Heart of the Machine

When it comes to the design of the health meter for our game I drew many quick design I had on my mind. All just to see what I could come up with.

Overall the design stemmed from having a heart-shaped tank, filled with red goop, that was being surrounded by gears and other steampunk-esque props. So this is a couple of the sketches I made trying to find the one I would continue work on.

In the end all the concept I had made for the health meter basically were scrapped as I felt it needed to be more solid and not so distracting from sole purpose of the meter; displaying your health. I then started looking for easier shapes still existing in steampunk in an attempt to make the health meter appealing and useful at the same time.

Focusing on the heart as the center I found some nice looking steampunk-esque cylindrical canisters with some nice details on them. And that in turn was what I came up with.

And that’s how it came out! After the first draft anyway. At this stage the metal has a disgusting colour and feels very flat. So after the feedback from the group I went back and changed the colour of the metal to make it look a bit better.

 There we are! The colour all fixed up and more rusty looking you might say. But still there are problems. I get some things that the group want to change and that I definitely can agree on. The image is still very flat, there needs to be more shadow and life to it. Also that red texture is a hideous heap of trash, I would not want to watch that go up nor down. Luckily those things are easily fixed.
Final product! I have now given the metal more life making it look a lot better. But the big improvement here is the red goop filling the container. I had some problem figuring out how I wanted the liquid to look as it is basically magic red water that is your life. But I made it simple and nice to look at by placing a water texture as an overlay on top of a simple red background.

After Words

I think it came out pretty well if I do say so myself. I started off  with many fun ideas and then didn’t really use them at all as I saw my fault in making them too distracting. But what I then came up with was simple and pleasant to look at. I always have had the problem with making my colouring flat which also is evident here, but with some polish and tweaking it got sorted out.

“NOOooOOOooOOO! NOOooo..!”
– Luke Skywalker, The Empire Strikes Back