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.