So what is new this week?
This week I worked on the Art pass, focusing on gathering images for an Environment Mood Board, and then beginning Paintovers on my screen captures, to establish an Art Bar.
My initial ideas for the environment, was to set the game on a moon-like planetoid, with mining aliens that pop out of the ground. I wanted the art to feel unique, and not as cliched as just dust and craters, so I started looking at landscapes that looked truly alien, and thought about how I could integrate some interesting patterns into the scenes.
In my Main Menu paintover, I settled on landscape features that were similar to opaque gemstone shapes, which would juxtapose nicely with organic alien characters and spiraling ground patterns.
During the scene progression, the player will see the aliens in different planetoid spaces, including construction areas adorned with architectural details. I thought that a balance of faceted shapes, alien design and unusual natural patterns, would be a fun way to create visual interest in these scenes.
I wanted to design user interface panels, like the Audio Menu, with simple geometric shapes, decorated with futuristic patterns, so I mocked up light panels in buttons, that would illuminate when interacted with, and used drop shadows to display some depth, from the Main Menu canvas, seen behind.
While I also previously used a black screen to dim the background scene, to make the UI “pop”, I decided to drop this feature, instead choosing to hide any Main Menu Interface buttons when Audio Menu is open, and when closes, will scale the Main Menu buttons to normal size, so they are visible again.
Colour-wise, I really liked the early surreal sky patterns I made, with animating teal and blue colours, so I kept the amethyst purple land structures, and used a complementary ground colour. I also plan to add incidental environment animations to the scene, considering light dappling, specular or environment maps. While being a huge fan of psychedelia in art, I will also add some experimentation time, looking into techniques to create these type of fun pattern effects.
