This Ain't No Place for No Hero...

This ain't no place for no hero
This ain't no place for the better man...
This ain't no place for no hero
to call home...

Allow me to reintroduce myself…the name is Dave! David Houston and I’m fresh out the frying pan and into the fire…okay not really, just got a little carried away with my Jay-Z reference -_-; Anywho, as Kyle alluded to in the last post, this week is my turn to handle the group project blog. So strap yourself in kiddies, as I tell a wonderful tale of team work and comradely and basically what it is that I’ve been doing on this project thus far!

*Ahem* Now, considering that Angelica and myself are the only two actually enrolled, we are tasked with being Project Manager and Assistant Project Manager (the latter being myself). But everybody contributes a great deal to the concepts and creations that go into Bala! And that’s awesome because the others are terribly talented and I can’t sing their praises enough. So give a nice round of applause for my group mates if you’re in a position to do so without making yourself look like an abject moron for breaking into a slow clap at your computer!  I also act as a Concept Artist and Environment Artist, and all around utility guy! 

So far what I’ve been doing is mainly coming up with the look and behaviors of some of the baddies and babies that are in our game. It’s an interesting process to say the least, as I've been out there figuring out what is and what works at behest of the Overlord’s…err Angelica’s, will. So I guess, what I’ll  be showing you is some of my process and general thinking that goes into the enemy designs.

This is the tentatively named boss witch (all our enemy and character assets are named after what they are for the sake of reference, but we’ll call her BW for now), she is one of four established level bosses in the game (others coming soon!).The first thing I did was think about making a different feeling character than the dream witch without going so far into left field that she felt like she didn’t belong in the game. So I sat down and looked at the style guide that was established for our lead character and kind of picked through some of the clothes and looks that DW (dream witch) didn’t use.  Since DW has a lot of frilly things that give her a mildly gothic look, I felt her opposite should be wearing more form fitting sexy clothes (granted that thinking is a little rudimentary, but hey it gets the job done!). She also is physically different in her size, body type, and complexion. Where DW is thin and pale, BW is long, athletic, and dark. I wanted her to look powerful and intimidating; so she has a well-defined muscle structure. I tried not to go overboard with her muscle tone because I still wanted her to look feminine. 

Now that I established the differences, I needed a few linking similarities to make her look as if they belong in the same world. I didn’t want to abandon the gothic look that was established for DW, so I stayed in that vein somewhat with her clothes. I used the button down style dress top and pleated frill skirt. I also gave her a mask, much like DW’s cat mask as if to say in this world witches wear critter masks instead of pointy caps! It’s kind of a cool concept so I ran with it. I decided on a fox (though I could see someone calling it a bunny, I kind of went up and long with the ears), in part due the fact that foxes are thought to be cunning creature. I also thought it was humors to have the foxy bad guy wearing a fox mask…sometimes things really are that simple. BW’s mask is beat up however, as it has a broken ear and a large gash above the left eye. These are set in place to somewhat cement her standing as a bad ass and all around bad guy. We tend to link rugged to villainy, so I just felt like it worked. 

This also ties into her facial features and eyes. I attempted to give her a somewhat crazed look, as I imagined her personality to be unstable. Broken mask, broken mentality! I also gave a similar looking scar to DW’s to her; I just put it in a different place. The idea is that there could be a history or connection to scars and witches or at the very least between the boss witches and DW. This idea acts as a subtle vehicle for the characters and builds the narrative. I also gave her twin tails so that she had a cutesy like hair style to match the somewhat nightmarishly cute theme of the game.

The final thing I look at is what makes the character unique; or rather what can I do to make this character unique. Gimmicks aren’t just for wrestlers and bad fighting game characters folks, so I went down into my bag of tricks to see what I could dig out. Since BW looks like she could kick somebody’s ass hand to hand, I thought about giving her something that looks like it’s in the way of martial arts. I recently watched The Man with the Iron Fists on TV, so gauntlets where kind of stuck in my head. I went there and tried a few different styles until I landed on a pair of fire spitting demon gauntlets as her main weapon, and there you have it!

This is my process in a nut shell! I always refer back to the style guides and reference images to try and keep things consistent, and I try not to get too married to any one concept I create. I’ve had to go back several times to redesign enemies that don’t exactly fit or make sense. That can be hard to do, especially when you work so hard to bring something about. But that’s the nature of the beast! It’s a group project, so everybody has a piece of the say in getting it done!  So I’m constantly asking the team what they think or how they feel about certain aspects of the characters. And that’s fine by me, because it always helps to have fresh eyes on your work! 

    

Anyways, my time is up. I believe Hank is on deck and he’s bound to have all sorts of goodies that you folks can sink your teeth into next time, so look forward to it! Until then, stay classy interweb!!