Animations - New Characters

Seaweed Redrawn

Due to time constraints I won't be redrawing the other 2 seaweed assets. As much as I would like to Byron has enough to deal with without having to work in more stuff and this with the fish should be enough to fill the underwater level. I think OB might have some stuff to include also.

The Bird...

So Byron asked me for another flying character so I figured a bird would be nice. The character is for the volcano area so I thought a hawk or vulture type bird would be best suited for this type of enviornment. A badass bird for a harsh setting as opposed to a weak sparrow or something. This to me makes sense.

So this is my initial sketch. I drew it up on the computer rather than in my book first to save a bit of time. It was a good starting point in creating the final version which you can see below:



Final Bird - facing forward like it needs to so it can swoop in and attack! Should be good :)

More Characters!!

As mentioned in the previous post, here is the wolf fish and the new piranha:

Wolf Fish:


Piranha:


With the Piranha I am going to draw him with his mouth closed also so that when I animate him he can snap as a Piranha should :D

Also to come is the seaweed redrawn and the bird character.

New Characters!!

Over the past few days I have caught up on sleep and dived into making some new characters. So far I have a new puffer fish and seahorse and I have redone most of my wolf. Unfortunately I cant alter the head so if there is time I will just draw over it. I don't think it will matter too much though as these characters are brief on screen so I doubt it will be at all noticeable. In development I have a new piranha, a wolf fish and Byron has asked for another flying enemy so I will also create a bird character once this other stuff is done.

Here is a look at the puffer fish and seahorse:

With the new characters I am drawing them front on as per the groups request. It is more in keeping with the game also as you are flying forward so these characters need to come forward to attack you. You could argue that they are attacking from the side if I were to continue with the side on look but this way better suits how our game works at the moment and its easier on Byron to code these characters in if they are forward characters.

A Second Chance...

We presented our "game" today... unfortunately it wasn't at all complete. We had a major bug in the engine which made it so that you couldn't play past around 15 seconds into the game. Because of this we couldn't proceed to make up the second and third levels as we were incapable of testing it due to this bug. However, thankfully we have a second chance and we are going to use it. My job over the next few days is to unfortunately redraw my assets as the art style just doesn't fit and with the puffer fish the animation goes obviously blurry. I think it will be easier to start fresh rather than try and convert my old stuff, at least character wise. With the seaweed the colouring is ok so I will just remove the ink and redraw it to fit more with Michael's style. So new characters! COMING SOON to Fly Hard...

Animations

Right so here we have all my creatures in action. Animations are basic as Byron said he will do the rest to implement them nicely.

Creatures in Pieces - Ready to Animate

I have split up each of my characters into separate pieces so that I can animate each of them easily.

Wolf Animation Development

Ice rock that will be propelled of the top of this lower rock below.



Wolf: Crouched


Originally I was going to animate the wolf so that he jumped out from a side of the screen to try hit you and slow you down as a result. However I felt this wasn't plausible as if the wolf jumped at the penguin he would only land in water or end up hurt as a result. We also have mass problems with our engine so instead what I am going to do is have him crouch down and knock a ice rock of top of one of the ice bergs. Above is a still image of him crouched and above that is images of the ice rock I made to fit the wolfs shape.

Coloured Seaweed

I ended up with two sets of each seaweed asset I created because I wanted to look at the contrast between using the darker, paler set of colours as opposed to the vibrant colouring which we use throughout our game.

Character 5: Purple Piranha

The developed Piranha which as you can see I went for the purple colouring.

Seaweed Concept Sketches

Using my research from looking at seaweed I created these designs. I was questioned as to why I didn't just do a few leaves and my reason for that is because I feel our game deserves more than that. Our art style is quite detailed and to take the easy way out I believe would only harm the overall quality of what is being produced. Images are detailed above water so those below should be also.

Character 4: Green Fish

This is the developed version of the custom designed fish concept. I wasn't too happy with the design of the older version and I really hated the design on his skin. So I gave him a bit of a revamp in which I am a lot more comfortable with. Gave him a fish mustache as well to add to its character.

Seaweed Inspiration

I wasn't really too sure what sort of forms seaweed took or what sort of colours it takes so I decided to do a bit of a google search and these images were those that I used in some way to design (more so colour) my seaweed.

Character 3: Seahorse

The seahorse fully rendered. Quite happy with how it turned out.


Also did an alternate version which includes wings. I was told we needed more flying characters so like a flying fish, this seahorse can jump out from the water.

Character 2: Puffer Fish

This is a look at the second character I produced for our game, it took quite a long time (not as much as the wolf though however) as I experimented with different colours, formations of body parts and especially scale. For the spikes I wanted them to stand out but not over power the fish.

Chosen Fish

For our game I have decided to develop the puffer fish, seahorse, piranha and the custom designed fish with the striped lips. I was thinking of using the shark but our game already incorporates a whale so I thought there wasn't really any need of having two sea ruling fish.

Colour?

Piranha - I think I am going to go with a purple colouring. This was the first colour I could see a piranha being because I want to sustain our colourful imagery and purple is an attractive colour. Piranha tend to be a bluey purple colour also so I feel its quite fitting.

Seahorse - Either a green or a yellow orange.

Puffer Fish - A dark colour. This type of fish is deadly (as seen on "The Simpsons"). Evil/Death is most suited to the darker range of colours.

Custom Fish - Unsure as of yet, I plan to develop him a bit further as I'm not yet happy with how he looks. See how it goes.

Tokens

Sketches:

These tokens are for the minor and max power ups that you collect during our game. In designing them I had really only 2 things in mind, speed and fluidity. I also wanted to ensure they would be easily related to our game which is why they are forms representative of a bird or penguin. These forms are also representative of a wing or fire to influence speed.

Final:

Blue - Minor Power Up
Orange - Max Power Up

Developed/Final Wolf

Here he is boys and girls, The wolf in all his glory!

Fish Concept Sketches

Left: Custom Fish. Semi inspired by Magicarp from Pokemon.
Right: Puffer Fish

Left: Piranha - Inspired by an alligator
Right: Shark - Great White? I think so, use only the best.


Left: Seahorse Head
Right: Seahorse Body

Left: Custom Fish
Right: Modified Piranha- Kid

Left: Piranha - Kid
Right: Piranha - Adult

Underwater Thoughts

The underwater aspect of our game I am rather excited about. I have taken it on board as my sorta zone to design for - while also continuing the wolf as he is looking really good. This underwater aspect adds a whole new element to our game so I must do it justice with providing it with some decent imagery. A lot of the underwater side of things will be coded according to Byron, things like the visibility and colour will have a blue tinge? But besides environmental appearance, life must also be considered. I will start with fish and then move onto plant life looking at seaweed.

Sketches for Wolf and beginning to computerize

Been working on this arctic wolf character for our game, started off with some minor sketching to get the proportion looking OK, it's hard to do with a mouse so I need something hand drawn to reference when making the digital image. Here's what I started with:

Surprising it wasn't long before I got this, once I did though I scanned the document onto the computer and cut out the biggest body on the page and the lovely head without eyes which I must say I am very proud of. I think I really managed to represent the physical features of the wolf head quite nicely. After a long practice in Photoshop - trying to develop the head using Michael's art style (which we are using for this game), I managed to ink up the head. Looks like:

As you can see, it is in it's early stages. It still needs its detail colouring before I can stick him into flash to render an animation.

Also for practice I knocked up this polar bear which actually looks pretty cool. May return to it later...