Winter 2014 Progress

Dissonance has received a gameplay overhaul at the beginning of the quarter, but that's not stopping the art team! Here's some of the concept art I created for assets in Level 1, Chapter 1. The art is sketched in pencil, inked with a felt tip marker and brush pen, and colored in photoshop.

Boulders, shells, and message in a bottle designs

Memory shard design

Tree designs

Various designs. Of note: the finalized memory shard design for Level 1.

Sidekick Concept Art

Lumi Turnaround

This is our sidekick, Lumi. I chose for her the form of a paper lantern because it fit perfectly with the art style. At the early stages of design, she was an important secondary main character who had abilities to affect the environment. However, we decided to cut a lot of complex gameplay ideas because we don't have a dedicated programmer. Instead, we will play to our team's strength in art. Lumi is currently most important to narrative.

Choosing what exactly Lumi is has been a long process. We had ideas for her as a robot, a fire spirit, an animal, and a lantern. It was only after we established the papercraft style in early October that we could narrow it down to something that fits with the environment. When I chose this look we also had the idea that other similar characters would be scattered around the background and revived to increase the light level. That idea was also scrapped more recently in favor of collectibles.

Initial design sketches in pencil for Lumi as a paper lantern

From this narrowed down early design sheet, I had the team choose favorites and critique the looks, similar to the early monster concept art sheet. However, while the favorite monsters were chosen unanimously, Lumi's design was subject to more critique and took more time to research and design overall. The geometric style fit best with the art style. I mixed this with the ribbons in the final design to give Lumi some character. I imagine in Lumi's idle animation that she would float gently in place, and when she moves her ribbons trail behind her.

Updated Height Chart

An updated height chart

This is the height chart I created for the second pitch, using warmer colors and the updated main character design. Tian C. is working on getting the overall color scheme working with the new direction of our game. (In a nutshell, we are doing less horror and more dream-like overall mood.)

You'll notice I left off the giant spider from this image. That character is back in the concept art stage. He needs a proper turnaround in the papercraft style so we can model him. I'm not certain if we are still incorporating a boss battle at all, most likely we'll discuss this over winter break.

Pitches and Playtesting

Today, Jeff C. and I attended an event to pitch Dissonance to an animation class, with the goal of finding animators for the game. Several other related events took place around the same time, including an event to playtest games and Coffee Hour, a weekly get-together for students who work in the computer labs. We remained until all events ended, showing off our game to several people, including game designers, writers, professors, and animators.

Our team leads were unable to attend today, so Jeff and I handled the pitch. Jeff is our sound effect lead and also works on level design. I'm a concept and texture artist. Together, we were able to talk about the direction of our game and present our work so far. As people came our way to ask about our game, it was Jeff who guided players through the game example and me who presented a condensed version of our pitch to anybody who missed it.

It's incredibly wonderful to see the entire team's work together in one location and to get so much positive feedback from others. We still have a ways to go with our literal game, but the concepts are evolved to a point where I can imagine how our game will play in the end.

This was a great experience! I made a lot of notes about presenting our game to others. For one, our current game pitch is a little lengthy. I will definitely be creating another (more condensed) pitch for future use. I like the idea of getting a dedicated writer on our team, so I will be preparing a second pitch especially for that purpose. There's a little work to be done in the meantime, though. With one week of the quarter left, we'll be wrapping up with a blockout of our first level. I expect to continue working on this project through the winter break.

Texturing Begins

Here's a sneak peak at the texture I'm currently painting!

3D model work by Olsen D.C. and Tian Chen.