Hi everyone!
I've talked a lot about my comic in previous posts, but today I'm going to talk about the game that I've been working on. It's a collaborative project that began during my senior year of college, and I am now continuing it outside of school with my partners Aaron Cheney and Will Anderson.
My role on the team is art director, animation, and 2D art. I can't talk much about the engineering or game design, but I can talk a lot about the art process!
Our game is called Second Nature, and is a cooperative 2.5D platformer. Players take control of two nature spirits, Big and Small, to complete a series of puzzles and challenges.
Two years ago when we started this project, I wanted the players to feel like they were running through a painting. I wanted the game to be as beautiful to look at as it was fun to play. The game takes place in several different biomes, each with their own color palette, flora, and fauna. Here are some paintings that I created as different style tests:
The last piece, of the forest, became the piece I sent to the other artists to base off of the style. Here are some images from the game itself to show you how the style evolved as we worked!
In these screenshots, you can see the transition from temporary placeholder art, to what we thought was final art, to an even more refined style with in-game dynamic lighting. The biggest challenge was making sure it was clear which surfaces the players were able to interact with. We were able to use light and color to differentiate foreground/background from "interactable" platforms.
Here's what the game looks like in its current form!
We found a happy medium between stylized and realistic. I'm planning on doing more posts about this in the future, let me know if there is anything you would specifically like to see!
Thanks!