Enemy design – Fish
|
The design for the enemy fish was made mainly by focusing on keeping the aesthetic of old japaneese mythological creatures in mind – and how these where portrayed in paintings from feudal Japan. This was something i focused on implementing mainly in the face of the creature, that has a lot of similarities to these. Furthermore, the design had to look like an emeny, and like it could deal a moderate amount of damage and move fairly fast. This was made by giving the character a tinting of red, something that went beyond the original colour design for this character, and by exagareting its streamlined shape. I did not want to give it too harsh features, and hence the entire design consist of flowing lines, but with sharp ends to these lines. This was in order to still stay within the aestethic bounds of the concept. The colours used where colours that would stand out of the backround, that was a dark blue, these became white, light blue, and grey – to be as distinct as possible from the surroundings and the player, that would be a warmer tone while the enemies all had colder tones in their colours. The lightness of the fish is also chosen to mirror the mist that will be floating around and will be a big part of the game, its general aestethic and mechanics – in order to tie the design togheter with the world. The fish design for this particular enemy was chosen to emphasize that this was a rather common enemy, being a fish in the water – but also a relatively fast enemy, that would move in a fluent pattern, unlike the other enemies in the game. Doing the animation of the character was proven to be a challenge, since I could not get the fluent movement I wanted on only 12 frames/ second. I also tried a simpler variant where I only animated the fins of the fish in different layers, but realised this would look to stiff for the game, and more robotic than an actual living fish would be, I also decided to simpify the design for the fish, since I realised painting the fins in such detail would take too much time, and I wouldn´t be able to get it done, and have the other work that needed doing fit such detail on the time given for the assignment. The finished design:
The fish as how it would look in game:
 |
