Animated Assets 003

I tried painting these mushrooms with minimum outlines and they came out quite nicely. They may be a bit too complex for our game, but I'll see what the team says :)
They were fun to paint! Pretty colours too waaaah~

Some more inspiration/ references :)

References
https://www.etsy.com/nz/listing/272933232/mushroom-wall-decal-watercolor-fabric?ref=market
https://www.etsy.com/nz/listing/400437481/mushroom-watercolor-painting-butterfly?ref=market

Animated Assets 002

I'm still rather new to water colour, especially digitally. I had a go with some water colour brushes that Mikayla shared with the group. They look, alright? But I know I can do better and make them look a lot more appealing. Perhaps by adding more colour or contrasting colours into them.
These concepts are simply trying out the brushes and colours. I added a white border to show my idea of them being 'cut out' from a book. It doesn't work just yet as it would look more tied together once compiled with the environment. The red mushroom looks more 'watercoloured' than the other mushrooms.

I had a look at some water coloured mushrooms to get a better sense of what to do. These mushrooms don't have an outline, but I think our game will do better with objects that have outlines if in the foreground. Elements within the background can probably go without outlines, so the focus is more on the fore and mid grounds. 

I will try more complex approaches to watercolor the mushrooms in photoshop. Even if it is a tad too complex, simplifying it shouldn't be too difficult. Trying different brushes will also help determine the look an style of the object, so I will try as many as I can.

References
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-watercolor-illustration-mushrooms-colored-orange-cap-boletus-butterfly-image58171282
https://www.etsy.com/market/mushrooms_watercolor

Animated Assets

Team Sprout
Our new summative is to create 2 environment assets and animate them as sprites. We had a meeting today & Jo is typing the minutes up. We went through assets that would potentially be in our environment as well as animals & bugs. After that we picked what we would chose to draw up & further develop.
Yesterday I already had in mind what I wanted to contribute which are mushrooms & flowers. I drew up a few concepts for each & will ask the group what concept they like the best so I can start developing them into a polished asset.
We each have more than one asset that we will draw concepts of. I will also be drawing up sprouts & other plants. I will look more into native NZ plants also.

References:

Mushrooms
http://www.100thmonkeymushrooms.com/learn/growing-instructions-2/mushroom-box/
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-400393507/stock-vector-different-kinds-of-mushroom-different-types-of-mushrooms-isolated-on-white-background-edible.html
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-different-types-mushrooms-illustration-white-background-image44512924
http://www.gmushrooms.com/motif/
Flowers
http://aljoschathielen.deviantart.com/art/Pink-Flower-371399795
http://zombiedip.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-17824788
http://maw123.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-59649468http://extraoridnarygirl.deviantart.com/art/flowers-101897724
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Flowers-473654876
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zantedeschia

Concepts

Over the last few days, I've been working on character concepts & an environment concept for Team Sprout. I feel like the environment concept that I've done doesn't convey a side scroller look at all. Also this is what the end of a level is most likely to look like. This is due to the level starting off quite dead and as the character progresses, the environment slowly comes back to live. This is due to the character planting seeds and restoring the environment.

For character designs, I started off by using simple shapes and chucking leaves on top (middle & bottom rows) These designs are pre boring.
I then came across this image & thought 'Why don't I add NZ native plants to the characters??'
I drew some Koru & Pohutukawa flowers onto characters. I like these concepts the best! They were fun to draw as well.

Reference
http://probertson.tumblr.com/post/125576347404/succulent-boys
http://www.studynewzealand.eu/archive/1354917493/New-Zealand-Christmas-Tree
http://gonewzealand.about.com/od/NewZealandTravel/tp/Cheap-New-Zealand-Tips-For-Cheap-Travel-In-New-Zealand.htm

Horror Environment Concepts + Feedback

I've been meaning to post this for the last few days!!
On Tuesday we were given the task to draw 4 horror game environment concepts. I drew my ideas up fast, so they aren't thought out very well. They had to include a sunflower and a baby flower rattle.

This concept is quite boring and doesn't have much going for it. My tutor Lena, suggested playing around with the lighting. E.g. light coming in from the window, which will cause the sunflower to simply be a black silhouette. Taylor said the sunflower can cast a creepy shadow. My own thoughts on it include, shifting the window over, so it's not in the center, more toys on the ground and perhaps a different angle of the view.

When I think of a baby rattle or toy, I begin to think of other related baby things, in this case a cot. Lena suggested making it more clear on which direction the attack on the cot is coming from. I said that I wasn't sure if someone attacked the cot or if it was the baby that wreaked the cot. So I understand that showing a clear indication of the direction of the attack would help the player better understand the image and what happened. Jerwin said that the sunflower on the wall makes it look creepy. Mikayla suggested having the image crooked on the wall or even on the ground, showing that it has fallen off. I really like this idea, but I reckon it can definitely go both ways. - A messy room with something untouched can add emphasis to each thing depending on the way you look at it. A fully messy room can shock the player.

I took the previous concept and changed it up more. I originally wanted the hands to be coming out of a big shadow, but didn't get around to drawing it in. I added shadow to add emphasis which looks a lot more interesting than the previous concept.

This concept isn't much of an environment concept, but I went with it. Tea suggested that the flower that the baby is holding would be dead, while the sunflower next to it would stay alive. This is a neat idea as it suggests that the baby is possessed or some sort of demon or not from this world.

