Dare 2014 Week 6/7

Pretty much in the last week now. We've a couple days next week but that'll mostly be for last minute preparations. We'll have a decent build by the end of this week with everything we wanted to include implemented in time for Protoplay. In the last couple of weeks I've been mainly focusing on getting all the extra UI/screen info ready and working on the game trailer. Here's the game trailer first.

Wish I could say I've enjoyed the UI design anywhere near as much as the character design but I can't. It's something I always feel I struggle with and this lot has been no exception.

Here's the last model I completed at the start of week six. We put this up on twitter around that time but I've since fixed the roof  which was way too large. I couldn't see it til it was pointed out! Was a strange one.

Theres a couple more small bits and bobs to add to this one too but this is almost all the 3d stuff we will have in the game for Protoplay in one shot.

I finished up the start screen today Quite happy with the overall look. Shortpaw will be the 3D model with some animation over final screen. This was mostly created using existing models obviously with a couple of extras modelled and textured then the whole thing was comped in Photoshop with extra painting on top to tidy up some areas, add depth and add a bit extra detail to some parts.

I made most of the UI over a mocked up shot of the game so I could get an idea how it was going to look in-game.

The icon is a bit of a failure actually. The initial one on the left here was way to busy for an app icon. I sort of hope we get some other use out of it. Even with the gradient fading out the background I think it's a bit weak. If I get a chance I'll have another crack at it before the weekend. 

Below is a bunch of the UI and game asset stuff I made. All done with Photoshop.

Dare 2014 Week 5

Had a tricky week 3 working out how to best texture the environment elements but seem to have it working with the characters now. 

Here are some renders of the models and textures. So far we have the main character and the frog enemy animated and working in the game with the rabbit enemy nearly there too.

And a bunch of development sketches for the worm enemy. This is the process I've used for all the characters for Lapin. A stage of rough idea sketches, then discuss with the team and take the best ones forward for some refinement and further development to arrive at a final design we are happy with.

The environment is a textured ring. Actually only a quarter of a ring but I did it like this to do seamless textures.

The idea being we can procedurally load in different texture maps as required and have the seamlessly match up while that segment of the ring is off screen. This should hopefully allow us to have some different environments at some point quite easily.

Below is a render from Mudbox and an example of the ground textures as seen through the "camera" of the game.

I also got some renders done for our poster. Layouts were done by Gary. Went to town with the render settings but I'm not sure it was worth it for what we ended up with even though it's pretty nice quality. 

Might have to colour correct the frogs to separate them from Shortpaws trousers a touch for the actual poster.

I'm going to be cracking on with environment elements for the rest of the week and probably some storyboarding for the trailer video.

Dare 2014 End of Week 2

Having a blast at Dare. I can't tell you how much I enjoy going into "work" and sitting drawing and painting and modelling characters all day. It doesn't feel like work in the slightest.

I'm loving the constant work with low poly characters and have been working out some more tricks in mudbox for texturing them efficiently.

This week I've done our main characters who is now rigged and being animated by Gary, and just about got the first enemy character done. Just have to do the armour for his various levels.

I'm hoping to get to some environment stuff early to mid next week so we can get that loaded into the game and see how it all works.

Here are some extra renders from the second part of this week. 

Dare

Graduation and uni is all wrapped up. Had a fantastic time on the day and at the Grad ball too. 

Next thing on the agenda is the Dare to be Digital games competition that is held every year in Dundee by Abertay University. 

In the run up to hand ins for uni Gary and I found a couple of programmers and an audio guy and came up with a game idea and entered the competition. 

Well, we got in.

Here is our pitch video. The animation was all done by Gary and most of the concept art and storyboard section was by me.

Dare 2014 Lapin Pitch

We've just started our second week. So far we have some sort of working prototype that we are able to test and the main character is almost modelled and textured and ready to be animated. Not too shabby for the first week but we are still hoping to pick up some speed as we get going.

Here is some of the concept art produced in week 1 along with some screens of the nearly completed "Lapin" 3D model

Variations on my initial designs by Gary

Final Design

The First of Lapins enemies will be a Mutant frog warrior!