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.

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.

Lutra Character Concept

This was a concept piece I made for a portfolio application to FIEA, a masters program at the University of Central Florida.  The assignment was to create concept art for an existing game that matched the style.  I chose to design an original League of Legends character, complete with splash screen art, in-game mockup, lore tie-in, and skill list!  One of my projects for this upcoming summer will be to model, texture, and rig this character.  I'll also be redesigning the skills from ground up, and animating each one after the character is finished.

Oh, and I was admitted in to FIEA.  Good times!

Various Speed Sketches

Various sketches from throughout the Fall 2010 semester. Each took 1-2 hrs, not necessarily including time coming up with the composition.  Click to englarge.

Matte Painting with Animated Perspective

This matte painting was generated on seven layers, using Photoshop.  The perspective animation was created in Maya.  Below are the static image, and the perspective animation generated from it.

I wish I had been able to go more into detail, but I burnt out towards the end, simply because there was so much going on in the image.  In hindsight, I should have worked a specific area, so I could start putting detail into smaller objects, rather than having the large fields of hill and sky that were relatively uninteresting.

Architecture Matte Paintings

The fourth and final required realistic matte painting.  I had chosen Art Nouveau style architecture.  The assignment was to practice geometric structure and convincing perspective.

I decided to use a different method as before; I started with a sketch, again, but moved onto a grayscale value piece, rather than jump in color.  After I decided enough of the image was completed, I added color to the grayscale, and drew over the necessary sections to add texture and variations in color.  I couldn't decide if the method was an improvement, or simply another option.  The piece took around 16 hours.