wonderwallworld

[wonderwallworld]

Report #46 5/2 - 5/5

Well, its the last week of WT, so that’s something interesting. I think it’s had its ups and downs, but it was something I enjoyed overall.

In terms of work, I resized the canvas of the rooms so they would all be the same size and gave them a little border, because they looked very strange in game without one. I also made the lobby a room instead of just a gatcha screen. I worked on finalizing the villain designs, adding some shading/lighting and cleaning them up.

I also finished Ridge’s animation and cleaned them all up as well, before they all were sent off. 

[wonderwallworld]

Report #45 4/25 - 4/28

This week I worked on Ridge animation, Dawn portrait, and the basic bedroom.

I finished Ridge’s idle animation last week, so I worked on finishing up her other animations. I made a rough walking animation, but struggled a lot with conveying a walking movement with the style Ridge was drawn in. I have a rough version now, but it still needs some working and patching.

To take a break from the animation, I worked on Dawn’s gatcha screen. While we have little pictures of them, gatcha games usually have a splash screen for their characters when you summon them. The background needs some work, but otherwise its done.

Once I finished that, I worked on a basic room for the characters to walk around in. Originally we were going to do customized rooms, but that would simply have taken too much time. Instead, we decided to go with unlockable decorations that you collect by getting to know the characters at the hotel.

[wonderwallworld]

Report#44 4/18 - 4/21

It’s starting to become crunch time around here, so I’m just trying to finish up the last art things we need for our game. I fixed up the resolutions of the characters and finished up Dawn’s design. I really only had a sketch of her, so I finished it up. 

I worked on animating Ridge, giving her a cute, simple idle animation.

Finally, I finished up the storeroom with tips I got from the art meeting I showed it at.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #53 4/11-4/14

This week I worked on designing Dawn, the princess, the background for the gatcha screen and a button for it.

This week was fairly hectic, with testing and NTHS things, so a lot of time this week wasn’t really spent on making things. Still, I managed to get a few things done for the game, such as the design for the princess and the gatcha backdrop and button.

The princess, whose name as of now is Dawn, was a pain to work on. I wanted to make her main color yellow, but I have now learned that yellow is a terrible color for that. I went through color set after color set, and none of them seemed to work. I also didn’t really like the design I had for her, since it didn’t really have a royal feel to it. I decided to take a break from her and focused on some other things, namely the gatcha items.

Using perspective and a few references, I drew up a design for the hotel lobby, where the gatcha would take place. I made the desk and the button the foreground, and you ring the bell to summon a character. I blurred the background to keep the button the focus, and created a banner (albeit a temporary one) to show how the menu should look.

I drew Dawn again, and this time was able to find a design I liked. I tried to keep the dominant yellow, but in the end, I let a different color take over and stuck to yellow accents. I think her design could still use some work, but I like how she looks for now.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #52 4/5 - 4/7

This week I worked on a storage room for my game, a piece I presented for art critique, and some head portraits. I also worked on a portfolio piece, but I’ve already shown it and it hasn’t changed enough to warrant putting a picture of it here.

This is a room meant to store materials and resources you collect as you play the game, which allow you to upgrade your hotel. I drew the sketch and colored it very loosely, in order to find a palette I liked. 

I also presented the traditional form of this sketch during art critique, a piece that captures four figures interacting with each other. After I received critique of it, I decided to redraw it and color it digitally this time, adding in the advice I got. Only three of the four are roughly sketched, but I improved the center character’s expression and moved her more to the left to separate her and the rightmost figure a bit more, as per the critique.

We also had middle schools tours run through this week, so I sketched a couple of characters I’ve made to show off some of my art skills, just in case one of them saw and thought more highly of the program. I also got to practice with side profiles and 3/4 view, which I always need. 

[wonderwallworld]

Report #51 3-30/3-31

This week I worked on concepting Ridge completely, so that my teammate could work on her chibi design. I also worked on her room, just to get a feel for what it would be like, though I will likely be changing the perspective on it. I also sketched an opening screen for the game, incorporating the story into its design. 

I also worked on buttons for tours coming by, though that was just manual labor.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #50

This week was Game Jam week, so I took a break from my game to work on that. The goal of this one was to polish up an old game worked on in the past. I joined Underlands again to try and add some more features to it and make the game look better. 

I worked on an explosive and its animation, a full screen for the control screen, and a grappling hook. I tried to push myself with lighting and landscapes, so I put some extra time into the lighting on the TNT and the cave portrait. This week was mostly just adding to it, so most of the larger aspects were in the game already. 

I think that this Game jam went pretty well, and my teammates and I were definitely able to create a better product. I think the game overall improved, and minus a few technical issues, the play-testers seemed to enjoy it. 

[wonderwallworld]

Report #49

This week I finished a character for the game’s design, and I named her Ridge. I worked on her mini sprite but I didn’t really like any of the concepts I had so I don't have them here. I also did a background sketch that needs to be fit to the style, and I worked on some gesture and expression drawings.   

I also worked a bit more on this piece, working on the other eye, adding more detail, and adding the rough shape of the hand.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #48

This week I worked on the frame and the base of the hotel for the game, and I worked on villain concepts and some expression practice, specifically with open mouths.

As I worked on the concepts for the game, the story started to form too, so this lady started to become more than a water woman. This meant her costume didn’t fully fit her new role, and it was really plain anyway. So I set to redesigning her appearance, which I am still not finished with. 

Finally, I drew up some concepts for the villains. My brain vaguely gestured to humanoid chimaera, so I ran with it, and came up with some designs that I liked. The bull and the frog are two of the best ones, according to me and my team, and the other four are ones that needed some work. The gremlins are a slightly different type of enemies, but I worked on some sketches for them and we liked the second one the best.

