the role of a Lead Artist

Hiiiiiiiiiiii!
Today I would like to discuss the role of a Lead Artist (from here on referred to as LA) as I have implemented it during my work with Depth.
Our group (Ettin) has two graphic designers (blessed), so it was not a clear choice who should take on the role as LA. Since there were only one of each other minor in the team, we reasoned that the ”extra” artist would be Lead Sound Designer. Truthfully, I don’t recall exactly what […]

The main menu as a narrative tool

Friendship Down’s original concept document provides basic narrative direction: while on a peaceful mission, the crew of the spacefaring vessel The Friendship is abruptly attacked by a hostile alien race. The crew (a squad of friends) is forced to abandon their ship using escape pods, and then land on an unfamiliar world where they must fend off their attackers and find a means of escaping the planet. This basic storyline was intended to be communicated through an introductory cutscene, showing […]

The boaty look, from concept to end result

15/02/18
When it came to the decision of the player avatar it was the main goal to figure out how to make it look and feel boaty enough.
For the movement of the boat we decided it should feel slow and heavy. That had to be shown in the design of the boat as well.

Reference time
Looking at fishing boats the first design was being made. Rounded edges small and fragile was the first thought on how it should look like. We […]

15th of February – Implementing Art into Unity

This week has been all about implementing the art assets into the actual game, which is built in the Unity game engine. What I’ve learnt from this experience is that making something look good in your Photoshop document isn’t quite the same as making it look good in the game. A tree might look very pretty on its own, but that might change in the context of trying to create a level using that tree. Suddenly, it had to work […]

Blog2

Japanese boats and the Sea
For this blog the goal is to describe the process coming up with a design for the boat, and then drawing said design. I will also provide some reasoning and reflection regarding the design
So what does a Japanese boat look like? Since the Japanese theme were one of the things that I personally liked the most about the concept, I felt like it was important to make the design as similar to the boats used in […]

Blog 2: Honey explosion

Hi!
This week I’ve been working on the animation for the honey ball explosion!
Since I didn’t write much about the game last time, I will do it in this blog post so you get a better understanding on what the game is about. So, your beehive is under attack by a hungry bear, so you and your swarm of bees need to get back to the beehive as soon as possible to chase the bear away. Along the way to the beehive […]

Creating an unfogettable ambient

Introduction
Creating a lasting experience for the player that convey mystery and excitement yet is not too intrusive or frightening is probably the decider whether our Umibōzu will succeed or crash and burn. While a lot of atmosphere and ambient can be build up with music and sound cues, having believable, coherent and frankly spoken “beautiful” art is arguably the most important factor. Last week, I already touched upon the water in Umibōzu and my aesthetic vision for the project. In […]

Insight #2 – Iteration

In this entry I will present the iterative process behind the creation of the Behemoth’s cannon and the changes that it went through from its conceptualization until its current alpha-ready state.
The concept of Behemoth called for a disproportionately large cannon as one of the cornerstones of its aesthetic. With this in mind, we decided on a military sci-fi setting with dystopian and cyberpunk elements, which resulted in a simple yet rugged and powerful design. Our main inspiration came from SNES […]

Sprint 4 – Polishing the harbor and player boat.

This week I have been tasked with polishing the habor for the starting page. Basically the idea behind it is that the harbor is the background for the main menu but also the starting location. Once the player hits play, he has control over the boat, gets indications on the controls and try the controls in the harbor before sailing away and starting his journey.
To the harbor I have added a city with vendors on the bottom so that it […]

Boss bear – About the boss fight and the design of the bears appearance.

In the game that we are making, the bees are rushing to their hive to save it from a bear that is attacking it. Completing the first level lets you play the boss fight with the bear. One of my tasks in developing the game is to design the looks of the bear and animate it.
The result: what the boss fight looks like in the game
The mechanics of the boss fight is that the bear open and closes its mouth, […]

Animating the Squid

In reality, cephalopod attacks on humans or boats are rare, but for the purposes of Umibozu, a squid was one of the enemies in its original concept document. In our interpretation, the squid became an enemy that was would be distinguished as a slower moving type of enemy in the game. This had to be taken into consideration when creating the animation for the squid.
There were two types of animation cycles required for the squid to be implemented into the […]

5SD064 Making the sprite–shark

Hello, this week I will illustrate the process of making the sprite of a shark, which is also the enemy character in the game Umibozu that my group flytrap has been working on.
We designed 3 enemies and 1 big boss as the antagonists in our game, shark  belongs to one of the 3 enemies. Before I started sketching the shark I have looked on google of the looks of real sharks, 3D animated shark and 2D shark drawings. I decided to […]