Art Style for Project Blend

Project Blend is one step closer putting together a unified vision of what they want the game to be; this week they have been split into three teams.

The game will be set in a 3D world with a restricted view; a view where the PC can move around in planes through the level, similar to Little Big Planet (2008 :Media Molecule)
The main character in the game will be a Raspberry Assassin, who will move around the planes of the level to stealth kill the enemies. There will be an emphasis on the stealth element of the game but hack n slash elements will also be implemented.


Mechanics 
One team will look into various mechanics that could be implemented into the game.

Art Style 
The game will have a real focus on fruit gore, the main level talked about so far in the obvious one, the kitchen. So each member will make a mood board to show how they think the game should look.

Setting Plot
Apart from the kitchen there is no real story or plot and in what time period will this game take place in? The team will decide what the focus of the main character is and what his / her story is, why they have to kill all the other fruits.

So each member of each of these teams will meet together, each team will then decided which ideas to incorporate into the game and which of the colours and style to adopt into the game.


My Art Vision for Project Blend 

I’m on the Art team this week so I will be looking at various games, starting with little big planet as that game, seemed to be the focus in our last meeting, then work other elements from different games art styles  into the project.

Little Big Planet

Fig. 1.1

In Little Big Planet (LBP) the main game is centered around closed levels inside of buildings (Fig 1.1) But in the levels that are created by the LBP community, there are loads of open levels. (Fig 1.2) Project Blend so far seems to be wanting to set the game inside of a kitchen. So there will be closed backgrounds in the game but otherwise like fig 1.2 there could be an image placed into the background with blur to keep the attention on the character and not the background. The focus needs to remain on the character and the three planes of movement.

Fig. 1.2

Kirby’s Epic Yarn 

Fig 2.1

The backgrounds are simple, bright, block colours that are used like LBP to keep the attention on the player. Even though the backgrounds are simple they still carry on the unique bright and wonderful art style.

Some scenes there is a lot going on in the background but this adds to the atmosphere of the level and boosts the players relationship with the location.

Fig. 2.2

But sometimes as you can see in figure 2.2. There is so much going on, that some times knowing where to look is hard. Project blend wants the focus to be on the character and his change throughout the level so this level of detail if applied will have to remain in check, so that vital character attention is not brocken.


Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong, has a cartoony look and feel to it, with a nice rounded character style, bouncing with colour. Some of the backgrounds are close and others appear miles away, with the use of lovely painted backdrops.

I feel this game style will lend it’s self wonderfully to Project Blend.


Donkey Kong is a game where the PC moves along one plane through out the game, though there are sections where the plane is broken or sections where the barrel blaster shoot the PC to a plane in the background.


Super Mario Bros Wii 

Mario has a unique 3D on 2D style.
The main character is in 3D as is the plan he moves left and right on, and the enemies he interacts with; but the background is a single sometimes two image(s).

Usually one image that moves with the player, some levels have two where the closer items move across the background faster than the image behind the first background image.
So there are two background images and front background image and the behind background image, the front background image moves faster across the screen to give an extra layer of depth to the level without having to use more valuable and time consuming 3D models.

Fairytale Fights

Fairytale Fights is full of a vast array of colours, there is an overbearing amount of colours used in each scene; this game would be well to do back through it’s colour scheme and select one set of colours rather than all the colours of the rainbow, like the case study I wrote last week about Devil May Cry; it mainly used greys, blues, and reds, to bring on a gothic feel.
Fairytale just throws colours out everywhere and anywhere.

The actual colours themselves are very bright like you expect a fairytale colour scheme to be. This is the sort of colour I believe would suit Project Blend.

There are a few moments in this game where a killer pop up shoots on the screen. When the PC slashes an NPC in half a pop up comes up showing the killer detail of the NPC’s falling into pieces. This I feel could play a big part in Project Blend as one of the main focuses will be on the change in the PC’s state these pop ups could be used to show off the stealth kills in the game to their full, gory awesomeness!.

HomeRun in Berzerk Land

Homerun in Berzerk Land is a flash game about a PC who as the player progresses can buy the PC bigger and more badass weapons to hit the NPC with; the further the NPC goes the bigger the score.

When the PC hit’s the NPC with his weapon an animation pops up which helps heighten the action and suspense of how far this NPC will go. This animation only pops up when a critical hit is obtained, so this gives the player an extra sense of achievement.

Samurai Jack

I feel in keeping with the anger and rage of the character to show his change to the player another art style could be used over the top of the existing art style to give a MASSIVE! contrast to the rest of the game to give extra emphasis to the pop up motion movies that will give the player his creative madness through loads and loads of gore.

Bleach 

Bleach has a main character that has a character literally with a split personality he is normal but gets taken over by a mask at points in the story, this causes his personality to change and this change is apparent to the character through the use of the mask.

This gets across change excellently without having to use over the top pop up animations.
This will be great for Project blend as it will save the team loads of time in little animations, just to give the character a simple yet apparent change.

Captain Simian and the space Monkeys

The character here has a split personality, there are only a few changes but every time the character changes his personality a small visual change is enough to give the viewer what they need to know a change has occurred.



Bibliography

http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/adventure/kirbysepicyarn/video/6282158/kirbys-epic-yarn-video-review
Kirby, Background Inspiration

http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/adventure/donkeykongcountryreturns/video/6266114/donkey-kong-country-returns-power-punch-trailer
Power Punch Trailer

http://uk.ign.com/videos/2009/11/12/new-super-mario-bros-wii-nintendo-wii-review-video-review?objectid=14354229
Mario review, videos of gameplay.

http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/fairytalefights/images.html?tag=gallery_summary;image_index
Images for Fairytale Fights

http://www.kongregate.com/games/BerzerkStudio/homerun-in-berzerk-land
Game Kongregate - Homerun in Berzerk Land

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-sC3S2qeqs&feature=related
Samurai Jack

http://www.google.co.uk/images?um=1&hl=en&q=Bleach&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=G4-7TMmBOdq5jAffl7nqDg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=8&ved=0CEgQsAQwBw&biw=1392&bih=739
Images from Google for Bleach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L7DcZVyBBs
Captain Simian and the space Monkeys  - Split personality