I needed to work on expressions, specifically open-mouth ones, so using some of my OCs I drew them. They turned out okay, but I think more practice is still needed.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #47

The game I was working on before wasn’t working out for me too much anymore, so I changed to a gatcha hotel collector game. I drew concepts of the level design, the hotel, and a character to help sell it, and once we were approved, I started work on concepts for characters that fit each of the other four “classes.” I managed to finish three and a half.

This week, I finished the final character and drew the hotel base.

With the base, I wanted something simplistic but also formal, so I mimicked more modern and Vegas-style hotels for the base and color palette. The colors took a bit to figure out, but I knew I wanted the gold. I kept the gold and white in the places I wanted them to be, and then modelled the other colors around it until I found the palette that I liked. I also modelled the mosaic off of each symbol for the characters. I might change the lighting to match a time of day later, but for now it is permanently noon. 

[wonderwallworld]

Report #46

This week was a bit of a lax week for me project-wise, as our game ended up going through a bit of revamping and lots of basic things needed kinks worked out of them. I drew a little concept of a game cover, but never finished it because the team wasn’t sure if they would need it anymore. 

I also attended an art meeting where I asked for some critique on a work-in-progress I have. I mostly was told some tricks for lighting and to reposition the hands, but otherwise was encouraged to finish the piece and then bring it back.

I also started a realistic portrait in greyscale to focus more on lighting and tones and figure out how skin reflects in the light. I’m still working on it, but this is how much I have so far.

Otherwise I drew the other main character for the comic I was planning on doing, and his design was quite tricky to figure out. At first I drew him differently and in a different pose, but after messing with his face and hair for a good amount of time, I decided to completely redraw the sketch and see if that helped. I used more triangles in his design, because he’s supposed to have a sharp, collected vibe. This worked really well, the biggest problem with the previous design being that he was too square.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #45

This Game Jam was actually pretty successful, in comparison to other Game Jams we’ve had. Our team was able to complete a fully playable, relatively decorated game. This was the longest Game Jam we’ve ever had, though, so I think that played a big part in that. I really liked the character design and the story seemed like it had potential, and the game itself had a fun concept. However, I think that the idea was a bit rushed, and since I joined this team after the idea had been finalized, I didn’t really think to ask about it. The concept was fun, but it was also limiting, and without a whole bunch of other factors it just turns out mediocre. The concept itself is that player is tasked with escaping an underground cave by digging up and avoiding obstacles. The obstacles were pretty glitchy though, and didn’t really do much to hinder the player. There was also only really one type of obstacle, so figuring out how to avoid it didn’t take  long or much. The story elements were also pretty hidden/weren’t implemented in time, so anyone intrigued by it was mostly just left wanting more. There were also some art pieces that got left out, like the background, that definitely could have improved the experience. Overall I think that getting a playable game in 2 weeks is an accomplishment, and that what we had was good, but I think that adding more and expanding on our idea would have made the game much more fun and interesting.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #44

This week I worked on final Game Jam animations and just worked to get the game as finished as we could by Thursday. I also worked on character designs for a comic I’m hopefully going to begin.

This is the main character, who is nameless at the moment, but her character design came to me in a blur and she manifested herself on the page. Overall she was pretty easy to design, though I might draw a few other concepts just for the sake of it. 

For the checkpoints in the game, I was asked to draw a lantern. When the  checkpoint is reached, the lantern turns on. Peyton drew the basic shape of it, and I drew the fire and did the lighting. I animated the flames moving and ignited too.

These are a few animations I did for the main character. The standing jump is intentionally janky, I thought it would fit the character to have a more silly up and down movement. The running jump was a bit of a struggle, because of the perspective, but I think the ending result is pretty good, just a bit too much air time.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #43

This week I mostly just worked on Game Jam things, like backgrounds and character concepts, along with some trinkets that can be dug up in the game. I also started working on the animatic I had in mind, though I think I’m going to save that for home because it’s a bit violent.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #42

This week I worked on learning Blendr, rendering and just some general sketching, and I worked on designing the main puzzles for Closing Time.

For the main puzzle I wrote up a document with a picture providing the rough layout. Each of the three games, two are played to get the codes and the third is the glitch game at the end, are also planned out. The first game spells out the code in the enemies when you shoot a specific enemy. The office one has the numbers on the bottom of trophies you collect throughout the level, and when arranged properly allow the player to see the code and leave the level. The Pac-man one reveals the key once you kill a ghost.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G3klew_6XBb0R4WsTt6C9yMp_ktGsGeEdvdbz0S18YQ/edit?usp=sharing 

I worked on learning Blendr by starting the donut tutorial, but after struggling with clipping for a while I took a break and practiced lighting on a lamp.

Finally, I worked on rendering by finishing up a drawing I did of a character I love, along with sketching up designs of his friends and family for an animatic I might try to work on.

[wonderwallworld]

Report #41

I This week I worked on a lot of practice art pieces because our team fell through and we had to come up with a new game project. I also worked to create a new game idea and brainstorm ideas and its fundamental concepts. At the moment it is a 3D VR horror escape room meant to freak ya out. 

Art-wise I worked on a realistic portrait and lighting, and I have another WIP of a different face for more practice.

I also started on lineart for a traditional piece I did a bit ago that I would like to finish.

Finally, I colored a couple BNHA manga pages to work on coloring and as a fidget to keep me focused while we talked about our new game idea. (kind of out of context spoilers for the manga but hey)

[wonderwallworld]

Report #40 12/13-12/14

This week was fairly short, but for our final stretch. I made a FF interior and worked on some more figure sketches. I also redesigned Dragonite’s design from Pokemon to fit better with the designs of Dratini and Dragonair.