AwfulJams 2016 - Grandfathered In

I did a game jam!  Specifically, we did a game jam; we being my old co-worker, Albert Peter, and my brother, John-Mark.  Albert did game design, writing, and art.  John-Mark was in charge of programming.  And I was in charge of character designs and sprites.

It was for AwfulJams 2016, a game jam run by some goons over at the Something Awful Forums.  It's a month long, and this year's theme was "Games for Grandpa."

Coming into it, we had this idea to do a visual-novel style game.  We had an idea of the theme, but it wasn't fully announced until the start date.  Very quickly we shifted from a single-encounter visual novel with 3D characters, to a 2D Long Live the Queen style game.

The story, written by Albert, was that the elderly were getting taken over by the militant-style Millenials, being forced to conform, or otherwise mysteriously disappearing.  We worked in several different endings, such as Grandpa successfully conforming by passing the Millenial's test at the end, Grandpa successfully not-conforming (but still passing the test at the end), and Grandpa escaping with a certain multi-platinum singer songwriter best friend.

Check it out here: https://floteam.itch.io/grandfathered-in

Before I get into a bit of a post mortem, here is the art that I had worked on:

I drew all of the character designs, did the coloring/shading, and inked all of the game sprites, except for the linework in base grandpa, grandma Muriel, and his grandson, Jason.  Albert did the linework for those.

Here are some of the pre-ink-and-color sketches.  You can see some alternate designs here.

And here are the original Grandpa Horace sketches I did, when I was exploring style.

Jacob's Post Mortem (after the jump; click Read More to view)

Portrait of Brynmore "Mouse" Skweaken, the Deep Gnome

In my current D&D group, we're stuck in the Underdark.  To those who are uninitiated, it's just an underground world, with darkness-dwelling races, such as the deep gnomes.  My previous character, an English thug, didn't quite fit in this world.  So I've created this new guy, and had to create a portrait to go with it.

And frankly, I'm pretty proud of him.  I mean look at him, that's pretty awesome, right?  I don't do as much digital painting as I do animating, but I'm glad to see something really cool come out of it every so often.

Below is the original painting, before the parchment effects.  He's a slightly hairy deep gnome, and his thing is that he's whole-y plain.  He's not SUPPOSED to stand out in any dramatic way.  That's how he gets away with being a spy.

Life Drawing October 2013

I've been doing values for the fast few sessions, so I wanted to try some linework this week.

Life Drawing September 2013

One nice thing about being in school is it's much easier to take life drawing classes.  While I'm still at FIEA, I'm going to keep on attending life drawing where possible.  Here's a collection of my work from this past month:

I'm used to drawing with outline, so now I'm forcing myself to use value blocking instead.  I can't tell if it's helping, but I have to assume it is.

Nassa Color Schemes

As I'm moving towards texturing my character, I painted up a bunch of options for color schemes.  I'm exploring the first two further.  While I really like the colors of the third and fifth, neither fit the character as well, and character comes first.

The next step was some variations on the chosen color.  The second one ended up being the favorite.

Nassa the Gnome, Version 2

I wanted to experiment with animated textures for facial features, which was my original plan with the old Nassa model.  I've been on a low-poly model kick for a little while, so I decided this is the ideal time to create a new model.  The goal was to stay under 1000 tris.  I also intend to take this one through textures so I can test using animated textures for the face in Maya and in Unity.

I did consider working from my older model, but I really wanted to try applying everything I've learned over the past few months.  It's interesting to see how similar it is to my old model, but how the shapes are so much better now, with fewer polys, too.

The picture above is the newer sketch I was working off of for this new model.  I fleshed out my original idea and design, visually describing the materials her clothes were made of, and the individual layers of the clothing.  I leaned towards a more cartoony look, since I wanted to push the designs of our three DnD characters; one short cute female gnome, one big beefy human/vryloka, and one fat stocky dwarf.

Quick Concept for Intrepid Spider Cave

Quick concept I did for Intrepid.  Our project lead asked for some concepts based on some locations he wanted to present as possible areas to build.  I did a quick-painting of this spider cave, showing that the flood of tiny spiders that would surround the characters.  Jessie, with mild arachnophobia, could burn the spider webs, but she relied to Tank to bark them away from her long enough to do so.

Intrepid Lighting and Color Study

This is a lighting and color study for Intrepid's style and pallete.

Edit: Re-uploaded the image with some slight color and background changes.

Intrepid Lighting and Water

Lighting, color, and water concepts for the game, Intrepid.

 

Edit: Re-uploaded the image with some changes to the color and water.

Grapple Concepts

Matte paintings I made for a game called Grapple, to be presented to the FIEA faculty and students as a potential 8-month production.  I used a combination of photographs and digital painting.

