Building Alliances pt10

Thumbnails

I wanted to create some thumbnails to assist our 2D lead in the production of some 3D assets for the render for our game. As we have been working on different designs for potential monsters as well as the environment, I created some illustrations that would be able to work as inspiration for Louie to work from to help with his 3D production and his design work. I started out with the creatures and created a mood board of different mutated animals to help me think of some characteristics that would work well in the design of these mutated animals. 

Among this mood board are various different animals and creatures from giant oversized insects to deer and birds. As these designs were going to be inspiration for a 3D render, I opted to focus on smaller animals that would be easier to work with in 3D software. The larger concepts and creations were being left to Sean our 3D lead so I didn't need to worry about making any huge, exaggerated bosses but some smaller mobs that would maybe have small health pools and work as jump scares or minor inconveniences within the gameplay of our game. I decided to go with one air born  creature and one that would be on the floor. Throughout the process of this brief, we have considered different elements of the design work such as where the creatures would come from or hide. I wanted to make two types of characters so that we have a concept for a creature that would potentially attack from above and hide in drain pipes or holes in ceilings as well as one floor type that would lurk in gaps, in trash cans and among piles of boxes or storage. We want this game to be scary so having different jump scare elements set on different levels not just in front of the players POV adds extra dimension and stops the gameplay and jump scares feeling repetitive. 

These are the two concept pieces I created for Louie to potentially use as reference when he is working on his 3D design work. Using my reference mood board, I loved the concept of distorting and deforming the bones of the animals to give them strange and horrific silhouettes as well as characteristics that make them much scarier concepts. The bat no longer has its normal anatomy of having its hands connected to its wings and now has its own set of arms. Its legs are longer and its wings have become bone that has mutated and grown out of its spine. It's mouth is torn and mutilated to make way for the extra and overexaggerated  teeth and jaw space. The rat also has longer and more unusual limbs and spends more time walking on its back legs. Its spine is fractured and pushing shards out of its back. I think that both character designs could potentially work very well as minor threats to the player within our game and would work well used as jump scares to heighten tension and make the player overthink, making our bigger bosses even more terrifying.  

I also worked on some environmental sketches for Louie, specifically working on some plastic inspired trees for him to build and place around our game locations. I created two sheets of tree designs inspired by two different plastic sheets, one being plastic tarp sheeting and the other being bubble wrap. 

The designs on the left side are all inspired by the plastic tarp. Even though the animals in this universe are mutating due to the microplastics, nothing is to say these same infectious microplastics wouldn't have an effect on other life such as the plants and trees found within the environment. The first set of trees were inspired by plastic tarp sheeting. Due to our game being a horror, I found tarp sheeting is used to show abandonment throughout a lot of different media. Its often found torn hanging off barbed wire or blowing in the wind shredded on a fence. I wanted to use this for some eerie tree designs of my own where it looked like the trees were growing tarp looking deformities. The second sheet I used bubble wrap for reference. This is not particularly from any kind of horror franchise or reference but I thought it would be interesting to imagine some trees that were growing bubble like leaves and mutations. I made 4 different designs with different trees that look as though they would belong in different places with some looking more swampy and some looking more natural park. These design sheets will work as inspiration for Louie to use in his 3D work!

Here are the final pieces produced by our 3D lead Louie! They're really cool and match the vibe of the game we are creating perfectly! Louie did a really amazing job on making these designs look entirely unique and fit perfectly into our game franchise.