More character stuff and some colour experiments

Hi,

I forgot to mention in the last post that the character, is indeed like a Tyco Rebound. Haha. So it can flip over and keep going either way. Which might be cool.

Anyway, Iv been playing around with different colours and different visual styles. But mainly in this post..I will be showing the images I've made in Painter IX.


Heres the first two that i played with. Obviously not too sure about colour yet, but these are just tests.
I really like the look that painter gives to your images. I think maybe it would look good with a sort of cell shaded black outline effect..but im not sure.

This is the first proper one I made. I had good fun learning to use the program abit better. Obviously I'll learn more and more as i go on. But, anyway, I Gave it a side on stance because this is the view we will probably most have when we are playing the game. I quite like distinction between the two side, not by colour, but by its composure. Cat on the left and Gorilla on the right.



This next one, I tried to just give a different view. I also tried a different colour set. The reason its blue and yellow is because i kind of stole them from sonic 2. The factory level at the start, where you run along a yellow and blue tube. The colours are slightly different, but there we go.
The idea is ok, but on the whole it doesnt look too great. Its supposed to be, the Gorilla side facing you, but Codey saw it as a rear end. haha. Let us know if you agree with him :)



So aswell as thinking of character stuff. We've been thinking about the look of the rest of the game. It's been in my head for a while now, that it might be good to make it an ode to the platform originators. Using then, traditional, techneques like tiling and simple layering of the assets.
So I've played around with making some tiles...using my current love of painter.












Colours wise....I kind of went for abit of a sickly colourfull mix. Abit like Sonic, Mario, Psycho fox. And other similar games.
So I apolagise in advance if its horrid. haha.






The character in this has a black outline around it...just to show it uo a little more.
Other than that, I think this pretty much pulls off the horrid blocky and psycadelically coloured look that we nostalgically think of in old platformers.
Ive not spent much time on the back ground either, but i think thats a good idea maybe. Because if the game is going to be fast paced, then we wont have much time to look at it, and it may look better as the screen blurs across it.

Thats it for the styles I've come up with.
I do have some more stuff to say about style ideas and influences...but i need to talk with codey first before i say incorrect things. haha.

so,
goodbye for now

Iain

character development so far

Hello,

I managed to get my train in the end. Yay.

Anyway,
so heres some scans of my note book, documenting the development of our little character so far. Codey has touched on some of the ideas already, so I hope to just elaborate on them a little more.











While Codey and I were enjoying a coffee, we discussed shapes which we associated with speed and agility. Codey mentioned that when he thought of speed he thought of sharp shapes...so i drew a 'Wipeout' style ship...then that progressed to a sort of little nimble pyramid head...Silent Hill esque. I played around with it being on two legs, then thought of it switching from two to four, back and forth etc...
Then I just took away its head.
Codey drew a line through the centre of it and then we came up with the idea of a split personality of sorts. Except, aswell as different characteristics, it would have different abilities.











I drew it running on two legs, and we both imedietley thought it wasnt working.
four legs it is.
We liked the idea of one, being able to run fast and the other being able to jump high. The player would then have to switch betwee the two, depending on the situation they were in.
We then added a wallgrip, so the played can jump from walls or even hold on to asses the situation for a few seconds. heres a little table to show the balance between the two.





The white side, would perhaps be a little like a cat or some other kind of fast moving animal.
The purple side, would probably most likely be a monkey, or Gorilla.

Heres a diagram to show how the player might switch between the two sides to manage a scinerio..








The white side, although its jump may not be as high, it is a lot quicker. So say if something was chacing you, or you needed to climb something alot quicker than usual. You could do so with the faster white side.
Or if the situation called for a more accurate jump, you would use the purple side. Which moves more slowly through the air.








We also like th idea of a double jump. For myself, double jump in a platformer makes it so much more fun to play. Or even a triple jump. We could mimic the style of Smash brothers. With the animation for the jump, changing for each press of the button.
Normal jump, to flip, to corkscrew spin etc. This would make it all the more saticfying.













