Sprint 4 – Polishing the harbor and player boat.

This week I have been tasked with polishing the habor for the starting page. Basically the idea behind it is that the harbor is the background for the main menu but also the starting location. Once the player hits play, he has control over the boat, gets indications on the controls and try the controls in the harbor before sailing away and starting his journey.

To the harbor I have added a city with vendors on the bottom so that it looks more aesthetically pleasing than only seeing the quay of the harbor. I also added a few boats because the harbor looked very empty.
I also tried different color palettes so my group can vote and we can ask other peoples opinion before making the final decision.

On top of the harbor, I had to redesign the player boat for different reasons. In total I have drawn 4 player boats since the first sprint planning and have wasted a lot of time. This was due to poor communication within the group. At first we had a engine power boat with very dark style, then we decided to go for a lighter no line art boat but still engine powered, finally we made a U-turn and our designer wanted the graphics to fit more with the idea of old chinese or japanese drawing, so that would mean drawing a woodden boat. I first drew a small one as i imagined the sailor to be a lonely man on his small rowing boat but it made it difficult to graphically fit an harpoon, a static light and a rotating light on the same boat.

Finally, I have come up with a bigger boat that ressembles an old woodden ship with a platform both on the back and on the front of it so that it will be easier to fit an harpoon with its animation and a rotating light with its animation.
I made the line art fit the harbor look and I used watercolor because we are planning on making the boat fade into a watercolor splash when he takes damages and when he dies from taking too many hits.

Here is a picture 4 boats i drew for the character player. The final one is the top right.

This past sprint has made me painfully aware of how important it is to have good communication within the group and I would highly encourage anyone to write down design decisions regarding graphics, art style, brush tools, palettes etc in a document that everyone signs on so that artists don’t waste time drawing 4 times the same assets or colouring them 5 times until everyone agrees that looks best or change the concept of the game and everything has to be redrawn.

That’s a good lesson i learnt the hard way.

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