Design Lab

Here is one long post showing you the process I took to create 7 character designs in my Drawing for Game Art class. 

The first part is to create 100 abstract silhouettes. I used the program Alchemy to create the shapes and cleaned them up in photoshop just to keep myself from defaulting to creating human figures. I usually do not like a lack of control, but this process turned out to be fast and fun. I took some time to combine some silhouettes just to challenge myself to look for good composition and not worry if it actually looked like something.   

The next step was to create 50 doodles. I was not so excited for this one. I was trying so hard to keep from making human figures I feel I went to far and that made pulling a character out of these very difficult. 

The third way we created character designs was with texture drawing. I pulled 50 textures from the internet and CG textures. I drew "what I saw" within 20 of them. You can see that some of the figures are incomplete, so I took the liberty to complete the form in the margins of the page.

This is the first pass on 10 roughs. 7 of these are taken from silhouette, and three are form the doodles. As you can see, the silhouettes have a variety of character, and all I could see in the doodles were fairies...don't do that. 

Refining part 2: 7 total roughs. 3 from silhouette, 2 from doodles, and 2 from the texture drawings. Here we had the liberty to start adding in local tone to help describe the breakdown of the forms. 

One parallel part of the assignment we needed to have was something called a force-fit. We were each given an animal, man-made object/machine, and an adjective. Mine was Anteater, Chainsaw, Filthy. Then we had to draw three roughs of a combination of 2 out of the three given themes. 

Here is a refined stage of the force-fit. I fixed some of the forms, refined the way the chainsaw blade looked, and jammed all three themes into the top drawing.

From all of that we were required to have one design from each method (Silhouette, doodle, and texture drawing) We also had to include one of the force-fits, and one of the silhouette designs needed to be from someone else's group of silhouette. 

To top it all off we were required to have clear light direction, and clean line work. The style and rendering was left up to us. I was heavily inspired by Mucha's line work, and the rendering from an art book, "Massive Black" by Ballistic. I added in some texture from GC textures on my filthy anteater chainsaw, the fairy, and used photoshop's cutout filter on the rhino thing. Other than those there is not much texture in the designs. If I was to take these even further I would continue to kit-bash textures and filters on top of the designs. 

Toy 3 - Aztec Slots

In Slots the player is journeying through a Aztec Jungle. They have found a temple and a large wheel impedes their path inside. The player must stop the wheel with the correct matching combination to enter and discover the secrets of the lost civilization.

The setting is in a jungle outside an Aztec temple in the year 2010.

The player is a research student on a school funded expedition. They are trying to discover the secrets of the Aztecs and fall into an unexpected crevasse. Pushing forward they discovered a secret entrance to an Aztec temple, and are compelled to use clues on the walls of the temple to figure out the right code.

An obstacle I would like to create is a changing image in the upper left  of the screen that jumbles symbols. You have to stop the roulette at the right time on the right symbol to complete the code to enter the temple.

  

Now for the Video:

Toy 2 - Reactor

In Reactor the player is trapped in a nuclear reactor that is beginning a melt down sequence. The generator is broken and nuclear waste is building up. The player must use the manual override to pump the nuclear waste out of the building before it explodes.

The setting is the inside of a nuclear reactor in the year 2197.

The back story of the game starts with the player working on the valves of the many pipes pumping nuclear waste. A shady character enters a key code that set off a lock down of the facility, and stops the flow of the main pipe coming from the core of the reactor. 

Possible obstacles so far can be a time limit of when the plant will explode. I also could add more than one blocked pipe and you have to get the flow of nuclear waste through them in a specific order before releasing the main pipe.

  

Now for the Video:

Toy 1 - Toy Quest

In Toy Quest the player has been trapped in a dimensional puzzle created by a nightmare made real. They must escape by jumping to and from platforms, avoid nightmarish obstacles, and rescue their favorite toy to escape the nightmare.  

The setting is the inside of a toy box dimensional-twisted into a nightmarish puzzle. The time period is in the early 2000's.

The back story of the game starts with the player (you) falling asleep and waking up inside your toy box. You quickly realize that your favorite toy is missing and you must retrieve it to wake up from the nightmare.

I began creating this with more of a Bloxorz mechanic in mind where you complete one platform's puzzle at a time, but instead of rotating the cube like Bloxorz I ended up making it jump...and that was too much fun, so I went with it.

So far the only obstacles I have in my my level depend on the collision of the platforms depending on color. Orange platforms have no collision and the player can fall through them. Purple platforms act a lot like the platforms in Smash Bros where you can go up through the platform from below, but you cannot fall through the top. From this basic rule I have created platforms that change color and collision to increase the difficulty of the character's movement through the level. See Example Below:

  

I would like to create more platform challenges such as moving platforms you have to time correctly, and add in more colors like red where if you land on it the players health is reduced and the level starts over. Other possible objects I would like to implement would be to move blocks out of the way, avoid little nightmare monsters that damage the player, and the collection of other smaller toys that increase the health.

The last thing I would add is to rotate the world much like in Fez to complete puzzles.

Now for the Video: