I met a gypsy and she
hipped me to some life game
To stimulate then
activate the left and right brain
Said baby boy you only
funky as your last cut
You focus on the past
your ass'll be a has what
That's one to live by
or either that's one to die to
I try to just throw it
at you-->
determine your own adventure
Howdy, howdy, and what it do?! How goes it Bala
followers? It’s the Heavyweight Champion
of the Universe as well as your friendly neighborhood concept artist, David
Houston, chiming in once more on the group blog-o-jigger. So long time no see!
I hope everybody’s been well and the other projects have been kicking all types
of ass! As usual, I’ve been in concept
land trying to cook up so cool looks and schemes to our game. In that regard, I
have some sad but necessary news to drop in. As Angelica alluded to in a
previous post we’ve had to cut back on some of the designs for the game, mainly
for the sake of scoping. That has me a little bummed out because we had some
really fun dungeons and baddies on deck, but alas it was not meant to be…at
least for now. The positive side of that is that if the development of this
game goes beyond this class, there is a lot of material for making a full-fledged
game. So let’s not say good-bye to all the great dungeons and characters we
made, but maybe see ya later!
So let’s switch the game up and focus in on what we do have
rolling for Bala, as of now we have 3 areas of interest planned. We have a forest
level that acts as our tutorial stage, a cake dungeon, and a time dungeon. So
that means the Champ here has been working on environments for our tutorial
level (yay\(^o^)/…sort of(-_-;))! I’m not the best at environments, but I’m a competitive
SOB who enjoys a good challenge, so I took to it with a grin. Hank built a
block out of the level and drew up an out line so we have an idea of what
happens where. So the next think to do was add a little style to it, so that we
could get a good idea for the ebb and flow of each “room” in our forest. That meant
getting on some draw overs!
These are pretty much useful little style guides that help
you figure out what assets you might need and where to put them. It’s also a
cheap little way to get you concept art to match the area…hehehe. Once we got
down into establishing how we wanted the areas to look we started trying to divvy
up the work load on assets. Hank went after the foilage…err foliage, and I
started trying to hammer out some of the possible man made like assets. Since
Angelica wanted some statues to go into our ruin like area of the forest, I
figure that was as good a place as any to start. Since the forest is loaded
with Guardian deity fish/snake type creatures, I went in and tried to give them
a motif for their area.
I tried to hash out a few different feels for the statues.
The first design on the left was meant to seem more primitive. I wanted it to
seem more like someone just went to work with a chisel and just scraped the façade
of the sucker right out of the rock and left it there. I also thought that it
was just kind of cool to have it wrapped around the rock as if it were
protecting it from something. I was really trying to hammer home that whole
guardian thing with that one. It also might be a cool little animation concept
for the shield guardian (the Guardians drop the power ups in the first stage
now, as opposed to the children). So animation squad; keep it in the rolodex. The
second one is a bit more of a blatant statue, where the creature is curled up
on a pedestal, with some sort of ancient runes or language scribed across it.
I had a few more iterations of this statue, but this one was a bit more interesting. This one is more dragon like, filled with a gang of loops and coils. The idea was to over stylize the guardians and make them seem like something beyond what they are (such is often the case with depictions of legends). They are thought of as something to fear or at least be in awe of, so I really tried to give it that feel in the design.
Whelp, that’s just a taste of what we’ve got going on for
now. There’s more good stuff on the horizon kiddies so stay tuned in. Same Bala
place, same Bala channel!
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