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.    

  

        

Let Them Eat Cake

Cake Witch's design did what I consider a 180 change from the previous concepts.  Despite how much I loved her exposed spine and demented eye boobies, her battle concept would not allow for this design.  Therefore, I had to get rid of her creepy elements.  May they rest in peace and show up somewhere else one day.  Another big change was her hair.  She originally had long flowing hair.  Because of her personality, I thought it better if she wore it up in a more formal hairstyle.    

Above is the first quick pass of her new design.  I drew her on top of Dream Witch's proportions to quickly get out a design idea.  I also wanted to ensure the relationship between her boots and skirt was what I wanted.    

I ultimately didn't like the first design pass of her top.  It looked pretty dorky.  I simplified it and gave her a strapless top.  I also couldn't decide if I wanted her to wear gloves or sleeves.  I wanted sleeves so that she would have exposed painted finger nails, but long gloves are more suitable for such a proper lady.  To make her skirt a little more interesting, I decided to split the top layer and expose the frills underneath.  Her skirt is adorned with roses and strips made of frosting.  The rose on her hip was removed because it was overkill.        

Because the other illustration was so messy, I redrew it to make more sense of the skirt.  Her top was also further simplified.  I also played around with cake hat designs, and decided to go with the one that has a rose.    

A reference for the back of her top.

This probably needs a little bit of explaining.  The premise of Cake Witch is that she is ordinarily a petite girl.  Her magic involves the creation of  the most delectable cakes and sweets in the world.  The catch is that she herself can not eat her cakes without consequence, though she loves them so.  When she is agitated or upset, she eats her cakes and, as a result, blows up like a balloon.  So!  That's why she has a katamari version.  The challenge to this form is that she needs to be round enough to roll around.  I drew the spoon for size comparison, but it wouldn't actually be present when she is in this state.      

Another try with less pronounced boobs.  She still needs a lot of work, but I'll get her figured out in her turnaround stage.

In the following weeks, I will be working on turnarounds for both Time Witch and Cake Witch, as well as concepting enemies.  Next few blog posts should cover those things!   

Tic Toc Doc

Time Witch is a shy and frail girl who doesn't like to fight.  She reigns over time and...Khoa can probably tell you more about her because he created most everything about her.  Maybe he'll write a blog on her one day, who knows.  Below is his concept:  

What attracted me to this design is the clock on her back, as well the scythe.  I think they are both  interesting elements that give her an interesting silhouette.  A couple things I wanted to change were her hands and the scythe itself.  I wanted to find a solution to the hands on her face.  That is, an alternate pose that would still read as shy.  As for the scythe, I didn't like that it acted as a part of her body (like a big mono-foot), and so wanted to separate it into its own object.  

In this iteration, I removed the clock from her back, added a clock, and positioned them to be floating behind her.  She's also standing on her scythe, a borrowed idea from my initial Time Witch design.  In the end, despite her face, she just didn't look right.  A shy girl wouldn't be standing on a scythe like that at all.  

Next, I tried to cover her face with her hair and made her poncho more ragged like Khoa had originally illustrated.  Because she is a being of time, her hair is constantly swept up as if it is being blown by the wind.  I also changed the clock to be more abstract and represented by floating orbs.  As a note, it looks as if the scythe is a part of her body here, but it's not.  I can't remember why it's drawn that way.      

Pristine poncho again.  The clock made of orbs now has hands that I thought would come out of her back.  This drawing was basically to get a feel for her floating.  

Here, I came up with a scythe design that I'm not entirely sure if I like yet.  In the top right is Time Witch's silhouette with her in-progress design.  In the bottom right is an attempt to get her face right. 

At this point, I showed Khoa all of the concepts I had come up with and we talked about how to make her better fit his vision.  We decided to make her barefoot and stick with the  old ragged clothes in order to juxtapose her young appearance.  We also decided the hands of the clock didn't need to be attached to her. 

More trying to nail her face.  The hands of the clock are no longer coming out of her back, or attached to her person at all.  

How do you draw shy people!!!

Her somewhat final design! (where I forgot the draw the hands of the clock)  I got rid of the poncho and went back to Khoa's original illustration.  I did this because the poncho does not work very well with her always raised arms.  Her garb is made up of two layers: her dress, and a shawl that helps to conceal her arms and make her form ambiguous.    

Next, I tried to nail down her clock and scythe and thought, why not combine them?  The little arm of the clock looks dumb and needs to be made longer.  I would also like the option of the scythe to be detachable from the clock and able to float around on its own.  At any rate, I don't feel this design can be 100% finalized until the way she fights is fleshed out in detail.  I also don't know how much I myself like this idea, and would like to see it mocked up in 3D before deciding.

That's all for now!  The next blog post will be focused on Cake Witch and her design process.      

Witches 'n Bi- Beautiful Girls

Long time...no see....

It's been a while since last quarter.  So long in fact, that it doesn't feel like last quarter ever happened.  It was therefore very easy for me to toss plans out the window like they were never plans at all.  Instead of trying to mold environments around non-existent witches or loose themes, I decided it would be a better idea to design witches, and then design their environments around them.

For me, this meant taking themes I liked and then personifying them.  In my last post, I mentioned a couple environments that we planned to do, and I stuck to a couple of those very loosely as starting points.  Here are a couple of the results.

