Hello Steemit Community!
I came up with a game idea, which I hope to continue and test out. So far I have been exploring the visual design/style for the background!
So far these two are my favourite. I can show you how I came to these decisions, and my process. However my process is a bit everywhere at the moment, as this was my first attempt at doing anything like this.
I will take you back to the verrrry beginning! These are my initial sketches, which I tried to capture the mood, style and story of the game.
It would take place in the Witch's Home, inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, the Little Witch seems inferior or small compared to the problem, but with her kitty companion and stealth, she can overcome the obstacles.
Since this is my first attempt at any game. I wanted to create a "prototype" level first. This was basically just to see if I could do it.
It would be very basic, an introduction to the problem, and her way to fix it. In this case, people came too close to her home. So she takes a relic, and places it nearby, which sets up a protective ward around her home. (Glowing yellow stuff). And this is basically the goal of every level. She must go deeper into trouble, to find relics, help animals and put up protective wards, and help regrow damaged areas of her forest.
For the Art Style, I looked at some comics, as I wanted to have an artsy/fresh feeling to the game. This helped me stay on track for my drawing and colours, as it's very easy to put too much! (Which is never good for concept phase.)
So I began with the Line Art.
Again, this was new to me. No idea what I was doing. I struggled to focus on shapes, rather than line quality. Have to keep reminding myself this was all just concept phase, not finished art.
So I filled in the colour, I knew that if I were to actually create this game, I wanted to have at least 4 different colour hues/variations, one for each of the different enemies to overcome; lumberman/robots, Cult Witches/Crows, corrupted animals/werewolves.
But first, I would need the right colours for my intro level. It's always tempting to settle for the first version. I nearly did. But after watching a basic 2D scroller tutorial, I realized I needed a foreground, middle ground, and background.
So I created this:
(Copy and Pasting the same trees and hills, just mismatching, flipping and scaling basically.)
And I thought, it was pretty good... but I better try and see if adjusting the colours at all could enhance it. So I copied this, so I would have 4 different attempts.
So I discovered a few good things doing this.
Adjust your resolution wayyyy down. Because having all of these (line, colour, gradients) on separate layers was killing my poor student laptop. This can be done in Image > Image Size.
Everything I do is in Adobe photoshop"Hue/Saturation" Is a tool sent from art gods. With this you can adjust the hue/temperature. You can increase and decrease the saturation of the colour. AND you can increase the level of dark to light. Which just makes this... 3000 times too overpowered.
Image>Adustments>Hue/Saturation [Control] + [U]
Another variation of this is Colour Balance. [Control] + [b]
Which can change the temperature with very sutable adjustments, very cool, very cool!
And last but not least...
- "Curves" [Control] + [M]
Image>Adjustments>Curves
This one is the trickiest to use, but in my opinion the best. I still only know how to use the most basic function of it.
If your layer has lots of values, like in the background, (dark/middle/light/stars/moon) then using the curves you can adjust the dark, middle and brightest values of your layer very specifically!
If you're a wizard, then you can drop into the Channel modes, and adjust the red, green, and blue values individually, which is beyond my current skill level, but interesting to try!
And that's basically it.
Personally I like this dark purple one the best, there's something witchy about it! Which one is your favourite?
This was all my concept phase. I am still learning, researching. Any feedback or suggestions or resources you guys show me I will gladly take!
My next task is to design the characters. So the Little Witch, her cute little kitty. The cult Witches, the lumberjacks and their robots, the corrupted beasts and the werewolves... Every level will have their own mega boss... so excited!
I do have 1 idea, which I'm quite seriously debating, and that's having the entire screen black, except where the black kitty is. The idea is in my sketches, the player has to move the cat to see what's happening on screen.
This could make the game feel scarier, and more into the character of Little Red Riding sneaking around.
Let me know what you think!
Also, if you'd like to see me work on the main character, robots and crow witches and what not, drop a like or a comment! Or just tell me to, that's also very effective. :P
My goal is to make little tile pieces, which can be used to construct forests, much like how most mobile games are. If you think I should hand draw everything, so each tree is unique and different, let me know too, as I said, this isn't a serious game, but a learning project for me.