As for the look of the character. Its pretty simple, which is good. But I would like to explore it more. The idea of two different colours is nice. And the way Codey has painted it in the last post I think is quite cool. As though the two sides have been thrust together, and arent quite whole yet. The colours spilling over one another.

I tried a few different ways to seperate the two, and this one i think has some potential. Though Im yet to discuss it with Codey, I think its a nice idea all the same and is worth just showing for now.











Its kind of abit tacky at this stage. But it looks almost tribal, and made me think as though its some kind of ancient creature. With symbols of a long lost race. Like a champion of its kind...This may being a starting point for a story.. but who knows.

Magical

anyway, thats me for this post

Thanks

Iain

Finding clarity in confusion!

Bonjourno!

Well this is my first blog post for Codey Vs Iain! After much thought of working individually, both Iain and I decided that our palns for world domination could only be achieved as a team!

Iain's previous post lays the foundations for the basic idea's of the game, speed, flow and human movement. After a revision of our thoughts we came up with the pitch "A fast paced platform game celebrating the art of flow and human movment". I appologise if this at all seems a little thin and scatty im writting our progression from a couple weeks ago.
The developement ideas started pretty rapidly based on random idea's of both speed, movement charm and incredibly animation. Character jumping from buildings and off mountains etc.. Character developemnt was also set into motion, alien like creatures donning cone heads





















to average Joe the office worker........



















one of my initial idea's involved an office worker, jumping through the window of his work place tower block, thus starting the game...

















Thankfully our ideas have progressed, on the 10th october Iain and I met for coffee and discussed the the relavent issuses of research such as:
Platform games
Human movement(now including Quadraped movement)
Artistic Style
Sound
Idea's of forced perspective
The games self awareness
Charcter Design

The buzz of caffeine rapidly fueled the developement of our character. After disscussions about speed and the aesthetics of speed we developed a simple quadrapped character. Further developement removed its pointed head peice and gave it split ability's. (Im sure your all scatching your heads)

For example both halves of the avatar have different abilitys and colours. By giving the player the ability to flip the character at any point we would be able to give domince to the frontal half. Lets say we have a white half and a purple half.....
















when the white half is infront the avatar runs fast and has a moderate jump and little grip. At the touch of a button the avatar can flip over, now with the purple half infront the avatar has a slow run, but an enourmous jump and greater grip.

Our hope for the use of split abilitys would cause for a greater strategic thought to navigating platforms resulting in the satisfied execution of movement within the games space.... the next post will hopefull contain images of the avatars developement and with some luck our artistic style will be nailed..... (possibily cell shading)


the next post will be coming soooooooon......

over and out

Codey

First post of this blog

Hello,

Welcome to the Codey Vs Iain blog. Which is actually our blog for 3rd year of outcomputer game design degree.

This is Iain speaking by the way.
I started a blog at the very beggining of this year, documenting this project, so to save me typing it out again in this one...heres the link to my old blog.

http://www.iaingillespie.blogspot.com/

I havent posted a blog for 10 days, so theres quite abit of catching up to do. But I'll start by telling you what it is Codey and I intend to do..
We intend to make a platform game, based on speed, flow and movement.
Thats the basic idea, though we do already have a lot more to ad to that. If I miss anything, Codey can correct me afterwards.

After we had an initial brainstorm of core mechanics we'd like to see implied, we discussed style. The visual style of our game is very important to both of us, so we decided to just experiment with different styles. We discussed a few different styles we liked (but for some reason both of us had Alien Hominid in our minds), and then I set about trying some out.
I tried Photoshop painting, Flash painting, monotone and line, and finally a collage of photos taken by myself at various locations and of various people.








After reviewing these images, we both immediately favoured the lined image. Mainly because it was simple and stylish. Though I also liked the photographic one alot, as it reminded me of samurost. http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

After having a discussion in Uni, we came up we came up with a list of things that we need to research constantly over this pre production period. Although its in codey's book, so i cant list them on here yet. haha.

oops! gotta train to catch! Codey or i will continue this later


thanks
Iain