Set Up Coloured

Here's the coloured version of the set up. With the ideas concerning lighting and colour that I had,.. I felt like it wasn't quite getting across to my group, so I thought a visual would help. It was different in my head which is unfortunate. Taylor helped me with the lighting and shadows as I'm just no good at painting on photoshop. So the light from a street lamp will be shining in through the holes in the sheet covering the window and will shine on the husband.
Dane did suggest making the room cramped and smaller. I did take this into consideration, but this is just a concept revolving around lighting, not so much the space.

Caricature Attempts

In our group meeting with the tutors, our tutor, Keat, suggested looking at caricature tutorials to help us draw our model and get a better understanding of her features. This really helped me as I was having trouble trying to stylize her, while we also wanted to make her look more realistic than cartoony. Plus Patrick suggested more three quarter angles :)
ALSO here is a lovely photo of our model Holly! #beautiful asdfghjkl

Concept Designs

Here are some concept designs! I'm not the greatest at concepts, but it can be fun and it's good to practice. Our character will be animated in a mirror, but not her whole body will be shown. I'm focusing on the head for now as this is basically where all the attention will go when the camera is on her. (Will probably only see her waist and up).

An important thought came to mind when I was drawing these concept up.
We will be having a photo of the husband and wife at the end of the scene and I thought it would be quite odd to have a life action character and a 2D character together in a photo (back when the wife was still alive). I thought that maybe we could base the design from a live action person that could take the photo with the husband. The husband has a sort of unclear image of what his wife looks like, this is why she'd look a bit different than how she does in the photo. Regardless of this idea, our group would need to discuss this idea before we could really go in further with the concept designing. PLUS we would quickly need to find someone who would fit the role of being the wife.
BUT until then, I will carry on drawing up concepts for my team. - Don't want to have nothing at all to fall back on to if this idea fails.

Another solution to this is incorporating the live action husband and 2D wife in the photo, but blurring the wife a bit, so that the audience wouldn't find it weird that a live action man was married to a 2D character. It'd be like the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Script: First Draft

This was my first try at the vending machine idea before the tutors gave me feedback. Definitely not the final, but it has a rough guide to my original idea. Annnnnd hopefully it makes sense.

Based on the vending machines on floor 10 lul
note: no dialogue

INT: IN HALL WAY (FLOOR 10 OTAGO UNIVERSITY BUILDING)

FULL SHOT OF VENDING MACHINE.
A figure walks to the vending machine and pulls out some coins to buy a chocolate bar.

CLOSE UP OF CHOCOLATE BAR IN THE VENDING MACHINE.
The chocolate bar gets stuck due to a small animated character holding on to it.

CLOSE UP OF FIGURES' FACE AND SWAPS TO THE ANIMATED CHARACTER
The live action character and animated character make eye contact and the live action character gets angry.

FULL SHOT OF FIGURE AND VENDING MACHINE
The live action character grabs the vending machine and shakes it. Angry because he/she wants his/her chocolate bar.

[Each time the vending machine shakes the location/ environment changes. This is due to the vending machine being a ship in disguise of a vending machine - to blend in with the environment. The location changes 3 times: to a beach, forest and waterfall until the environment changes back to the original setting.]

CLOSE UP OF CHOCOLATE BAR AND ANIMATED CHARACTER
The chocolate bar and animated character fall down in the vending machine. It looks really intense when the bar and character fall up close, like sky diving since it would be scary for the little character, but from the live action characters POV it looks pretty normal. Just falling. The norms.

SHOT OF FIGURE GRABBING THE CHOCOLATE BAR ALONG WITH THE ANIMATED CHARACTER.
The live action character brings the chocolate bar up to his face with the animated character holding on to the chocolate bar.

WIDE SHOT OF THE 2 CHARACTERS PLUS THE CHOCOLATE BAR
The characters are making intense eye contact , even squinting. The animated character growls.

MID SHOT
The live action character swings the chocolate bar causing the animated character to let go and splat on a nearby wall (or outside of the vending machine?).


Here are the notes again for it 
Backstory:
The animated character is from another planet or dimension. The vending machine is just for show as it is sort of ship or transporter for the animated character. The food in the vending machine is all fake. The reason the animated character holds on to the chocolate bar is because it isn't real and it part of the 'ship.

Possible idea for the 3D object - the chocolate bar. 3D for when the animated character is holding on to it and a real chocolate bar for when the live action character is holding it.

I originally wasn't going to have environment changes because I felt like it would be too dramatic and quite random. Saying this, I thought of a reason as to why the environment would change quite dramatically (backstory).

The amount of times the environment would change would need to be taken into consideration with the audience understanding what's happening as well as the time limit being 30-40 seconds. 10 would probably be too much as eventually bore the audience plus it would be too much in 30-40 seconds. Roughly 3 times would be good as it would still engage the audiences' interest. I picked locations that can actually be filmed (a desert would be difficult).

The alternate ending was that the intense eye contact between both characters causes the animated character to 'poof' away because he was scared. This ending isn't as strong as the current ending plus it makes the animated character seem like he gave up too easily.

Shadow Colour Concepts

I chucked some cool and warm shadows on the characters shirt & hat. I imagine the kitchen to be warm, with things such as the stove on and warm colours in general for the kitchen setting. It depends on the lighting & colours in the environment.

Expressions

My character is a very humble person and is rather emotional (especially if it involves food). Getting angry is very rare for him & he smiles a lot.

Props: Hats & Knives

Character Concepts: Head Concepts

Character Concepts: Simple Shapes

The feedback I got for my simple shape concepts came down to these two concepts which I also like.

Character Concepts: Simple Shapes

Visual Research