Game Design Week 4 – The Making of a Large Monster
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I’ve been working on several things during these past weeks, but not all of them are so interesting to read about. So, one of the most fun task I’ve undertaken was to create and draw the large enemy fish that is chasing the player for the duration of the game play. For two sprints I – among other things – made a concept illustration, changed and refined that design, and tuned the colours. In the planning stage, I made some quick concept illustrations to capture what traits the big monster should have. Different directions I tried out includes head shape, body shape and size, proportions, eyes, fins, maliciousness etc. Getting these illustrations to the team for approval is a first stage in character design so they also could have a say in the direction I would continue in.
The concepts that were liked more than the others were merged and fleshed out and I made a bigger, shaded versions. I also added two submarines in the illustration to indicate size. Some feedback I then got was that it looked too nice and curious, but a good kind of eerie. I also didn’t think it was enough “fish looking”, with paws and fin ears. So, what I brought with me to the final illustration was the shape of the head, the wide mouth, and the pointy eyes.
For the more polished final version of the monster I first did a sketch outline of the general shape and some details. In the sketching stage I redid the the design a few times, before any colouring, so I would save myself some work and time. Moving on to the painting of the creature, I used a fast technique to make the drawing more solid by using a large general brush and high opacity, solely in grey scale. This enabled fast shape creation, and finding lighting and shadows faster. I then moved on to put some colour on the monster, and did this by adding an adjustment layer and changed the hues. By using this tool I could be very flexible in my colour choices, testing out what looked good by simply changing some values instead of re-painting the whole thing. Below is a basic three picture gif to illustrate my process.
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