Desolation: The Old World

So I have now for a while been working with concept art and creative development for the game Desolation: The Old World. Since it has been a while since I posted anything here on my blog I’m drop this bomb of my compiled work on the game!

 

This character was supposed to be a sort of merchant that would appear from any odd dark corner and trade with the player. 

Here is a concept art of the enemy faction called “the Gnaarg”This is the fist rendered piece of an environment in the game, just to get a feel for what the game world should entail. It was decided to be a bit too bright. 

3D friendly concepts for the average door in the game. Iteration 3 was decided to fit the game aesthetic most. 

Some concepts for structures and architecture. 

I wanted to try out some more stylized concepts for the game world as well.  

After a long process of traditional sketching I landed upon the design to the far left, I then proceeded to iterate in photoshop until I reached the design on the far right. In the end the visor was made more smooth some of the helmet diods were scrapped. 

For the main character I wanted to give the team a few variations to choose from after the initial concepts were given green light. So I played around a bit with the proportions and silhouette of the character.   

In the end the character landed on a more slender and realistic version that I cleaned up a bit and added some asymmetry to make it more interesting. 

Here is the final piece I did for the game before it was put on ice. My requiem for the game! 

Apart from what I have shown here I have a mountain of sketches done by traditional means that lies dormant in my sketch pads:) All in all it has been really fun to work with the setting of the game and to get the opportunity to really poor my creativity in to creature designs and environment concepts! too bad the game could not go on.

Passing of knowledge

Title. “Passing of knowledge”

With this work I wanted to further explore the nordic myth and that take on the fantasy genre. I think that a lot of the fantasy that is portrayed in modern games and movies have turned towards a generic expression that has taken away a lot of the soul and sense of mystery that has always been the most intriguing part of the genre as far as I’m concerned. So with my exploration of the Nordic myth I hope to find some sort of core essence of genuine mystery that tells a story that is closer to my heart.

Greedy Buggers – My latest work of concept art

The Ent Chef

We were having a drawing/programming night last night, we were given key words to paint from. I got the words “organic”, “cook” and “forest”, so this is what you get! I had a lot of with it, worked a lot with different ways to create textures and experimented with different blending modes.

Week 7

So for this week’s post we are to self-evaluate our own knowledge of anatomy artistically speaking, so I will show a few of my 2D drawings and share some of the feedback that I got from my fellow students. Some of these images are already shown in previous posts, so “sorry” or “your welcome” if someone has to repeat the experience.

The thing that I received the most critique for and that I myself also think is the area I could use the most improvement is when it comes to motion in my images. There are a lot of static lines and a lack of general movement in the poses of the characters. Another thing is that I seem very inclined to mess with the proportions of most characters, like having everything stretched out and elongated, which could be used as a style characteristic but if so I should do so with a clear pretense of doing just that.

One major gap in my work with characters right now is that I haven’t made a lot of female subjects, I think that I’m just more comfortable with drawing the male body and anatomy. Which is in fact kind of strange considering that almost all of the nude models I have drawn from in class since I began studying art has been women.

When I now realize some of the knowledge gaps that I have, I will try to fill them with focusing my drawing exercise towards those subjects. Firstly I will focus more on practicing action-pose drawing, and the way I thought I should do that is to do five minute sketches were I pick different verbs or expressions to illustrate. Just to squeeze in as many of those exercises as I possibly can whenever I have a spare moment, which is not very often these days but I’ll try.

I will also start to use more anatomically correct reference- images when I draw characters in general just to burn those proportions deep into my standard procedure of construction drawings. Also I really should get over the bump and start drawing more female characters and really get into it so that I become comfortable with that, because that is something I need in order to become a versatile artist. But I really think that it is just a matter of routine and practice, I just need more hours to grind and play with it to get where I need to be and I really try to draw a lot and do concept art in 2D just for practice and fun. I really try hard to not forget that drawing is really fun and something I just love doing just for the kick of expressing my imagination and create my own little worlds full of my images.

As bonus material I will now show a sneak peek of my latest concept work! It is just a practice image drawn from imagination in my spare time, but I did play around with the pose a lot to get the expression that I was looking for. It has some way to go before it is finished, but you can perhaps see the direction it is going in, and I welcome all tips and critique I can get towards completing it! I live to learn.

Character Background Jorm

 

Name: Jorm. It has no name that can be pronounced by humans, through folklore since the dawn of time this one has been called Jorm.

Gender: None.

Age: Unknown. The beings are mentioned in the earliest accounts of civilization, they are said to have been created by the goods to keep watch over the realms of good and guard them from the dark forces that wishes to take over the world. Some even say that the gods have forgotten them in this realm, and that they now just wander aimlessly in search of their creators.

Physical attributes/ Health/ Handicaps: These beings are very large, reaching heights well above the tree tops and they are also incredibly strong. They are however not very quick to react and seldom make any hasty movements, but once they build up momentum they can move with terrifying speed.
the only known weaknesses that they have are contact with lava and deep depressions that renders them immobile and sometimes falling asleep. Many of the hills and land formations around the world are actually made of these forgotten giants.

