Background for game and main menu

This week and the end of last week, my focus was on making the background for the game. I had previously made a rough sketch with some coloring to get a feeling of how we wanted the background in the actual game to look.

I set up to start drawing, by using very broad strokes of different shades of blue and green to try and get a nice color for the water, I used the smudge brush to make the transition look natural and blended.When I was happy with the color, it was time to draw the outlines in different layers. One layer with the sand, one for the cliff in the background, one for the plants and one for the rocks in the foreground. I made my lines in black, something like a rough line art, which I then filled with the color I wanted and used a smudge brush to blend the black lines into the color to make shades and structure for the different assets. I finished with erasing the edge to make a smoother finish.

I saved the finished rocks and plants as separate assets to be implemented in unity and for the rest of the background I saved the sand and cliff together with the blue layer. I also added another blue layer ( a copy of the original) between the sand and cliff layer in a lower opacity, about 35% or so to make the cliff seem further away. And another low opacity blue layer on top of the sand to make the sand look like its inside the aquarium.

When I started with the main menu background, we had talked about wanting it to be about the same as the game background, but with planks as buttons and the title on top.
The planks and title was going to be separate assets that would be added by Rebecka later.
I started with the previous background and moved the plants around to make it seem like an aquarium.

When I had the plants in the right place and all needed layers visible, I started working on adding things that were for the main menu only. Since we had been talking about having a a part of the narrative somewhere like the “how to play” page, I got the idea to make the main menu tell you the basics of why you’re on rampage in the aquarium.
So i started sketching a scene where Stephen is on one side looking hungry and upset, while the enemies are on the other side with all the food. When I was happy with the sketch, I made the line art in black and then colored with the normal hard brush. I used the smudge brush a bit on the sign to make it look older and to give the wooden stick more life.

The end result was much better then I anticipated but I’m still not completely happy with how the enemies look, It was difficult to draw them from a different angle and I struggled a lot with them not looking like I wanted. In the end they look fine but not as good as they could, if I had the time to spend on fixing it.

About Mikaela Åhrlin

2016 Graphics

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