Brain Storming The Ideas
I knew straight away that I wanted my game to follow the fantasy/adventure/action genres. I chose to base my ideas around the movies Excalibur and Pan's Labyrinth. The image below shows everything that came to mind whilst thinking about them, even including plot ideas and character ideas. I wanted to focus on characters, plots and environments as they were the most important things to begin brainstorming about. There wont be any human interaction or appearances in this game, and i'm not planning to add any vehicles for the moment. But I will still try to create some sort of concept. I have provided the trailer to both films below so that you are able to see where my ideas have come from.
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Mood boards
After brainstorming my ideas into a mind map/spider gram I needed to create some mood boards. The first mood board is themed around fantasy and forests, the second mood board is going to focus on the character ideas, so It focuses on the species of animals I would like to use. With it I'm going to pull out some features to add to my character concept later on.
Character Concept Designs
During the character concept process, I had to consider that my game was based in mainly forest like environments, I wanted to focus more on the Pan's Labyrinth universe than Excalibur. My main character would therefore need at least a few suitable adaptations to be able to survive in its child stage (the basic and first playable stage of the character), considering it was an animal type creature. The first sketch was something quick I drew (as you can tell) just to get a very basic idea on what I was looking for. Originally I wanted my character to be completely feral, but during the designing process he became a little less feral than planned.
The first picture here shows the comparison between the first concept and the third concept whilst it was in progress. Its pretty horrific, and personally, I think there is nothing unique about it. It looks way too much like a cat had just had a mask just thrown onto its face. Though of course it was just an idea, definitely not what I was hoping to be the final product.
The first picture here shows the comparison between the first concept and the third concept whilst it was in progress. Its pretty horrific, and personally, I think there is nothing unique about it. It looks way too much like a cat had just had a mask just thrown onto its face. Though of course it was just an idea, definitely not what I was hoping to be the final product.
Finally the first character concept was complete, I made sure that I tried explaining his features as much as I could. Little information such as its height, where the ideas came from (species ect) and importantly, the characters name! I'am not expecting my hero/main character to look anything like this after a few more drawings as this is just the idea I saw in my head at the time.
The idea of the main character is that it will be playable in three different stages. The names or classes may change in the future.
Child
In this stage, the character is playable. It may not be able to fight at first, but it will use the environments around itself to avoid or tackle other enemies. For example, at this stage the character is small enough to fit into cracks and crevices, or even small tunnels that the other playable stages will not be able to fit in. This will be the stage that you first play as in the beginning of the game. It should only last quarter of the story before moving onto the next stage. I'm expecting to create some concepts for this stage to be able to fight with other enemies.
Youth
After the character has 'aged' in the story, I plan for a second stage. In this stage, the player will face tougher enemies and be able to use physical abilities to progress through the game. In this stage the character is bigger and unable to fit into those places that it could do in its previous stage. However I may not go through with this idea, I may only keep both child and elder stages as I do not want the story to be too short for each stage and I do not want the game to drag along too much to bore players.
Elder
The final stage of the characters development, it can engage in combat and learn to use weapons against other enemies. This is where the player will begin to fight the hardest enemies in the game and the story begins to slowly get more intense as it progresses on. This will be my next main focus in concept art as I would like this stage to be part of the important moments in the story.
The idea of the main character is that it will be playable in three different stages. The names or classes may change in the future.
Child
In this stage, the character is playable. It may not be able to fight at first, but it will use the environments around itself to avoid or tackle other enemies. For example, at this stage the character is small enough to fit into cracks and crevices, or even small tunnels that the other playable stages will not be able to fit in. This will be the stage that you first play as in the beginning of the game. It should only last quarter of the story before moving onto the next stage. I'm expecting to create some concepts for this stage to be able to fight with other enemies.
Youth
After the character has 'aged' in the story, I plan for a second stage. In this stage, the player will face tougher enemies and be able to use physical abilities to progress through the game. In this stage the character is bigger and unable to fit into those places that it could do in its previous stage. However I may not go through with this idea, I may only keep both child and elder stages as I do not want the story to be too short for each stage and I do not want the game to drag along too much to bore players.
Elder
The final stage of the characters development, it can engage in combat and learn to use weapons against other enemies. This is where the player will begin to fight the hardest enemies in the game and the story begins to slowly get more intense as it progresses on. This will be my next main focus in concept art as I would like this stage to be part of the important moments in the story.