Week 1:
Our Brief for this module was to create a Video Game to do with the theme ‘unstable’. We joined with some game design students to start planning for our group project and came up with a few ideas:
- A video game where characters lived inside an arcade machine of some sort that would be unstable due to a broken fuse.
- A chemical lab or kitchen setting where you had to collect resources
- Grim Reaper game where you go around environments causing unstable conditions for workers, the more levels you complete, the more you become promoted.
We presented this on a PowerPoint slide as a group and based on our feedback we went with the grim reaper as it was the best idea out of them all, although there was still a lot to work on as the game idea needed a lot of improvements.
Slide made by Nicolle.
As a group we discussed possible outfit upgrades that were unlockable within the game and items that the grim reaper could throw to sabotage a workplace such as a construction site or farm, these items would be bananas that the workers could slip on or boxes to fall over. After our discussion in class, I went home and drew up some concept art based on my research and discussions our group had:
Basic Grim Reaper:
Unlockable style:
Unlockable style:
References
Images I gathered from google images:
We agreed to call on discord, to further discuss game ideas and styles. We organised a call for that Thursday evening of week 1 (feb 1st).
We spoke about:
Who the game was for, Style references, texture styles, what mechanics we would include, promotions, what perspective it would be and the overall purpose of the game. During the call, Chloe was taking notes and summarised it for everyone on discord:
I mentioned an idea for a cut scene at the beginning as we were stuck on the purpose of the game and the reasoning behind Grimm’s actions.
On the call we looked at a game called Deaths door and we agreed that this was the style we wanted to go and planned on using this as one of our main references due to the colour schemes, the low poly environment with hand painted textures along with the sizing of the character compared to environment and the isometric view. This really pieced together our ideas of the game, although we didn’t want to use just one reference so we planned to do our own research.
Roles:
We then agreed on roles throughout this project with Choe and myself focusing on characters then, Shane and Nicolle on environments. My role was to be responsible for the main character Grimm. I preferred this role as I wanted more practice within the whole character modelling and rigging pipeline. We made sure everyone was happy with their role and they felt comfortable with the work required and that the whole team would be there for support if needed.
Our Agreed style: Soft Fantasy
What is Soft fantasy?
Soft fantasy can be seen as things that include fairy tales, legends witches and Genies. It is easier to understand what it actually is when compared to Hard fantasy which would include Things that have complex magic systems that are very clear to the audience so they can understand and Detailed world building, although hard fantasy is usually based on things that aren’t very real world/natural. While on the other hand, soft fantasy has to make sense to a degree so that it could be more possible to happen.
Soft Fantasy Examples:
- Disney
Hard Fantasy Example:
- The Lord of the Rings
References:
https://www.dabblewriter.com/articles/hard-fantasy
After the call I researched some other games as reference to our chosen style and uploaded them to our Miro Board that I created for the whole team.
These references are games that I thought fell under the ‘soft fantasy style’ and some showed a great isometric perspective that we wanted to aim for.
Tunic – I thought this game was great reference as its isometric and low poly with a stunning painted texture with the kind of colours we were hoping to use within our game. It may be slightly too low poly for the likes of probs and trees etc but overall a good reference.
Links Awakening – Great low poly reference but slightly too bright. Good reference of character shapes and form although this style may fall under the ‘Saturday morning category’.
Blue Fire – Really liked the painterly textures that I thought would be useful as reference. The little character also reminded me of our grim reaper with the little cloak so its good to look at this to see the cloak from different perspectives.
Bastion – This is another reference I found, that I thought went with our style very well and falls under soft fantasy. Style influences of Japanese isometric games with busy backgrounds, action anime with the big probs and large hair. It also shares a lot of the same rules as our style such as character contrasting from background, round soft edges, colourful and bright environment and painterly textures. The main character for this game also carries over some similarities such as being short and chunky with the big head and hands.
Ori and the will of the wisps – I know this isn’t exactly the style we are going for or the level of detail but it has great examples of environments that fell under the soft fantasy style.
What makes this style different to the other styles?
Our game is supposed to be set in a real environments such as construction sites etc, where a grim reaper would be seeking souls so obviously we didn’t want to go with Saturday morning as this is usually in games like Mario where you are in a magic land the whole time. We also didn’t want this to be super realistic either or it would’ve just been a horror game at that point. We thought soft fantasy was the best style as we could create pretty bright and detailed environments while still keeping it cartoony as we wanted this to be a ‘fun’ game.
Week 2:
We had a class exercise to get us thinking about rules, influences, age groups and what moods games or movies have. This was our group project on Miro:
This helped to get us thinking about our own game and references that we picked out for our game.
We presented our progress on our ideas in class and based on our feedback we needed to:
- Include a BIG death character that would act as a superior or boss.
- Include gruesome ways to die
- One event leading to the other instead of someone slipping on a banana. Make it so they slip on the banana which leads to something else.
- Agree on a camera angle
- include blood that contrasts with cuteness.
- a shop that can be used to upgrade the character to cause more deaths within the game.
- Keep the rent Idea of death needing the job to pay bills – but make it disposable as its not needed.
