Cassie Boss, Die-Brarian | Psychonauts 2

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Die-Brarian is the boss form of Librarian Cassie, one of the archetypes inside Cassie O'Pia's mind, and the final boss of Cassie's Collection in Psychonauts 2. After Raz helps bring the other Cassies together (the Writer, the Teacher, and the Counterfeiter), the Librarian loses her patience and turns into a colossal paper-and-ink creature to prove that she is the one true Cassie. The whole level is made like paper, and so is she.

The fight has three phases. She throws censors and other enemies at Raz, opens Cassie's book, Mindswarm, to unleash swarms of letters, and brings books crashing down on the arena. Raz uses telekinesis to fling objects back at her, and each time she is stunned, one of Cassie's other selves goes inside her. She has a very long tongue rolled up in her mouth, and when you beat her, it rolls up and other paper versions of Cassie come out. In The Art of Psychonauts 2, Tim Schafer describes the early concept as looking like a big lady and nothing else, like a giant Cassie in a paper dress.

MY PROCESS

She was one of the most complicated boss models I worked on. Her design went through many redesigns, and several of our concept artists took a turn at her. She was fully animated, then went through another redesign and a new model. The final concept was by Levi Ryken, and I made the final model. It took a very long time, with multiple people working on her, and so much progress went into her.

Her lower body is a swarm of ink. I built it from simple geometry shapes, and I went back and forth with VFX artist Dan Bruington of FXVille on how to lay them out. The UVs were very important to how the ink moves and how it supports the VFX.

I also designed her amulet and her book-shaped collar. I made several versions of the collar, including a closed one that used a blend shape. Her outfit has several sets of eyes that come out in each phase of the fight, and her textures change with them.

I created about 55 texture maps for her. Several of them are for every integration stage of the fight, as you beat the boss, and many are textures that helped create the ink and the effects running through the boss and the level.

Feel free to explore the game model: use the Model Inspector (bottom right) to view the wireframe and the textures.