Capstone Part 16: Finished Project and Beyond

As we wrap this project, I take a look back on it and reflect upon all the art I did.  It's my personal belief that if you understand the design of visual things, like composition, using basic shapes, ect, then you'd be a much stronger designer in general.  I've applied that belief throughout the semester, and have done some of the best asset design I've ever done.  This will continue to out next project, which I heard was a tank game.  I got so excited that I did thumbnails for various tanks in my free time.

Capstone Part 15: Final Art Assets and Tweaks

As our goal and MVP draw closer, I've been tasked with making some final tweaks to various art assets in the game.  Where was once basic Unity assets are now much more visually appealing.  The magnets now have a area of effect with a clear border, the shoot strength bar now fits in with the rest of the game, and the level select GUI is redone.

Capstone Part 14: Last Thumbnails

This week, I did the last thumbnails for the project, design for the exit.  We had previously lacked a way for the player to exit the stage, as it was a white rectangle before.  Below are the designs I came up with.  I choose to start with big, simple, and repeatable shapes, and recognizable shapes are a tenet of good visual design.  Humans naturally break down complex shapes into simple ones.

Capstone Part 13: Re imagining the Art

When we took a look at the entire game as a whole, we realized that not much of the art matched each other.  Our background was this gray brick texture that didn't fit with the space tech lying around the levels.  There was nothing unifying our art styles, so I called a teem meeting to discuss and find a an art style we'd like to go with.  We picked something close to the look and style of Tron, a lot of blue wiring on black backgrounds.  It was simple, elegant, and doable.  Below was the final logo for the game.

Capstone Part 12: Effects Art

I began to focus more on effects work this week, that is, effects on the ion and the teleporter.  Below are the animations I did for the ion getting sucked in and blown out of the teleporter.  I purposely added more frames to the start and less to the end to give it a sense of sucking.

Capstone part 11: Magnetic Thumbs

When we were first trying to find the "aesthetic" of the game, we first thought of a kind of a Frankenstein-esque theme.  The setting was originally going to be a medieval castle with steampunk-like technology.  However, this theme would soon be changed.  Below are early explorations of the magnet.

Capstone Part 10: Textures

As the 2D artist of this game, I started off with making textures, which I quickly fell in love with.  the following pictures are my personal progression from having no prior experience in texture art.  To make textures in Photoshop, you must continually offset the image and paint in the center, this way, it makes the texture tile-able over a larger surface.

Capstone Part 9: A New Project

We started pitching new game ideas for the back half of the semester.  It had to be something we could do in 8 weeks, so the scope had to be pretty small.  I pitched a prisoner's dilemma-like game where two players would betray each other for victory.  What was chosen was a puzzle game where the player would manipulate magnets to get an ion into a goal post.  Here are early pixel art concepts.

Capstone Part 8: Animations

I don't consider myself an animator, but I do understand some basics.  When it was required of my do a flame animation and an explosion animation.  With my skill set, I believe I've made a pretty decent animation.

Capstone Part 7: Buttons

I've created buttons for the main menu. Each button has 3 states, a unpressed, a hover, and a pressed version.  The buttons essentially light up and hover every time the mouse hovers over.  I've also created a ring for Saturn that has falloff.  The reason why it has falloff towards the bottom is because of atmospheric perspective.  When you're looking towards the horizon, you're essentially looking through more atmosphere than you would be if you were looking up.

Capstone 6: The Tank

One of my favorite parts of this whole project was to design the fuel tank.  This acts as the HUD element to let the players know how much fuel they have left, while also telling them how fast they're going.

Number 1 was the original idea I had for the tank, and I chose glass so that the player would be able to identify the amount the of fuel.  2-6 are variations on this idea.  5-9 use a much more bubble like design for the fuel tank as they take on much stranger designs.  9 is the most alien of all of them, as it's built like a nest of glass bubbles, perhaps I'll keep this design in mind for a different project.  

Ultimately, I went with 7.

Capstone Part 5: The Giants

The majority of our planets in the game and in the solar system are the gas giants, so I was able to knockout quite a few assets in one day.  Our work around for there being clouds that you can land is that these clouds are pretty dense.  The clouds are so dense on the Gas Giants that the closer you get to the surface, the denser the clouds.  It's so dense, that it's like swimming in air.
For the design of the clouds, I just thumbnailed  fluffy cloud shapes that looked appealing to me.

Capstone Part 4: Mars and Venus

My favorite planets to create were the terrestrial Mars and Venus, as I really got to flex my design muscles and come up with various rock formations.  Each one is inspired by the background rocks you'd see in a Looney Tunes cartoon.  Very simple, very geometric designs.

Capstone Part 3: Craterous

I was tasked with creating the surfaces for the Moon, Mercury, and Pluto, as each are full of craters.  The designs are fairly simple, just make a pit in the ground with jutting rocks to make it difficult for the lander to land.

Then it's just a matter of finishing them for the final game.  I also made a moon background with a star field.

Capstone Part 2: Rocks

Perhaps the largest task I'll have during this sprint is creating rock assets for our terrestrial planets.  Looking at retro travel posters for reference, the mountains and rock formations are very simple.  Each has maybe 2-3 colors.  My other big reference for these rocks are the backgrounds of the Wile E. Coyote cartoon, because they have really interesting formations.

Using these references, I drew up a series of thumbnails.

Capstone Part 1: Ship of Dreams

For our capstone class, we will be creating mini-games for a game called Kidscom.  As the only artist in the class, it's up to me to create all the art assets.  Our game is based on a Lunar Lander game where the player must land a ship on a planet without crashing, and my first task to create the final ship asset.  Below are some thumbnails I came up with to create an idea of what ship could look like.  To create a good thumbnail, a concept artist should use as little value as possible, that is, only using white, a mid gray, and black.  These three values create a very readable image, because our eyes immediately pick up shadows and uses those shadows to create form. 
1 and 2 were drawn from retro sci-fi movie posters, sort of the classic rocket ship.  However, most of them looked pretty similar and not like a lander.  For 3-5, I tried more of robotic drone look, and while I think they look good, they didn't fit the aesthetic of retro-futuristic.  6-10 fit the aesthetic the most, as they feel very Jetson's or Marvin the Martian.  11-14 are some of my favorites as I tried to combine elements from all the other ships, but they look too shell-like.  In the end, number 7 was chosen to be the final asset.

After choosing our final ship design, I took the thumbnail into Illustrator to create a final vector image.  I haven't used Illustrator in quite sometime, so this was rather difficult, but after a few hours, I managed to finish the asset to my standards.