Gisu, Psychonauts 2 Intern

Gisu, one of the interns in Psychonauts 2, uses her psychic power to ride her psychic skateboard. Her design and final model went through several variations and edits along the way.

Gisu was inspired by Afghan skateboarder girls, a fusion of Afghan and Iranian culture. She is dear to me because Tim Schafer himself asked me to come up with her name, and asked for more references so her design would be more accurate to reality. Gisu is also a Persian name that means long, flowing hair.

She has a fairly complex outfit system. We built several outfits and variations, including her hood on or off, and her hair with or without it. Her hood was made separately as a different outfit, and when it was down you could see her ponytail. This post shows both the hood-up and the hood-down versions. In the hood-down version, I deleted her hood and scarf so you can see her outfit underneath better.

The rig was built using our internal tool, with this specific rig made by Adam Kelsey, our rigging artist on the project.

Her PSI balls were simple sphere geometry, and their look was created by visual effects in the game. In the hood-down version they aren't included, and I stood her skateboard upright beside her so you can see it.

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