Week 2: Initial Concepting and Prototype

Hey guys, Adam here again to tell you about the initial concept work and prototype for our game.

So, after heading home, the lot of us all began to draw our ideas for concept art (shown in each person's introduction) in an attempt to gather a general visual idea for the game, so we could refine our designs. All of us took part in this part of the process, with myself also creating a mood-board and style guide for the game; Hendrick, Jeric and Nerys creating primarily concept art, and Christie also working on the prototype

After compiling some images of games we wanted to attempts to emulate the visual style of, we began to come up with some general guidelines for designs.

The main themes we wanted to focus on were:
Cute and vibrant visuals.
Very soft shapes with no corners.
De-emphasizing the limbs of animals and player characters.
The contrast of natural and man-made objects.

Several ideas were tossed around, but overall we settled upon a low-poly style with very basic, rounded shapes for natural features; and sharper, but still basic, shapes for man-made objects.

We were also considering detached feet and hands, like in Rayman for the animals and possibly the players.

Whilst we were hard at work creating concept art, Christie was also busy getting started on the initial prototype of the game, and created a simplified version of the game where two players could move, pick up a chicken cube and score a point by returning it to their spawn point.

At this point, the game is getting well under way, and all of us are happy with the amount of progress made. We managed to nail a visual style for the game, and headed off to work on more focused concept art, and to create a more complete prototype.

I hope you guys found this look into our ideas and workflow interesting.

Thank you!