Painting a World full of color

Painting a World full of color
After working on the original thumbnails, I switched over to going into more detail, and refining the color. It’s another fun process, figuring out which colors and ideas will work when blown up and enlarged. Some of the thumbnails, while fun, won’t work or are unreadable and so need a complete overhaul while still trying ...

3D Clothing Test

3D Clothing Test
Thomas was charged with figuring out the best approach for tackling clothing in 3D.  We ended up settling on using nCloth due to our limited budget.  There were some mishaps along the way of course.  Here are some tests that were made as we tried to figure out how to properly work with nCloth and ...

Developing a Character, Part 6

Developing a Character, Part 6
Well everyone, here she is!  This is the final concept of the Oriana you will come to know and love through this journey of design and production till the game releases. We wanted her to be perfect for this moment which is why we have so many steps involved in her process.  But we are all ...

The Color Process

The Color Process
  We wanted to lean heavily on color, with early levels being dark, mysterious, purple, haunting and creepy. Very spoopy, overall. And then as the game goes on it gets warmer and happier, Ori starts taking control of her world and molding it to her design. The last one is hard to read, and more ...

3d Living Line Test

3d Living Line Test
One of the aesthetic features we’ve chosen for Project Oriana is what we call a “living line.”  As previously mentioned, we will be using a thick and uneven toon line around our characters and environment.  We will be using this line to help emphasize movement.  This can be seen in the video game, Okami, and ...

Into the Forge, Part 1

Into the Forge, Part 1
Weapon concept; one of my favorite things to design.  We have decided that our character will be wielding three separate weapons throughout the game; great sword, shield, and long bow.  It was also decided that since she is just a little girl that the weapons would be the same size as they would be if ...

3D Hair Test

3D Hair Test
Like with clothes, we also had to figure out how we were going to simulate hair in Maya.  WE are working on a tight budget, so purchasing 3rd party simulation software wasn’t really an option for us.  We found that because we were using a toon shader, nHair didn’t really offer us the ability to ...

Developing a Character, Part 5

Developing a Character, Part 5
Every cute little girl needs a cute little dress!  So I went into this with a basic idea to keep our dress design simple and flowy.  As a team we knew we liked ribbons, we knew we liked long, and we knew we liked trim.  On the flip side, we knew we hated ruffles (NIGHTMARE ...

3D Line Test

3D Line Test
While our ambition is to have a fully 2D game in the end, we are currently using a 3D character model for our main character.  Kyle Murray and Thomas Edwards comprise our 3D team and have been hard at work doing render tests and preliminary modeling.  Above is an example render style that we have ...