What now?
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Entry Journal 2018/02/08
During the past week, me and my group have worked on a game called Aetherial (concept designed by Team Vampire). A shoot’em up project loosely based on the Disney movie Treasure Planet and with some influences from the steampunk art style. At the first week’s sprint planning, I (as a graphic student) got assigned with figuring out how the player avatar was going to look like. Guess what this week’s entry journal is going to be about! Aetherial takes place in a distant future, on a planet called Aventia. There, scientists are experimenting with a substance called Aether which, as a result of a horrendous experiment gone wrong, causes rifts to be open in the sky. Those rifts enable alien monsters to infiltrate the realm of Aventia. The player takes the role of a ship that traverses the skies to fight the unwelcome guests by shooting harpoons and avoiding projectiles using a dash mechanic. In order for me to come up with a somewhat good-looking ship design, I got into the process of doing research on the steam punk genre. This usually meant scrolling through hundreds of pictures and videos on the internet and gathering as much inspiration as I could. The main aesthetic approach for the player avatar craft was to make it look light, fast and easy so it could avoid incoming projectiles. Therefore I based my entire design on creating a vehicle that resembled a space ship rather than a 18th century pirate vessel, as suggested by Disney’s Treasure Planet movie. Shortly after I made a few sketches, each with its own variations, to further present my idea of the vehicle.
One of the few issues I encountered was incorporating the harpoon cannon into the design, as well as justifying its functionality. If you take a look at the 4th and 5th sketch you will notice that the cannon placement is not ideal since it can shoot in all directions except up. It was decided that the best solution to this would be to have the cannon at the side of the ship and rotate it 180 degrees. My fellow team members settled on the 4th sketch to be the final design of the ship. During the coloring phase I tried my best to add wood and metal textures to the ship, as well as canvas texture to the sails, but at the same time not to put too much detail into it, since it would have made the animation process too complicated (also because of laziness). The final result is shown below.
The big white circle would have been where the cannon sprite was gonna be attached. The shape of the vessel was, to some extent, inspired by the initial design that was presented in Team Vampire’s Concept Document. However, during our Sprint Review meeting on Friday, it was decided that the drawing had no connection to the steam punk guide style and that it gave the appearance of a car instead of a flying boat that hunts alien creatures with harpoons. So over the course of the following day, I spent my time working on two extra sketches.
And the left sketch was chosen…
At last, the above photo represents the final player avatar sprite. The ship has a golden plated armor at the front to defend itself from upcoming projectiles. That is also where the cannon sprite will be placed. However, the sails are there temporarily; they will be removed for further animation. I am happy with the ultimate result and think that the overall aspect of the ship suits the steam punk style guide and also works well with the placeholder background and the sprites implemented so far. So that is all for this week’s journal entry. See you next week!  |
