Finally, We Have A Character!!

It took us some time and a bunch of concept art, but we finally settled on a style for the 3D characters.  We decided that the main character and the female character will be in 3D and that the rest of the art will be 2D.  A big part of figuring out the character was figuring out the story and how he fit in it.  We decided that he should be lanky, nerdy and semi-realistic.  This was a very different from our original idea, which was a hulking, superhero type.  We wanted our character to be normal and relatable.  Now I  will work on refining a T-pose for both characters so the 3D artists can start modeling them and get them rigged and animated.

Egon from Ghostbutsters was my inspiration!

MelterMan Made It!

MelterMan was one of the games chosen for this semester!  This past Sunday our team plus our new additions got together and hashed out where we wanted the game to go.  We spent 3 hours defining the main game play and core mechanics.  Since this week is fall break, I gave the artists and myself tasks to accomplish for our next meeting, on Sunday the 19th.  We need to come up with as much concept art as possible and then choose what we like.  The animators were tasked with researching 2D vs. 3D.  I will post the concept art once we have it available, in my next post.

Prototype Pitchin'

Today we are pitching our prototype to Bob and the class to practice for our industry panel pitch on Thursday.  We feel really good about our core mechanic of melting and the prototype shows it off in several different ways.

On Sunday, the artist also discussed what direction we would like to take the art.  We're looking at a synthesis of MegaMan and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.  We will all be working on more concept art so we can further pin it down.

Prototyping

We started prototyping our game and right away ran into a problem with the melting mechanic.  Since it was creating so many particles it would crash the system.  The programmers immediately starting looking for new scripts to fix the problem and did very well.  I am currently working on environment concepts (seen below) and will be starting on some character concepts.  We decided the environment will be a run down laboratory, but we will also have a clean version used for showing the past.  We decided to go with 2D since our particle system is in 2D and it should make animating and all the art easier for us.

MelterMan!

Thursday I found out I will be working on the MelterMan project.  I'm excited to get started on the prototype.  The other members of the team are great and I think we can make something really fun.

I am currently concepting some ideas for the direction of the art.  We have agreed that 2D will be a good way to go for this project, but we still have to figure out an art style that we all like.

Pitches

This week we pitched 15 game ideas to each other.  I found it interesting which of my ideas people found the most interesting.  In the end, none of mine were chosen to move forward, but it was a great experience.

First day of class.

I'm already thinking of game ideas to pitch.  Thinking about what I heard today and how it compares to having worked in a studio environment.