Graphics Showpiece
For this project I was tasked with creating 3 designs, a weapon, an environment and an ability pickup. I will be discussing how I generated ideas, developed and created the concepts whilst gathering feedback.
For this project the section below details what this project is about:
“Power-Bomb-Me-Brother is a small, up and coming games development team based in Derbyshire. The aspiration for their latest console game “Regenerate” is large, but their team is not. Because of this, they are outsourcing the pre-production concept work for the Player character’s weapon, an environment and an ability pickup to freelancers like you. “Regenerate” is a first person, post-apocalyptic heal ‘em up that incorporates a cel-shaded, cartoonish art style into its design. During Gameplay, the player must bring life back into a damaged world, heal the people they find using their signature Vita-Thrower and unlock new abilities through pickups. While post-apocalyptic in its setting, “Regenerate” is being targeted at those aged 12-16, so the concepts that you develop must reflect this consideration.”
This paragraph was very clear about the objectives and the items I had to design. This was helpful. It was also vital that the weapon had to heal enemies.
Generating Ideas
I started generating my ideas with a mind map for the graphics showpiece project. I covered many ideas which I talk about in my mood boards. In order to generate interesting ideas I played a game called Epic Mickey as it has a similar mechanic to the game that we were being asked to design for. One of the mechanics of the game Epic Mickey is Paint which allows the player to heals parts of the world using a paintbrush which paints the environment into play. This game generated new ideas and influenced my final design.
Mood Boards & Inspiration
These mood boards discussed my environments, weapon and ability pickup ideas. It had to be a post-apocalyptic themed environment. I was inspired by Dr Stone and Mad Max fury road. I wanted to go with a mix of these themes, a ruined city covered in sand. While researching environments I noticed that the majority of the post apocalyptic themes were similar to Mad Max Fury Road. I also thought that mixing a dystopian environment like the area from Dr stone would be a good idea. I did this to cover the post-apocalyptic setting as well as trying to implement something different to make the environment stand out.
For my ability pickup I had two ideas in mind. A healing bomb that heals enemies once they have stepped on it or got hit by it and a speed potion that allows the player to run faster as well as reloading faster. My inspiration for the healing bomb was inspired by the ink bombs from Splatoon and the paint mechanic from Epic Mickey and the speed potion was heavily inspired by the Minecraft potions and speed cola from Call of Duty Zombies. I felt that a bomb that acts similarly to that of the Splatoon’s ink bomb would have fit Regenerates age demographic. However I chose the speed potion to use for the design of the ability pickup. The speed potion was chosen as this was the idea I was most confident in and had the most ideas for.
I had multiple ideas for the weapons going into making the mood boards. These ideas were a sniper, a fan, a bazooka, a pair of healing gloves and a healing sword. For the sniper and fan idea I used Overwatch as my main inspiration. These weapons were Ana’s sniper and Mercy’s staff. I did this because Overwatch has healing based characters in which I could take inspiration. Ana’s sniper has the ability heal by shooting at other and I took this into account as I feel the weapon has to be able to shoot and heal the enemies. Mercy’s staff is something I looked at as the top of it looked like a fan which blowed healing energy into the air. These design caught my eye in particular and would influence my design heavily.
I continued to discuss the bazooka idea as this is a weapon usually known for causing massive damage, I felt like making it heal would be a contrast to it’s original purpose. I took inspiration from Fortnite and GTA5 as these were the type of designs I was planning to go for. The first image is cartoony whereas the other is more realistic, I wanted to create a middle ground with these design as this would fit theme. However I never made this idea into a design as a feel it would look very similar to Fortnites bazooka design.
Finally I discussed my melee weapon ideas. The games I took inspiration from were Overwatch and Jedi Fallen Order. The healing gloves are supposed to be able to heal enemies with one punch and the healing sword does the same thing however it will increase the range of the sword after each swing. Unfortunately like the Bazooka idea I never used these as I felt that these didn’t fit the theme of the game and were too futuristic.
Concepts
Drawn Concepts
These are the drawn versions of the my weapon and ability pickup concepts, the Vita-Thrower and the speed potion. The design of the Vita-Thrower is a double barrel shotgun that has been deactivated, on top of that there are two bottles that contain healing fluid. These connect to the fan and a electrical wire is attached to the trigger which lets the weapon fire. I started some early sketches trying generate ideas. I wanted to combine the two ideas from my mood boards/mind map, which was the sniper and the fan idea. This lead to me using a shotgun as the base and the fan on top. I did this because I wanted it to look like it has been scrapped together with whatever the people could find. A used fan, tape and 2 plastic bottles.
The speed potion is designed to look like a water bottle with multiple metal pieces screwed onto it. As I wanted the design of items to feel like they have been scrapped together with whatever people could find on the ground, I decided to make the bottle be made out of plastic with metal plates surrounding the outside of it. I feel this gives the speed potion an exaggerated look because of the metal plates.
Finished Concepts
The finished design consists of the weapon, ability pickup and the environment. With all 3 designs I used adobe photoshop to make them more detailed. The Vita-Thrower has some changes for example the handle has a bandage on it as the bright colours. The speed potion also has some changes such as the “speed” logo, I did this to create a brand in this new post-apocalyptic world. I feel that this gives the speed potion an identity. Both the weapon and the ability pickup concepts have been given rough edges using the bevel and emboss tool. I did this because it makes them look wore out, damaged which would be expected in this post-apocalyptic world.
The Environment is the only design that does not have a drawn concept as I knew it was the most difficult. I took inspiration from this image, the main idea was to make this image cel-shaded and more kid friendly. I decided to redraw the image so then I could add or remove details that I didn’t think were necessary. By doing this I could make my own design and make it cel-shaded.
Production Log
This is a screenshot of my production log which I made at the beginning of the project. This contains the whole progress of the project and it goes into detail about the creation of the concepts, step by step. If you would like to see more please download the project folder.
Feedback
Throughout all stages of this project I asked for feedback in my designs. The image above me is a perfect example as this is the original design for the Vita-Thrower. After gathering feedback many people agreed that yellow wasn’t a very healable colour, so I changed it to be a purple and people generally liked it a lot more.
Many people also said that the speed potion needed something to make pop out more and I agreed with them. I then added a logo to give it a brand and people seemed to like it a lot more.