Open House Week

Tomorrow we plan on showing our progress to a large group of people at our program's open house event. In order to help spread publicity, my team created several posters to garner interest in our game. I created several concepts and colored one for print.

We also worked on recreating the tiles for both floor and walls. We went with a more generic stone visual as we felt we needed a more standard and comfortable level appearance to introduce the game to new players.

Apologies for the upsidedownness

Into 3d

Our eventual plan for the sprites in the game is first to have 2d renders of a 3d model for most facing directions. This may even be the final outcome if we can't get 3d models implemented in time. As a result I've been working on modeling one of the characters to get proportions and camera angles ready for when we make the move to full 3D characters.

A Colorful Cast of Characters

My arty compatriot has begun to instruct me in the way's of Adobe Illustrator. This has been helping me immensely in the clear appearance of my characters. These characters will be the final draft before making the move to spritehood.

Now in Color

While I have nothing tangible of my own to show as my work is currently being heavily refined for our next meeting. I have gotten the first fully colored and refined sprite from my arty compatriot. This will be very helpful in the creation of our initial style guide draft.

This is the colored and refined version of last week's Psychic Princess Concept 1

Concept 1: One of the interests we heard young females have is in witches. This is my first attempt at creating on in the new on-the-ball appearance.

Concept 2: It was difficult to find a fantasy creature with a more feminine appeal outside of elves, so I decided to add an anthropomorphized cat named "Fee." Again this is just aiming for diversifying our roster and picking what we like most.

Concept 3: A rancher by the name of Rita, I decided to go with a more masculine appearance for this character. One of our original goals was to create appearances for our characters that don't generally appear in video games.

Concept 4: Raggidy Heidi is a Rag Doll. Yep.

On the Ball Character Refinement

Last week I decided that our art style should proceed in the direction of the "on-the-ball" characters. I liked the expression that increased head-sizes offered, as well as the idea of having arms and legs. I also though that the idea of each character having spheres unique to their character would also add to their visual appeal.

While I have assigned most of my team to working on stage elements. Myself and one other member continue refining the appearance of the characters, with myself providing designs, and my arty compatriot providing the color and shading.

Concept 1: This is a Psychic Princess variant modeled after a more fairgrounds appearance in mind.

Variant 2: This is a version of psychic princess with more of a far-eastern flair to it. She is far less excited to be on this blog.

Character Concepts Round Three

We continue our attempt to discover an appealing body-type for our rolli-people. I call them this because the idea of them all being princesses has recently been called into question. My personal belief is that the appeal of a princess is that of a person who lives a life of luxury without necessarily needing to do anything. Not only is this not the greatest of role models, but it is also not the most exciting idea for a protagonist.

Another concern that has arisen has been the feasibility of rolling for our characters. A few members of our group worried that animating a character into a rolling position would use up an unnecessary amount of time and effort. As a result I drew up two new body types that would have a very easy time rolling.

Concept 1-4: These characters are all variants on the Psychic Princess character. With the exception of the top right variant, they would all roll simply along the sides of their bodies.

Concept 2: This is another concept for the characters where the rolling is all done on a sphere. This allows for more realistic character proportions, as well as pose-able arms and legs.

Princess Character Concepts Round 2

We are still working on the concepts for the various princesses. This week our focus was on radically different designs in both face, body, and color.

 My plan was, with the exception of the top design, to create variants on an existing princess that could potentially roll. The logic behind this was that by using an existing appearance we could focus more on creating a body template that would allow for the quicker creation of new characters.

Concept 1: Psychic Princess draft 1

Concept 2: Larger head allows for more facial expression and detail, potential for rolling on head.

Concept 3: Attempt at recreating a storybook appearance, gradient shading from black.

Princess Character Concepts

This week, the art team has begun coming up with ideas for the look of not only the princesses, but a general aesthetic for the game.

The first major change was to get rid of the retro style artwork in favor of what one might find in a storybook. The rational behind this decision was that retro style pixel art plays better with a crowd who finds it nostalgic, however as we are aiming for a young female audience, this will probably not appeal to them as much as a cleaner hand-drawn appearance.

Attempt 1 with light pastel colors.

Attempt 2: Much larger body to head ratio.

Attempt 3: Larger head, warmer colors, introduction of gradient shading.