Movement: As said before they are slow to react, but can build up incredible momentum given time. They seem to have certain migration patterns, but the motivation behind the patterns are unknown.

Appearance/Hygiene: The appearance of these giants can differ a lot both in size and shape and with that their physical attributes as well. Jorm does not seem very concerned with his appearance, of course he does not abide by the same framework for vanity and attraction as humans. Most of the giants seem to not question the way that they are made, they just “are” in the sense of physical beings.

Favorite food: The giants gather their life force from the earth itself, the core of that force is located at their hearts. As long as the core is active they are able to move their bodies, if the core is dampened by sadness or lack of energy the body will become immobilized and frozen.

Intelligence: Little is known of their intelligence, as no one seems to understand their language. It appears as though they communicate with each other through low rumbling sounds that makes the ground shake. To hear them rumble is however very rare these days, seen as there are so few giants left and they hardly ever cross paths anymore.

Culture: There are only speculations.

Temper: Jorm has a very calm and contemplative personality, He has been known to just sit and watch the passing of the seasons for years just contemplating the beauty of it all. When provoked enough however Jorm has been known to obliterate entire armies of soldiers trying to bring the giant to its knees.

About the game:

Platform: xbox, play station, PC.

Target audience: Achievers, explorers, ages 12 and up.

Direct competition, 3 titles: “Shadow of the Colossus”, “Skyrim” and “Dragon Age”.

Game description: An ancient evil has returned to the world, slowly creeping forth in the shadows. This evil was in the dawn of time defeated by the might of the great giants, but the giants have since then decade to the point of near extinction.

In this game it is up to the main character to find the power to raise the giants once more and restore their will to live and to fight off the evil that threatens the world. The narrative will be partly a classical hero’s journey, and partly a reflection of lost respect for the wonders and magic of nature.

 

The project

It has been a while since my last post! Working on the first drafts for all the animations and map objects takes up most of my time right now. The focus for us artists on the project has been to create as much placeholder graphic as possible to fill out the alpha version of the game, these placeholders then works as the foundation for the final product. 

The best thing about working with first and second drafts and placeholder graphics, is in my opinion that it allows for a more accurate visualization of what the final stage of the graphics should look like. It also gives the artists more flexibility and room for late changes if adjustment to the game’s aesthetics would occur. The praxis for this project is to take ideas from brainstorming into many stages of sketching before making placeholders and then finally the refined end result.

 

Concept sketch of on of the four characters.

 

One of the many drafts towards the placeholder for the “defender” character.

 

The first step of working on the final draft for the character.

 

 

 

 Much of the graphic has changed in order to improve the overall clarity of the gameplay, for example we changed the body into a crystal to ease the transition into colorizing the body as well as the mask, this was done so that the player would more easily identify his/her character during the gameplay.

More updates will come as soon as I have time! thank’s for reading!  

Theme Park!

Right away after finishing the first project, we are plunged in to the next one! 

My group have devised a game concept called Totemic, it will be a competitive multiplayer game featuring “king of the hill” type gameplay. Four players will each control two characters with a joystick and a trackball and battle each other in a jungle themed arena.   

Week 9

Now the final stretch is getting closer! The work I do now mostly contain of polishing the animations that we already have and adding smaller feedback effects, but there are always unexpected problems that need fixing! For this week’s blog post I have chosen to write about the work I have done on the game space.

Working on the game space has been an on and off process during most of this project, there has been a lot of iterations and changes in formats and color scheme and style. You can see the older variations in some of my previous posts, here I am going to show you the final version.

For a long time now, the idea was to split the houses and street into different sprites, and in that way we could vary the order in which they should appear. This would also save a lot of performance strain in the game since it does not have to load full HD images all at once. However when the coders implemented that version, there were some major screen tearing and glitches that they could not figure out. So I went back to the previous format, where each image is stacked on the other, this gives less room for further iterations, but it saves us time.

In the new iterations I wanted to add more details to make the surroundings more interesting to look at, but at same time I wanted to refrain from distracting the player from the action. With that in mind I chose mostly harmonious colors that would not pop out too much in the peripheral vision of the player, and if they do, they should consist of objects that are easily recognizable and identified.

My biggest grief is that there was no room for me to really go nuts with the background and give it more life. The coders time frame would not allow for any animations in the background, and the coders word is the law in this case. My vision was to add pillars of smoke and fires from Molotov’s and barricades filled with protesters and police fighting, and all of it fully animated.

I’m still pleased with the end result as it is, I think that the variations are enough to keep the player from getting bored with the surroundings. Oh, I almost forgot! I added solar panels to one of the new houses! I thought that since they have those in the kinder garden game, it could become this year’s gimmick! And at the same time promote clean energy! Boom! Serious games…

Thank you for reading! Good luck to all!

The Ranged Protester!

This is the movement sequence for the ranged protester! before we only had police enemies that attacked the player, and we did not want to make a statement of taking a side, it’s the old man versus the whole world and vice versa! the coding will be the same as for the ranged police, I’m just adding new sprites.