If you've made it this far, thank you! <3 I hope you enjoyed
Nice post, beautifully presented and explained. Detail oriented with nice pics. Thank you for sharing this with us, Upvoted. .
Thank you, I'm glad it was explained well :)
Such detailed thoughts as well as drawings. Continue to move forward and all the best in this game crafting.
Thank you! I will do my best
oooo I love this!! You are so skilled. very cool!
Thank you!
his beautiful postings, dropped in my account and upvote
I love your concept. I'm excited to see what the witch and her kitty will look like :D
Me too Me too!
Nice one....great idea.......do you plan to also handle the technical aspects i.e the coding yourself......what are your plans in that regard
I started out in Unity, but after being into it a full month, I realised I still just trying to figure out how to achieve the basic mechanics I wanted. While I wanted to learn how to create a game and hopefully apps. My goal as an artist and for a career is in Concept Art, Animation or graphic Design.
So I switched to Construct 2, but now I'm finding that Construct 2 doesn't let me do enough, and I wish I could switch back to Unity. Hah. I guess that's why most games require a team.
Ya....i guess so.......the idea to create a short version of the game as proof of concept will go a long way
You can get a team!! Contact @ciel !!!
Sorry @justatouchfey
I love your sketches :) 💖💖💖💖💖
Thank you, your support is much appreciated!
good idea
great art. keep up the work :)
This is incredible! I love your art style. Keep em coming.
Thank you, I will do my best!
Wow, this is amazingly good work. You mentioned that you looked at some comics to help determine the Art Style; what comics artists do you like the most?
You are also the first Stemit user to receive my FireAwayMarmot Seal of Quality, which actually looks pretty junky compared to your own work... But I hope you like it.
Thanks dude! Appreciated!
you are making an incredible contribution, a beautiful poem can melt this heart
this is great and you have very good art ^_^
I think you should go the route of generating forests, it can make for something interesting even for the developer after creating something like that. To do this there are many ways, but the one I suggest is to create terrain and objects separated from each other, and the objects will all have some anchor point (such as tree the anchor will be an x,y near the bottom) this anchor point could then be used in generation to know how to place the trees/objects along the generated ground, and you could also do this same tactic on background for parallax effects, or use the anchor as center of rotation for greater variance. Parallax is important either way I think because a foreground tree or two along with some background trees all scrolling at different rates gives a sense of a much larger world, you know?
Anyway, I am just throwing out some things for you to think about, in the end I say just do whatever you find entertaining to work on and the game will have that shining through after you're done, people will notice this :)
Yeah, Parallaxing is so cool! That's why I had to add foreground and separate background :D
Cool 😄
every thing is very nice in your poem and every word is heart touching
Hello, great work, i liked your post and reward it with upvote.
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Spaaammeeerrss are baaaadd
Just wanted to say I absolutely love your art and general concept. I am a game designer and would be happy to throw together a general prototype for you to present to larger studios. For aesthetic purposes and feel, I can start by programming the walking/ jumping/ falling animations for your character and do a parallax scrolling effect for the background layers so the character has a world to walk around in. You would just need to provide me with assets and we could go from there. I would like to make it clear I am not expecting to gain anything from this and just intend to provide a helping hand! Please reach out if your interested and good luck on your concepts.
I can't wait to play your game! Your art style is mesmerizing! I agree with you about the various tools that made our art lives easier. I love them too. Thank you so much for sharing!
very nice
Genius!!!!! I wanna play this game!! Make it reallllll
Amazing.... the Dark forest you have produced for "Little Red Riding Hood" is truly Majestic!!! I love how you use low-key lighting also as chiaroscuro effect to give off an eerie vibe that forces the player to be more alert to their surroundings when traversing through the level. From my perspective, I believe this game concept is potential TellTale Game based on folklore theme use to scare children to bed. It be cool if this game gives the player the option to play the role as propagandist "Little Red Riding Hood" sneaking through the environment to avoid many monsters that want to gobble her up; or play the antagonist "Big Bad Wolf" prowling throughout the level to hunt down and devour the "little morsel." Overall, this is truly a badass game and if you need someone to play-test this game let me know. I would love to be one of the first to head-dive into your envisioned game and willing to give critique as well.
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