Line Quality

Today's post will be on line quality. One of the key pieces to the art style for Shove Aside is the thick, graphic lines. As we are going for a gritty comic style, it helps breathe life into the world. In the poster, we wanted as much variety as we could get to differentiate the different materials in the world. The texture of dry patchy grass is different from a thick leather jacket or tree bark. Each part is simulated with different splotches and strokes to best evoke the feeling of that material as well as provide some artistic flair. In the examples above, you can see the different types of line quality used for the base of a tree, Dani's hair, patches of grass, tree bark, Dani's jacket, bushes, and Gabe's pants. Stay tuned for more updates!

Rough Dani Push

Rough animation of Dani beginning to push something.

Dani Model

Dani Idle Animation

Playblast of Dani's idle animation.

Dani Walk Cycle

Playblast of Dani's walk cycle.

State of the Environment 3

Made some changes to the plant textures, added a temporary skybox, and added color to the remaining untextured elements. Not to mention adding Dani to the scene! Still working out alpha blending issues within unity, but the scene is in and playable. 

Unity Screenshot - First camera placement

Unity Screenshot - Panned first camera placement

Unity Screenshot - Panned first camera placement

Animations: Take One!

Some rough, first pass animations done for Dani, since her rig and base mesh are functioning with a rough pass at skinning on it. 

First off we have a first pass walk cycle:

Next we have an idle weight shift:

                                 

And finally, crossing her arms:

Head of the Class

Progress update for Dani and Gabe.  With the final designs nailed down, we begin working on the creation of assets to bring the game together!  These are the current head models for Dani and Gabe respectively.  Their featureless, hairless craniums are rendered in porcelain of added creepy effect.  The bodies will soon be completed and connected to make our full characters, and the next task will be clothing them.

Design Process for Dani

Hello there!  I'm Danny Huynh, the concept artist for the team.  I take broad ideas and create concept art for characters, environments, and anything else that helps to refine and nail down the look and feel of the game.  Basically, I make pretty things.  Ryan previously talked about the inspiration and direction we want the game to go, so today I'll talk about the design process for one of the characters, Dani.

When I first joined the project, I had a rough sketch and a character background.  I read through to make sure I understood the character, and focusing on the main aspects of her personality, I needed to make a strong willed, outspoken, take charge kind of character.  Before I started fleshing out her character, I wanted to have some of the more key physical features nailed down, namely her hair and clothing.

Clothing and hair thumbnails.

One of my first sketches of Dani.

With feedback from the rest of the team, this is one of the first sketches I did of Dani.  This was before I had the design elements applied.  As you can see, her proportions and style are pretty average.  We wanted something a little more stylized.  Something with the grit of Backwater Gospel, the bold style of The Gorillaz, and the unique rendering of Ashley Wood.  Taking in mind the inspirations for the game, my next sketch came out like this.

Notice the sharper angles, the play on proportions.

For being a leader-type character, I wanted to play with having a heavier lower body to give her a more grounded look.  The other character in contrast is much slimmer.  With this as the newer reference of how I would draw her, I played with some brushes in Photoshop to get a better vision of how she would look with texture.

Dani with texture and thick ink lines.

Near final concept of Dani.

This is the closest to final concept that I've gotten.  Reassessing her design, I decided to go back a few steps to fix some problems.  Her baggy pants wasn't reading quite the way I wanted, and with the jacket, having her come off as bottom heavy was a bit difficult.  So, to remedy the situation:

More thumbnails, more silhouettes, MORE EVERYTHING.

I quickly pumped out some more silhouettes and thumbs to play more on her proportions.  In the end, I've decided to flip her design, making her more top heavy (makes sense with the jacket right?) and to have thinner legs.  Another feature that most characters will have is exaggerated hands.  Most of the stylization will take place more in the body than the face.  Even though the previous concepts won't be accurate to the final design, the work wasn't done in vain.  It helped to visualize what the quality of the final piece will look like, and it'll be interesting seeing how different the final design will look compared to the original sketches!