Forest Witch 

This one is actually from last quarter that I never posted anywhere, which I'll expand upon in a minute.  As her name suggests, she was intended for a forest area filled to the brim with mushrooms and our friend, the boobie tree.  This is just an idea of a girl with a giant mushroom on her head as a hat.  

For this one, she's got some bad bed hair.  Been sleeping in some twigs.  

The last attempt.  Here she has a mushroom hat and twigs sticking out of her arms.  She also has some cute high dollar boots, as well as a dress made out of a giant flower or leaves.  We will never know which.  Ultimately, she was scrapped because I thought she was boring and discovered I didn't necessarily want a forest witch.  She also has a very weak silhouette in relation to how she will be seen on the screen.  Because Bala has an elevated camera and things are seen from above, it seemed like most of her would be blocked by her mushroom hat.  So I.  Moved on.

Demon Witch 

The first new witch I came up with was a design for the Demon Festival environment, and probably one of my favorites.  The idea behind her is that she's a human with demon powers, and has powers over demons.  In battle, you would not only face her with her sword, but with her demon mask familiars.  She has a pretty stern demeanor and takes things very seriously.  She's actually based off of a doodle I did a couple weeks  prior to this witch jam whose design I kind of liked.  Here she is in all of her exposed glory:

Main difference between the two is the demon tail and demon aura stuff on her leg.  And of course clothes.  

Snake Witch 

Inspired by Medusa.  A dark skinned, seductive beauty who has snake hair.  What else can I say.   

In this iteration, I changed her hair up so that it was not the typical Medusa style.  She has smaller snakes as bangs, while the rest of her hair is comprised of three large snakes, kind of like Cerberus.  She also sports a giant mongoose-like pelt to play on the relationship between snakes and mongooses.  (I also want to note here that every time I try to type snake, I type snack instead and it's getting annoying.)  She'd also have a unique tattoo on her leg and not the one I borrowed because I couldn't think of anything.    

Ice Witch 

Ice Witch is probably inspired by a belly dancer.  She has poofy pants, is barefoot, and doesn't wear a shirt.  The plan was to have her boobs and forearms look as if they are frozen because she's such a cold-hearted witch.  To attack, she uses some kind of enchanted cloth to fling ice crystals at her enemies as she dances.        

Fire Witch  

In a couple conversations, the idea of having two witches in one environment came up.  I designed Fire Witch to be paired with Ice Witch, and thus she has a similar motif.  Whatever I drew on her legs looks really gross.  

Cake Witch 

The above design of Cake Witch is one that I did alongside the Forest Witch last quarter.  Originally, I wanted her to be a petite girl who loves to eat cakes and sweets.  Because of all the sweets she eats, it rots her flesh and exposes her bones.  But she doesn't care, cake is delicious.  This idea was scrapped because at the time, I wanted to give the exposed bones motif to Time Witch.  

This is the first design of Cake Witch from the witch jam.  One thing that stayed pretty consistent in how I approached Cake Witch's design was how her bangs are tied up and out of her face.  Because she has about the same hair length as Dream Witch, I wanted to do something different with her bangs so that they were not too similar.  In addition, I added hair clips so that none of her hair was in her face at all.  She's probably a messy eater anyway.   

I redrew her with a bib thing, and she also somehow got a lot taller.  Her intended proportions are in the bottom left corner.  

Because I was unhappy with Cake Witch's iterations all being pretty similar, I changed her up as much as I could in this next drawing.  She changed from a tween to a young, fancy lady.  With demon boobs.  Her fork also changed into a spoon.  The thought process behind the demon boobs came from trying to associate her with one of our existing enemies, Meiosis: 

That guy.

The eyes in  her chest are the same as the eyes in her head.  When her eyes are closed, they are open in her chest; when the eyes in her head are open, the eyes from her chest roll up into her head so that the cavities in her chest are empty.  Her midsection is missing to imitate the mouth of Meiosis.  Her missing stomach allows her to eat as much cake as she wants, though she is never truly satisfied because she has no place to put it away.  Her skirt in these illustrations is plain, but the plan was to make it look like the layers of a cake.       

  

I like her a lot, but we aren't using this design.  Perhaps she will strike back one day in some other form.

Time Witch 

I never got really far with initial designs for Time Witch because one was already in the works by Khoa.  I did a couple silhouettes of a witch who swings back on forth on a scythe, and how exactly she would stand on it.    

This is the closest to a full concept I came up with, which is a twisted Time Witch who enjoys other people's pain (I guess??).  I gave up on coming up with designs for Time Witch because Khoa came up with one that I particularly enjoyed (her personality was also completely different from the one I had come up with).  Bonus at the bottom right: Dream Witch with long hair.  

Pirate Sushi Chef Witch 

This is basically Demon Witch if she was someone else.  Hank really wanted a pirate witch of some sort, that was also a sushi chef, and ran a casino.  I doodled this one up during one of our design meetings.  She's got big ol sushi knives as weapons.  

Well, that's all I've got for the witch jam.  It was a lot of fun.  Shortly afterward during one of our meetings, we decided that we needed to downsize the scope of our project (see more here).  Originally, we were planning to have 4 dungeons/witch lairs.  That number has now been reduced to 2, and the winners are Time Witch and Cake Witch.  Congratulations girls, you'll be moving forward...

In the next couple blog posts, I will be showcasing more concepts of these lovely witches.  Stay tuned...