Conceptualizing the Behemoth

As a task for the second week, I were to start making our ”Behemoth” main character for our game. It was to be a large, towering Mech (in contrast with the large airship of the original concept document), and it was supposed to feel like it was much larger than anything else on the screen.

I started out with a rough silhouette sketch to estimate what kind of shape I wanted it to be, and the general shape I wanted it to have. This was a good idea, as we could then use this rough silhouette sketch as the sprite for the test-version of the game. Once I was happy with the general shape of the behemoth, I started doing the linework for it. We wanted everything to have a simple, yet still rough look to it, so I made every line thin and angular.
As we changed the character to be a Mech instead of a flying ship, I really wanted to add some legs to it, but in the final version of the sprite, there are none. This is because I envisioned it top-heavy, and that the legs would not be seen from above, making it both easier to animate, and less cluttered. I am not completely sure this was the right decision however – and it might change in the future.

Another feature of the Behemoth is its cannon, which in our case is situated in the center of the sprite. I really wanted to have two guns, one on each side, instead – but i decided against it because I think it would be too much of a hassle to program for our programmer. I took inspiration from an old howitzer gun as we don’t want the vehicles in the game to look too futuristic, but it shoots missiles instead of ordinary shells, seeing how they are to explode if the player presses the shoot button again.

The last feature of the Behemoth is its shield, and I decided to make it part of an ordinary energy forcefield around the Behemoth. I did not work on it for this particular week, but I did however make some concepts around how I wanted it to look, mostly because I wanted to see if I could make it circular, yet still match the angular, mechanical shape of the Behemoth.

I am in progress with animating each part of the Behemoth now, and initially we aim to just make it look good as it shoots, walks and dies. Once that, and the other basic elements are finished I want to give it some additional animations, including breaking off parts of it as it is damaged, and having the segments of its body to vibrate/move independently of eachother, to make it look more mechanical. I also want to add smoke effects and things like that, but only once we feel like we’ve progressed far enough with the other parts of the game.

In the end, I’m happy with how the Behemoth turned out. I still want to make changes to it, but it will have to wait until other parts of our concept is finished.

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