Underwater weeds
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As our game “Selfish” is set in a fish tank, we need to have an environment that somewhat mimics this fact. This means creating assets that would act as decorations. Plants are a common thing you would find in a fish tank either real or plastic. After some quick Google searches I picked a tall, leafy type of plant to start with and began to create it in Photoshop. After drawing the spine I added leaves and turned it into a brush.
With this framework to start with I added a single color that would allow us to use this as concept art and place it in our game. Once in the game we could adjust the colors, alpha or whatever was needed to created a varied effect to make it look like we had multiple plants or that they were at different distances from the player.
With the first plant concept finalized I only had to make it look more appealing rather than mostly flat colors. Starting with the taller, thin plant I had to add veins to the leaves. Using the color palette I chose a lighter and darker color to create the general contrast needed to see the veins. I also added a lighter color to the edges of the leaves to give them a better effect overall.
The last thing to finish it off was to add the light and shadow. First I added the lighting. The top of the plant is closest to the top of the water and should receive the largest amount of light. The tops of the leaves are also facing the light and should receive more light than the underside of the leaves.
The shadows came next. The bottom of the plant is at the bottom of the fish tank and also in the middle of some other elements. This will receive the least amount of light so it should have the strongest shadows. Additional shadowing should be on the underside of the leaves and wherever there might be an overlap.
With one plant finished, I started to create a second plant as concept art.  |