Midna Redesign - Final Concept

This is the final painting of the True-Form Midna concept.  I enjoyed this painting style, and I might try to employ it again in the future.

Midna Redesign - Clothing Permutations

Initially, I came up with 8 body designs for my Midna redesign.  I ended up (as well as the other students) picking the chubby Midna design.  I thought it was the most interesting, considering her proportions as the imp.

This piece was 8 more permutations, this time, addressing clothing.  I didn't want to lose the concept that she as no human gentials, with the clothes being sort of a formality (after all, she is of another race.)  I also didn't want to lose her magic abilites and her hair, both of which sort of get ignored when she turns into True-Form at the end of the game.

Link to the Past Church Concept

This painting came from a level in Zelda: A Link to the Past.  Early on in the game, the player comes out from a hidden passagway in the back of the church.  This is a 3D realized version of the 16-bit game with dramatic lighting.

Metroid Ship Redesign - Final Concept

This was the final concept, fully rendered out with details.  I chose the colors based on a split complimentary scheme, and wanted to keep the colors saturated.

Metroid Ship Redesign - Concepts

I started with a basic model in the style of Samus's ship from the Metroid series.  From there, I created these nine designs on top of the model.

Zelda Fire Rod Redesign Concept

This project was to take an item from an old-school 16-bit game, and redesign it as a brand new concept.  I took 3 objects and came up with a number of silhouettes for each.  After one was chosen, I produced 12 value permutations of the object.  After that, it took one and fleshed it out in color and lighting.  I tried to focus on the function of the object in the design; the fire rod shot little fire balls to light lamps from a distance, for example.  In this version, I gave it a bit of a mechanic-y flare, and used the lighter-style perforated metal to drive the point home.

One of the points of the project was to use this sort of illustrative cel-shaded style, which I must say I was quite a fan of.  I'm sure I will be revisiting this coloring style in future personal projects, assuming I ever get the time to make another... 

Zelda Items Redesign

The task was to redesign three items from the Legend of Zelda series.  I chose items from Link to the Past; the mirror, the fire rod, and the grappling hook.

The grappling hook was the most obvious of the items. I imagined how they might work internally, and for each of the designs, I tried to show that in the silhouette.  The fire rod was simply trying to decide how to represent a rod that can form fire.  Two were magical, and two were more mechanical.

The mirror, I thought was the most clever.  The purpose of the mirror is to send you into the past, a sort of alternate dimension.  In each of my mirror designs, I made sure the mirror could swivel; the idea being, when shifting to the other world, Link looks into the mirror, then turns the mirror surface around, shifting the world around him.

Elephental Disaster Beat Boards

I just discovered these old beat boards when organizing my files.  For old work, I'm still pretty happy about it.  Click the images to make them bigger, and check out more information here!

Nassa the Gnome - Final

I just finished my Nassa the Gnome mini!  Unfortunately, our DM couldn't play this week, so I got to work on this instead.  I added the clothes in on Wednesday, and I went over to Sean's today (Thursday) to finish up.

I got some Super Sculpey Firm, to see what it was like, and it ended up making the head a lot easier.  It still wasn't perfect, especially because I barely left any armature up there, but I was able to hack it together long enough to bake it.  The Firm Sculpey did really help keep enough details in there for baking (as opposed to the regular Sculpey.)  From there, I did a bunch of Xacto-carving to refine the details.  And in the last step, I added the ears, hands, and daggers.

In the end, I'm quite happy with it, largely because it is so ridiculously small, but mostly because the pose is so twisty and dynamic.  The clothes really accent the turn, and the arms have a real attitude to them.  I'm having so much fun with this; I think my next one will be around 3" using Sculpey firm, and I'm getting excited to try ProCreate in the near future.

My next step is to paint this handsome gentleman and fine lady, and then give them fancy bases.  That macro lens really makes them look gritty, but it will all be cleaned up in the next versions.

Nassa the Gnome - WIP

I must say, she was quite fun to play last week.  She's a Gnome, who wears elven clothes, and appears to be some sort of rogue - appears to be.   I'm really looking forward to the next Dungeons and Dragons session.

But since I wasn't running the dwarf, I had to sculpt a new character.  I started this little piece today at Sean's place.  I was actually able to get some good progress shots on this one.  She's quite difficult to work on because she's even smaller than the dwarf, currently at about 20mm.

It also doesn't help that I'm using regular Super Sculpey modeling clay.  Sean mentioned Sculpey Firm might be a little easier for me to work with.  Nonetheless, using my multiple-bake layer method seems to work alright.  I just have to do a bit of Xacto work in there as well.  I don't work fast enough for the 2 hour window using ProCreate or Green Stuff... yet.

 Armature ready after two tries.

In-progress shots.  The clothing layer will be the next session.

 The sketches I was working off of for the character's designs.