Final Poster

We are proud to show the finalized poster for Shove Aside! Underneath, you can see the overall process of the poster.

Color Comps

The next task for the poster is color comps.  We wanted to make sure that the color palette we chose conveyed the right atmosphere, so these were the choices we were deciding from.

In the end, we decided on the purple sky to give a sense of mystery.

Value Thumbs

Line work on the poster is done! The next step is defining the values before the coloring phase.

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!

Poster Creation

The next task for conception is the poster design. It will be a challenge to capture the essence of the game in one picture. The first part of the design process is figuring out what will be highlighted. As a narrative-driven game, we felt that the characters and and iconic location in the town should be prominently featured. The next step is looking for inspiring movie posters that provoke the same idea as the game. A few examples:

With the reference images and our own ideas of what the design should be, we created many thumbnails to see where the composition could go. Once a thumbnail was agreed upon to have the strongest impression, work on the final design has begun! We'll keep you posted as things come together.

State of the Environment 1

Going to be posting the updates on the state of the first shot of our environment over the next couple weeks. Here is the concept piece and a screenshot of the current 3D and Textures.

Gun Battery: First Shot  - Concept

3DS Max Screenshot

Secondgiving!

Since I moved away from Wisconsin to go to college out here in Washington, a couple other displaced friends of mine and I started the grand holiday tradition that we now refer to as "Secondgiving." Secondgiving is celebrated sometime the weekend before or after Thanksgiving, depending on schedules of those involved, and we make all the standard Thanksgiving favorites for those who can't go home for Thanksgiving (and those who can) really, all the members of our Washington family-by-choice. This year the whole team was in attendance, along with a bunch of other friends.

 Danny either discovered that his camera had a panorama function, or just decided it was a god time to play with it, as he took a bunch of pictures for us!

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.

Team Building: Favorites!

Hello all!  Today's post will be about team building.  One thing that helps people connect is common interests.  It's how we relate to one another, right?.  But what do you do when you're so eager to know someone, you just want to instantly be friends?  We've come up with the perfect solution.

Don't let all those pesky extra words get in the way: just work on a spreadsheet like us!  A simple, efficient, and interactive way to know almost everything you'd want to know about someone.  Instead of putting words together in your brain, just filter to the golden nuggets of information you need to truly bond with another human being.  So the way it's broken down is easy: rows of categories and columns for each participant's answers.  "What's your favorite food?" No need to ask questions.  Make it a statement!  "You like cheeseburgers!"

Check out this absurdly cool chart!

Joking aside, it's a great little game to figure out what each person likes and dislikes.  A set of prompts that you can refer to when you need to buy Christmas presents, can't decide on lunch, or whatever other disputes you need settled.  The categories can really be anything.  So far, we have about 25, ranging from games, movies, music, animals, even worst fears.  It constantly gets updated with new categories or revised answers, and we had a great time spending hours figuring out out favorite Pokemon, books, and actors/actresses.

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!