doodle dump in the toilet

Unedited, unfiltered, Bala related pen drawings from the other day week provided without commentary.

we just need falling leaves

I am prepared to unveil to you the mysteries of the tutorial.  It's all plants.  Check out these plants.

That's a lot of plants.  This is a shot of the tutorial in its entirety.  You begin in the bottom left of the screen and progress until you reach the top right of the screen.  It's all plants because those were the models that were ready to go in at the time of building the level out for playtesting.  More interesting things to be added.

Here's an overview of a segment from the tutorial.  The real challenge with placing assets is that all the models I had to work with are organic.  Our rooms are square in nature, so the player collides with things in a very non-organic manner.  What the plants do well is hide that!  However, for a section like the one above, we will need to put in an actual straight wall, or be a little more clever.  

This is actually what you see in game.  It's important to put structurally sound objects where the water is spraying, otherwise that wouldn't make much sense.  Probably.    

More assets.  The trees look pretty good!  We need more trees.

This is mostly what we had to work with at the time.  The X'd out assets were not used.  All I can really say is the build looks much better than it did last quarter!  And it can only get better from here.  Til then!  Bye

Spirit family that you will one day murder and steal their powers

This week, let's take a look at the natural evolution of the fish.

This flying magical fish is what we are currently using in our tutorial.  It is a special kind of creature that once killed, grants the player a special power that they will be able to use throughout the rest of the game.  It is a forest spirit of sorts, and thus supposed to be a sacred creature.  After doing a couple fish concepts, I found myself stuck.  I could not get the fish-like creature to emulate the feeling that I wanted it to.  So, the fish evolved into a spirit girl...lady, which I think is a little more elegant.    

In order to use the same play structure, I kept in mind how the fish work, and how their movements would translate over to a more human form.  Each of these concepts bares that in mind in some form.  Additionally, each of these spirits will have the same base model to reduce the work load on our character artist, and to strengthen their sense of unity.  This way, we can give each of the spirits their own unique attributes while keeping them pretty structurally similar.    

For funsies, I made them into a circular mural to be put on the door that leads into the main forest.  This is to symbolize that the forest is their domain and that you are entering into it by going through the doors.  It should then come as no surprise if you happen upon them!

Texture used is purely for concept, so it needs a bit of work.  Doesn't look like a door quite yet!  But that is the general idea. 

After these rough concepts, I did even more rough concepts that our character modeler could work from to  translate them into 3D.

This winged lady is responsible for bestowing the player with the wind ability.  Her wings flap to create a burst of wind much like the original fish's would.

Next is the spirit who gives the player the water ability.  Her tendril-like hair is inspired by the frills of a jellyfish, and flow behind her as if suspended in water.

Finally, we have the spirit that gives the player the shield ability.  She was a little harder to pin down, as she is very much unlike the other two.  I'm still a little uncertain as to whether she will work or not but we will see.  The cloth/scarf thing encircling her body is meant to be used almost exactly as the original shield fish, and is even shaped similarly.

The way that the shield fish is shielding itself is the same way that the shield spirit will be using her cloth.  Is it practical?  Will it work?  I don't know.  Let's see if my concept gets shot down.  Stay tuned.

Wind Family

Piggy backing off of the concepts of the pedestals from last time, I'd like to show off a couple of our objects that are interactable with the wind ability.  Here's a precious family photo:

   
Pictured here, from left to right, is the Wind Elevator, a "Windmill," and the Wind Pedestal.  In order to distinguish that the player must use the same ability on all of these different objects, a wing motif was created.  These wings, although a little different in appearance on each object, all react to the wind ability the same way.  When the wind ability is used, the wings spin on the Y axis to let the player know what they are doing is working.  In the end, these objects will also have similar color palettes.  For example!

Here are some placeholder textures that are going to be used for playtesting.  They will become beautiful one day.  

    

wingdings

Hello!  We've made some great headway on the tutorial and are working on concepts for the environment to model.  Today I am going to highlight two props I've been working on, the Wind Pedestal, and Water Pedestal.

These two pedestals are objects that the player needs to interact with in order to advance in the game.  As their names suggest, the Wind Pedestal is interactable with the wind ability, and the water ability is used on the Water Pedestal.  It's therefore important to make sure that these objects correspond to the ability that needs to be used on them.  In addition, I also needed to think about affordance, and how the player would know that they are affecting these objects.  The first thing I did was come up with a couple concepts for each object.

I wanted to make sure I explored a variety of options to compare to one another to see which ones worked, and which ones didn't (bad ideas included).  For the base of the Water Pedestal (top row), I wanted to try to emulate the shape of a chalice, which has a round form.  I primarily wanted curves to be the distinguishing factor between the Water Pedestal from the Wind Pedestal, so the Wind Pedestal has a more square frame.  While it was easy to come up with ideas for the Water Pedestal, it was more challenging to do so for the Wind Pedestal.

I kept asking myself (and google), "what is the universal symbol for wind?" My first thought was that cloud face blowing out a gust of wind.  Hardly appropriate material for an inanimate object.  There are also windmills.  And clouds.  What else?  For some reason or another, I decided to explore a feather/wing motif.  Not directly related to wind, but you see them blowing around in cutscenes a lot.  Another reason I gravitated toward wings is so that when the player uses wind on them, they would spin or move around in some way.  After exploring a few wing types, I tried to go the cloud route, with little success.

Next, I showed some of my teammates for feedback.  Below are the results.

There were two main questions I had for them:  

1)Which of these reads the best as a Wind/Water Pedestal?

2) Does the chosen design meet desired functionality requirements?

The circled items are the concepts people gravitated toward, and the X'd items are ones that do not work at all.  For example, The last 3 Water Pedestals in the top row read more as Wind Pedestals, and were thus tossed.  The Wind Pedestal in the last row looks like a shining sun.  The X'd Wind Pedestal in the 3rd row looks like it is covered in vines.  

There was only 1 Water Pedestal that they seemed to like, and that was the second one, though it did have some problems.  There was concern that the dripping water coming out of the chalice seemed a little too directional, and might cause the player to interact with it in unintended ways.  As for the Wind Pedestal, the first design was favorable, as were two of the more cloud-like concepts.  The problem with the ones with clouds in them is that they would be difficult for the player to tell if they are doing anything with them.  

With that in mind,  I decided to do a couple more concepts based on the circled items.

  

I tried a couple different things with the water droplet motif, most of which didn't seem to be working.  The Water Pedestal ended up staying pretty close to how it was previously designed.  In a way, the Wind Pedestal also ended up staying close to how it was previously designed; the focus here was trying to make its base a little more interesting.  I think I was also getting tired at this stage and ready to move on with my life.

The circled items are what I had to work with when going into the modeling stage.  Here are the models are they currently are (plus another one of our assets).

When translated, the Water Pedestal didn't end up working at all, especially with the angle of our in-game camera.  Here, it is much simpler and needs some refinement, especially compared to the Wind Pedestal.  We will be testing with this model regardless.  As for the Wind Pedestal, it was originally going to have some clouds at the base that didn't seem necessary once its other parts were modeled.  As a note, the asset to the far left is also an object that is interactable with the wind ability, and thus has a similar wing motif to the pedestal.  

   

Here is an approximate shot of what these assets will look like in-game.  Their silhouettes read pretty well, the Water Pedestal just needs to be pushed up to the same level as the other objects.  Perhaps I can show that off next time...until then, let's hope Atlanta doesn't get shut down for another week from weird weather.