Bottlenecking?

As mentioned in my last blog, I was in an awkward place about environment art because the levels had yet to be determined. We were kind of at a stand still for bit, trying to figure out where to go. I had Kyle do some sports props like water bottles, flags, and duffle bags, just to scatter in parts of the levels so it could look like sports players actually go to these fields.

But there was some confusion about art style. Then I realized a fully-done asset never made it into the game last semester. 1.) Because our shader for the game would not allow for all of our texture maps to be applied to assets in-game, and 2.) because there wasn't enough time!

I felt a little bad that my art bible didn't get across what I had intended it to. But it's all about communication. We had an artist meeting on Tuesday to clear things up. We also ended up talking about a lot more things than we intended to (which is definitely not a bad thing).

Mostly, we talked about characters. There was still some debate about how we were going to do armour, or if we were going to add some differences on the fire and ice team's models. At the time, we were considering doing customizable armour. There would be a few armour pieces the player could choose to be on their character. I sketched up a couple of concept "sets" we could potentially put in the game.

The base armour set (left) and a "rock" set (right).

This was recently scrapped because it was just becoming a technical issue and we were worrying about animation problems. So we decided that the jersey textures would be where all the customization was going.

In class I got some good suggestions to make the designs on the jerseys more bold. Sibyl's stripes on the characters were just an idea, but I hadn't really put much thought into it yet. Our teacher, Marc, pointed out that the stripes were so thin in some cases, that they barely made a difference. I got to thinking about more interesting stripe designs I could do.

In class we also ended the discussion of whether or not we should do male or female characters. While this was an idea we've always had and been wanting to do, after some talk with our teacher and with each other, we just didn't see enough reason to do a female. It would double our work load in a lot of cases, and it just wasn't worth it.

Chris also got started on a new fire level this week. Instead of the side of a volcano, he thought of putting the fire level inside of a volcano, or in a volcanic cave (he changed his ideas a few times :P). We now have a great whitebox of a level, and we suddenly have a lot more direction in terms of environmental art. From last week until now I've done a few environment concepts.

"Inside a Volcano" level idea concept.

After Chris changed to his "Crystal Cavern" idea, and we had a whitebox.

Our other level is going to be a "mushroom forest/swamp." I embraced this idea because I just love giant glowy mushrooms.

To get an idea of the density and variety of foliage.

Alongside that I was also doing character stuff for Sibyl. I realized I never did a character turn-around, because I was the one doing all of the character stuff last semester (excluding animations). Character modelers typically need a turn-around to determine proportion and just see the character from all angles.

This is when, as a concept artist, I start questioning myself and lose my creative freedom. I used a reference for this, of the "ideal" male body. Comparing that to my original designs made me second guess myself over and over. The proportions of this turn-around is a lot different than my drawings of the mage when I was doing it without a reference.

Today, I worked with Sibyl and looked at the proportions of her 3D model. We made a few minor changes here and there. The biggest one was the head. She had already made two versions of the mage: one with a proportional, "real"-sized head, and one with a bigger head, which was closer to my past drawings. We both agreed that the one with the bigger, unrealistic head looked better. It made me feel better, because it proved that character models don't have to be realistically proportional to look good. It also proves helpful to have an experienced character modeler doing this, because she knows how to translate my style into 3D.

I had to do some detail shots of the character for her too, so she knows how some of the armour is working.

These might seem like silly things to fuss over, but it's the small details that count. I made sure Sibyl knew how the hood was connected to the shirt, and how the boots were shaped. My other drawings didn't do this well enough.

Other than that, I was working on UI. We are completely revamping our menus, and I'm working with our new programmer, Erin, on those. We're using uniSWF, a program that allows us to put SWF's from Flash directly into Unity. This way I can make fancier buttons and UI animations.

I did a quick mock-up of our new spell-selection screen.

When you enter a game, you have to pick your spells.

The idea behind this is that you're a mage student taking notes off of the official Mageball rulebook. The rulebook (left) would be a fancy piece of parchment with intricate lettering. It would list the name of the spell, and its mana cost. On the other side (right) is your notebook parchment. As you choose your spells, they would be "written" in your notebook. It would be a dirtier piece of paper with doodles all over it and rough handwriting.

When I showed it to Chris, he had trouble understanding what exactly was happening. When he got it, he loved the idea, but suggested I change the rulebook to an actual book instead. The problem with that was that a book takes up a lot of horizontal space, which the screen doesn't have much of. We want the UI to take up as little screen space as possible. Chris said I should just have half of the book on screen then.

  
Everyone agreed that this version was much easier to understand. And we're definitely keeping the cute doodles in.