can use them as a quick gate before investing in rendering.

Collaboration: Making Readability a Shared Goal

Readability is not owned by concept alone. It is co‑authored by animation cadence, rig deformation, VFX contrast, lighting, level clutter, and UI placement.

Partnering With Design

Designers define the creature’s gameplay role, attack ranges, and telegraphs. You can help by mapping those needs onto anatomy:

Where does the wind‑up originate—shoulder, spine, jaw, tail?
What part of the body should be visible when the tell starts?
Which silhouette changes are readable at far range?

When you propose a telegraph, propose the camera context too: “This tell reads even when the player is behind cover because the dorsal spines flare upward.”

Partnering With Animation and Rigging

Animation creates motion signatures; rigging determines what can move without breaking. Occlusion planning helps both teams:

Identify which joints must achieve large silhouette changes.
Provide limits so the creature doesn’t self‑occlude into a blob.
Plan folded/unfolded states, posture extremes, and spine compression.

A powerful production deliverable is a set of “silhouette keys”: a few frames of major actions (idle, alert, attack wind‑up, attack peak, recovery) drawn as silhouettes. These help animation preserve readability and help rigging prioritize deformation quality in the right places.

Partnering With VFX and Lighting

VFX can rescue readability or destroy it. Dust, fog, and particles add drama but can drown shapes. Similarly, lighting can create crisp silhouettes or flatten everything.

As a concept artist, you can suggest:

Which regions should remain high contrast.
Where emissives are acceptable (and how bright they should be).
How effects should frame the silhouette rather than fill it.

Production artists should coordinate on “contrast budgets” so the creature doesn’t compete with UI and environment.

Partnering With UI and Audio

UI can cover the creature; audio can compensate when visuals fail. Discuss common overlaps (health bars, reticles) and ensure anchor features aren’t hidden behind UI placement.

Audio motifs can also carry identity at far range—footfall weight, wing whoosh, rattle, or vocal cadence. A creature that becomes visually small can still feel large through sound design, as long as the motion and scale cues align.

Special Case: Crowds, Swarms, and Multi‑Unit Occlusion

When many creatures appear together, occlusion becomes systemic: units block each other, silhouettes overlap, and the player reads the group more than the individual.

Design strategies:

Give the group a collective silhouette (shared head shape, shared motion rhythm).
Reserve strong anchors for leaders or elites.
Use simple, bold identifiers (color blocks, dorsal shapes) rather than fine detail.
Plan “layering” so units don’t visually merge—clear negative spaces and consistent limb rhythm help.

In production, supply scale charts that show units side‑by‑side, and specify which features are allowed to vary without breaking recognition.

Special Case: Foliage, Grass, and Terrain Clutter

Nature is one of the most aggressive occluders. Tall grass erases feet; tree trunks slice bodies; rocky silhouettes compete.

Design around this by:

Raising key identifiers above knee height.
Making the upper silhouette unique and crisp.
Using color/value grouping that separates from common background palettes.

If the creature lives in a specific biome, test it against that biome’s typical colors and values. A pale desert creature may vanish against sand; a dark forest creature may become a hole. Your creature can still be biome‑appropriate, but you may need accents—edge highlights, emissives, or contrasting plates—to maintain readability.

Production Packaging: Turning Readability Into Documents Downstream Teams Love

For production-side concept artists, scale readability and occlusion planning should appear explicitly in your handoff.

Include:

Scale sheet: creature next to player, common NPCs, and key environment props.
Distance thumbnails: close/mid/far reads with notes on intended readability.
Silhouette keys: major action beats as silhouettes.
Anchor map: a diagram labeling which features are non‑negotiable for recognition.
Occlusion warnings: “Lower legs often occluded—do not place critical ID only here.”
Fold/state sheet: idle/combat/sprint/folded wings/raised crest.

These documents prevent readability from being lost in translation.

Concepting Phase: Choosing the Right Complexity

In early exploration, you will be tempted to chase novelty through detail. Scale readability asks you to chase novelty through structure.

If you can express the creature’s identity with:

a silhouette that reads in two seconds,
a motion signature that feels unique,
and one or two anchor features that survive occlusion,

then you earn the right to add microdetail later.

A helpful rule is: if the creature doesn’t read in silhouette at the intended gameplay distance, it isn’t finished—it’s only decorated.

Closing: Design the Creature and Its Visibility

Creature concept art isn’t only anatomy and aesthetics. It’s perception design. You are designing how a creature will survive the harshest conditions: small on screen, partially hidden, backlit, blurred, and competing with UI and chaos.

When you practice scale readability and occlusion planning, you protect the player’s understanding and the game’s pacing. You also protect your own design intent through production, because you give downstream teams clear anchor features, state rules, and visibility priorities.

If you do it well, your creature becomes recognizable in a single glance—whether it’s towering over a canyon in a trailer, stalking past the player’s shoulder in TPP, looming into a wide‑FOV FPP encounter, gliding across an iso battlefield, or standing at human distance in VR. The creature doesn’t just exist in the world—it communicates in it.