Game documentation

My last minute visual for game documentation to make everything look more polished (better than a word documentation, right?) Chris write the documentation, I just put it into a visual format. I think it came out good though.

Updated background and ship

Coloured the ship in and made the space background a little less white/bright. Rendered out the animation also. I'm happy with the results, I think the space station looks cute hovering. It's also cool to see the back story coming to life now. 

Making the trailer animation

 I made this background in photoshop from scratch. It didn't look very good at first but once I kept adding detail to it, it actually came out looking half decent which I'm happy with. I was worried it wouldn't look convincing enough or have a 'hand made' feel to it. The planet was pretty easy to make too. I went for blue colours to add to the "sci-fi" theme.
The animation is for the trailer which at the beginning will give some backstory to the game. It will talk about how the space station is broken and heading towards a sun. So my animation is of the space station hovering, stuck in the one place which I animated in premiere pro.

 First concept for the space station

Second, uncoloured concept.

Added details to looks pretty

Just added in the final details for that last little touch. The custom made drop shadows really make everything look like they're inside the environment. It was challenging painting more smoother, 3d details onto a 2d/pixel style level. But once I got started it became much easier and less daunting. 

Adding nature

Enter the second level 'biodome' themed. We slowly introduce elements of nature here, suggesting some scientific experiments have been done and neglected, leaving the plant life to go wild. I bought a new tablet and was excited to try it so painting foliage was surprisingly exciting for me. Some rooms have some scientific experiments such as jars with flowers and chemistry sets while others have complete overgrowth with brown walls, cracks, vines and moss.

I made black foregrounds with vines and plant life. Some of the foregrounds in the earlier rooms have wines intertwining with the vines to suggest the plant life is beginning to take over.

The plug in console animation I made. The character had to line up exactly 50 pixels away from the console for this to work. 

The new and improved dialogue box. During the tutorial these boxes will appear with text, prompting the player on the controls and hints to solving the puzzles. I made the new dialogue box with more shape as to make it more interesting. 

Bits and pieces I've been working on

 A capture of me having difficulty rendering out the frames. i figured it out in the end.

 My attempt at making the dialogue box. The first one was too "steampunk". Unintentional but typical of my style so I had to make it more minimalist.  

Trying to make a drop shadow for the character currently but it's just not looking right. It needs to be detached from the player so it doesn't look strange when he jumps.

And the animated dialogue box. I'm proud of how smooththe animation came out even though it's simple.

Idle animation

My many attempts at the idle animation....
(it was really time consuming and difficult to draw the legs bending. I'm terrible at perspective and anatomy) 

And for the final one

Background + new character walk

I've drawn a background for one of the rooms on the first tutorial level. It's sort of a 'wind down and take a breath' room where not much action is happening, to wind down from the other rooms. I think I'll still add some details to it though like an oil can on the floor and maybe a wall light. This is supposed to be a broken down robot.



New walk cycle! I've added the red, bobbing head and flashing light. He's look much better and more lively I feel. Chris said that when you animate the body moving during the walk it looks strange but I think the bobbing head compensates for that. 

Work update

I've drawn the tileset for the second level which is introducing a foliage/jungle aesthetic. I drew over the existing tileset adding vines, branches, cracks, grass and faded colours. 

My task for this week is to draw a background for one of the rooms in the tutorial in 'smooth style'. This is just a rough sketch of ideas. I'm thinking a giant sleeping/broken down robot chained up may be interesting.

A good tutorial for drawing vines (for the tileset, 2nd level)

http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-a-Jungle-Vine

Energy Bolt

I redesigned the energy bolt. At first I had one with yellow that had halo like shapes in it. It didn't look right so I changed it to be like this. Not sure about it yet though.