Our goal for our group was to create an art style for a game we’re making with other student from a different class.
I was in “Group E”, which consists of me, Ingrid, Corey, Eoin, and 4 other students from the game development class. I discussed with my group for any ideas about what our game should be, with “Unstable” as the central theme, and our main three picks were either a 3d platformer about using a shotgun or rocket launcher to propel yourself for momentum via the rocket jump from “TF2”, a first-person game about fixing your house in the middle of an earthquake with the gameplay being similar to “Sinking Iron”, and a puzzle game about an old man with anger issues and we have to complete tasks without increasing his anger levels or else he dies
We pitched our game ideas to our tutors and they said they liked the first and second options as they were able to understand them and felt that the third option had ideas that weren’t explored enough. However, they told us that we have to pick one to focus on and the group chose the second option as we felt that the simple gameplay loop and small setting could make it manageable for us to complete in 12 weeks..
While half of our team focuses on developing our game, the remaining group members (which I’m a part of) had to focus on what the art style of our game should look like and to create a style guide for it. After discussing with the rest of the teammates, we decided that Eoin and Corey would design the games’ environment and props while me and Ingrid would design the characters. I talked with our group about any ideas of what type of art style our game should have. One of the art styles I though would be nice was the soft fantasy art style used in Fortnite, Sea of Thieves, or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This was because the semi-cartoony aesthetics could fit the game’s at-the-time comedic tone and the stylization could help us design characters without the constant need for thinking about realistic body proportions. This was the art style we ended up going with. I was designated as our groups character designer so I was responsible for the characters designs, or at least refining the designs of concept sketches of characters made by other members to fit the game’s art style, for our 3 characters, the builder(protagonist), his wife, and their real estate agent, and making the groups’ art style guide.
Initially, I didn’t really know how to approach it task as it was still early in development and everyone was still trying to figure out who’s gonna do what task. I thought the animators had to design assets that the game developer students will add into the game so I drew concept art for the real estate agent as I thought that each team member has to draw their own character and we were still experimenting with different art styles.
I based the Real Estate Agent’s design of the stylized design of the “businessman skin” from “Fortnite” and Mr. Sawhit from “Ace Attorney” due to the design and smile fitting the shifty persona of our Real Estate Agent.
Concept sketches:
There was a bit of a communication error with the rest of the group. The game developers had a presentation due that was different from ours and we all thought that they were both due Week 3 instead next week. Because of that, there were changes made to the game that we weren’t aware off until the presentation. One of those changes is the game now having a semi-serious tone and they even talked about concept ideas that really fitted the sudden shift of tone, which made us feel that the current art style feel inappropriate. I can’t really blame the other class students as this was still very early in development and this was their first time they’re working with other students from a different class so they don’t know what’s it like to be an animator; as they thought that animation wasn’t as big of a deal. Ultimately, we decided to stick to the soft fantasy art style as we reasoned that other games with similar semi-serious tones use this type of art style too.
I also tried making an art style guide for the characters. However, I struggled during its development as I had a hard time figuring out how to create one and the examples didn’t help either as they looked more akin to model sheets to me or had more focus on stylistic design choices from other art styles.
I showed this first attempt to my group but I had to redo it. Eoin told me I used too many references from the same source material and that I was essentially copying the art style of Fortnite, instead of making my own style, which won’t get me a higher grade.
At this point, I was immensely stressed and angry. I only had a week left to finish a character style guide for my group and I couldn’t think of how to make one that the rest of my group can understand as well as format it.
I eventually asked Ingrid for help on how to make an art style guide for characters. She showed me a concept sketch of the protagonist, the builder, and what she think how a style guide sheet should look like. After looking back at the examples shown on Blackboard and gave it some further thought I decided to go with the idea of just using a character and adding some posing and design tips for guidance on how this character should act, kind of like a model sheet.
I used Ingrid’s design of the builder as a template for the design principles showed me her design of the builder and I used him for the design principles template for the style guide. Although, I had to change some bits of the design to make it look like a builder, mostly a construction worker.
References:
I first sketched a bunch of drawing of what I think should be in an art style guide for characters and some feedback Ingrid gave me, took a picture of these drawings and cropped them using an app called “CamScanner”. These will be used as references:
I then imported these images into “Sketchbook”, another iPad app, and traced over it while doing some changes to make the design clean. I also did these in separate layers if I need to move or make them smaller in order to give me more space.
Development of final art style guide for the builder:
After I finished the art style guide sheet I exported it as an image and imported it to our group’s PowerPoint presentation. Most of the work I did was drawing the builder design principles and concept sketches for the real estate agent, then posted the images into the slide but I did at least helped clean up some details in my teammates’ slides. These are the slides I helped made in the presentation:
Updated slides:
In conclusion, I hate every bit of this. The creation of the art style guide was a long, stressful and frustratingly difficult task to complete and it wouldn’t have been this way if it wasn’t due in three weeks and at Monday, the same day as our presentation. My group members said that the work I put it do look great at least made me feel satisfied to what I’ve got at least.
Overall, I feel exhausted after the stress of rushing to get this done in time.
Reference links:
Character design asthetics:
https://fortnite.gg/cosmetics?type=outfit
Real Estate Agent inspiration:
https://aceattorney.fandom.com/wiki/Frank_Sahwit