- Have an option that allows the grim to be unsuccessful when placing bananas etc. if the person doesn’t go on that certain square that the banana was placed on, they survive.
We re-evaluated my Grim Design and decided that we wanted his feet and legs to be on show instead of his cape dragging along the ground. I laso wanted to chnage his face to display more detail as he was too simple.
Reference skulls:
I really liked the idea of cracks as some detail and would actually give him some character.
This was my updated design where I added a shirt and tie under his cloak with a little belt to hide the transition from shirt to cloak. I sent this into our discord and asked for everyone’s opinions. We agreed that:
- His cloak looked like a skirt and had too much pleats / creases.
- No neck should be visible, so it should be just cloak, collar/tie and head.
- He should have shoes but more work kind of shoes like oxford shoes/formal shoes.
- Needs Bigger hands
- Add a Smooth cape
Big death
Reference:
This was my first design for the BIG death that our group decided to add. Since he wasn’t a big character within the game and only visible in a few cutscenes, he wasn’t our main priority but we wanted to have a design finalised. I sent this into our discord so that we could discuss on call. Its a very simple character that consists of a cloak and horns with a dark/hidden face with glowing eyes.
Hi-Vis Jacket was Mikes recommendation for comedy.
That Thursday, the animation people from our team had a further call to discuss our style guide and what we needed to include so everyone would know what was needed from them by the dead line.
My Targets were:
Finalise the Grimm and Big Grim Designs:
- Ensure Grim is more bulky with a big head and hands that would be consistent with the style of the other characters. Consider new clothing/cloak design.
- Make Big Grim more bulky and muscular with a red tie and gold accessories to resemble a suit in some way.
Style Guide:
- expression sheet
- Colours used and designs
- technical guide (construction guides and proportion guide)
On our group we also discussed colours for our characters and environments and we decided that a limited colour palate of purple would be appropriate for grim to contrast with the bright backgrounds and characters. Chloe drew up a colour guide on call:
Chloe’s work
Colour Theory
In terms of colour Theory, I think colours of purple suit our character quite well in reference to this colour guide of Disney characters. In the purple section we have Villains that have qualities of Power, Nobility, Luxury and Ambition. Grimm Definitely has Ambition and power to create such acts of horror, so I think these colours compliment his character well.
Reference: https://www.sitepoint.com/15-color-schemes-from-disney-heroes-and-villains/
I began improving my character designs based on the feedback from my group and made him a plain cloak with tie and shirt on show along with bigger hands which looks so much better. We spoke about instead of him having bone hands, to have a simple hand mesh that we could then paint shadows on to act as bones when texturing which will keep the model and rig a lot cleaner.
Chloe Suggested making him a little taller so that the style would be consistent. The head and hand size were perfect and stayed consistent with Chloe’s character designs.
Updated Height:
I Am really glad Chloe suggested this as it looks so much better and I didn’t realise how short he looked in the before and didn’t stay consistent with our style at all. Chloes character designs consist of Big hands, Big head, chunky form which mine also consist of now. the only difference is that my characters maintain a more a round shape rather than blocky. This is what we were aiming for as we wanted Grimm (main character) to stand out while still maintaining consistency throughout the game/style. Without similarities in the characters they would look very odd.
Examples of characters that are very different but maintain consistency within their game/films:
Mario – Big round eyes, chunky form, big hands, short body, big head, and bright colours.
The Simpsons – Big circular eyes, yellow skin, bendy figures, mouth shape, round bodies and noses.
Rick and Morty – Big circular eyes with small dot, simple mouths, long/lanky bodies and have circle ears.
Big Grim:
I looked at some references of Huge/ muscular characters:
Chloe mentioned Lord Hades:
Design:
This character is more of a small character that would be in some cut scenes within Grimms office so he is not on top of our priority list but I wanted to finalise the ideas.
I went for Limited red colour theme in contrast to grim while still contrasting with the environment and humans. Based on my reference images I created a more muscular figure to help create ‘Power’ and intimidation. I maintained the curved edges and big hands/head for character consistency.
Colour Theory research:
The colour red really compliments this character as it is usually associated with Aggression, Rage, power, anger and danger which really helps give the impression of the type of character he is by simply looking at him. Especially paired with the huge muscular figure.
References: The filmmakers guide to understanding color theory… – Gaddis Visuals
Color My Digital World | Color me, Color psychology, Color palette generator (pinterest.co.uk)
Style exercise: We took different characters and drew them in our style to see if we could draw different things while keeping it in the same style as our game.
This was my drawing.
Art style guide work:
I didn’t know where to start with my style guides so I looked at some examples supplied to us along with some that I found myself:
My Work involved in the groups style guide:
Early Character Development
Grimm Character Design
BIG Grim Design
Technical Guide 1
Technical Guide 2
Technical Guide 3
My Work on our groups shared Miro Board:
Overview:
Creating the style guide was a lot of fun although meeting new people was very scary although they are all very friendly and I can see us becoming a strong team. The Group communication could be better so I am hoping things will improve as time goes on. In terms of the work we were able to produce, I am fairly confident with my own work and believe I have produced a good standard within the time frame. There was one team member who did not produce a lot and feel it may be unfair for the rest of the group.