Character Designs Process

Above: Colored character designs on a height chart.

This week I worked on revising the monsters to fit our style better. Colors are chosen based on a mostly purple background. Next I will also try green and brown, based on Tian C.'s concept art, to make sure the green monsters stand out from the foliage.

The colors for Lumi (the paper lantern character) are still a work in progress. As a very friendly character and a source of light, she should stand out with vivid, cheerful colors.

On the far left is the main character. His design is done by Brice P. I decided his color should be close to white so he stands out against the dark background in dim lighting. Instead of stark white, I chose a light bluish grey to keep him from standing out too much in a background that's void of pastel colors.

Monster Designs

Above: Monster Design Ideas

We decided to use a paper craft style for the textures. Because of this, I drew monsters with geometric shapes, folds, flat planes, or shapes otherwise reminiscent of paper.

Since our level theme is anxiety, I chose to use sharp edges, triangles, and twisted forms as the basic shapes for each monster. The style of each eye reflects this. Many monsters have triangle pupils. One monster has eyes based on spiders, and the two monsters on the bottom left have empty eyes. I wanted to make the monsters look unnatural.

My inspiration for the monsters came from some sketches team member Brice P. did for the main characters, which were based on crumpled paper and shards of glass. Alex G., who came up with the original concept, had in mind some sort of Eldritch Abomination.

Above: Monster Design Ideas, Not Colored

We were able to decide on two monster ideas. The monster shaped like a parallelogram is our ground monster, and the very last monster, a flying pyramid that opens up to reveal teeth and a void, is our flying monster.

The other two monsters on the bottom row, the twisted form and the eel, also had many votes, but the team decided they would not fit this particular level design as well. I hope we will be able to use them for another level in the future.

An Introduction

Hello! My name is Nicole Strang, and I am on my last year of college. I am currently taking a set of three classes known as Senior Studio, which span over one year. In this set of classes, the students split into teams to create a video game. All of the students have already taken classes related to game art and design and are about to graduate, and so are focusing on developing content for their personal portfolios.

I am currently a concept artist, texture artist, and a narrative designer for one of these games, a puzzle/platformer with the working title "Dissonance".

I will be sharing art, meeting notes, and design process in the future. Stay tuned!