Art

Overall

Although I was assigned to do narrative, I felt like I should draw for the team. I wanted to originally draw so at the start it didn’t feel like a huge workload. Only later on did I understand how much work this has meant for me. And I was too stubborn to adapt my style to the roles demands. It was still good overall, people in the Feedback praised the art direction of the game. In addition, I got more control of the narrative because I knew what emotions I wanted to draw according to it. Most amount of the 2D art was made by me, but there were a lot of sprites provided by Kevin and Yangsong such as the map, rocks, berries, berry bush, the notepad that acted like the inventory and the backpack icon to name a few. I felt like I could’ve made my own versions if I used my time better.

Artist references

I liked the style of Beshi and Witch hat Atelier. The way that beshi draws their foilage is reflected on my mushrooms. It felt like they kept their art busy with texture which looked nice and crunchy as well as made things a little simpler. The art of witch hat always has well rendered faces with great amounts of expression, which was crucial for me to understand.

Execution

I decided to use my primary art style. I have a semi relistic and expressive style, which can help portrying emotions further. My characters typically have bigger eyes and more expressive colours. In retrospect, I should have simplified the style so I can keep the workload smaller and the results more consistent with one another.

Challenges

The most difficult thing to do was to keep the proportions consistent. The challenge was emphasised from me insisting on my painting style and moving the arms around, prompting me to redraw huge chunks of each character. This probably made the effect of transitioning through a variety of emotions less seamless as well as put my workload up.

In reflection, I should’ve drawn all the different body parts in seperarte layers, then I could’ve moved them around without being destructive. In addition, I could have made a bunch of different mouths and eyes to plaster on top of each character instead of redrawing them all the time. The advantage would be that I can reuse anything I have drawn, which would have increase the amount of output.

Techniques to convey emotion

I focused on changing the characters hands, mouths, eyes and eyebrows because it is generally the most emotive part of our body. What took the most time is adjusting the hands, as it required me to adjust their arm positioning so needed to redraw big sections of the body. But the result is an enhanced indication of what the character is expressing. Keeping eye contact can also give emotional context. Sierra and Marcus would look away from you when they trust you least, but if Sierra is talking or angry I used her piercing eyes to create a sense of confrontation.

One new technique I used is scribbling her eyes to convey a small sense of insanity. This is to reflect how Sierra isn’t thinking straight and her emotions are taking over. I liked the effect of the technique being quite seamless with the original shape of the eye. It feels as her iris’ are really smudged.

Characters

I made emotions based on what has been told so far in the story. Sierra ended up being the most expressive due to her character traits. Tyler was a scruffy character and Marcus is a neat teddy bear. All of them had dated styles to fit the timeline of the gdd.

Sierra

“This is my dads Compass… plot twist of the century, I’m giving it to you.”
“So please… Don’t be a moron with it.” – Sierra

Sierra has a high tech pink Pantagonia coat and has bright expressive colours. It’s all light-weight and high-tech. This is to emphasise that she has a priority of high end gear over actual survival knowledge. Not to say eperienced people dont use this gear, but it is clear through her Narrative that she isn’t. She has blue eyes to match the colour scheme too and stands out from Tyler and Marcus as they have earthy and fairly ragged clothes. Sierra’s sillouhette is by default more of a triangle for a show of expressiveness and assertiveness.

There were two big mistakes. Sierra has her backpack on, although they’ve lost all of their equipment in the story and she is still using the zipper with the hand that she has broken.

Tyler

“I barely know what I’m doing..” – Tyler

Tyler is a overly calm guy who doesn’t take a lot seriously. He has lesser emotions because of that. His clothing is simple and not exactly fit for the wilderness. Tylers only emotions is to express his opinion or to be defensive. He has a hard time understanding why Sierra is lashing out and generally doesn’t get her. Tyler has a more square sillouhette to emphasise his stubbornly indifferent nature.

Earlier versions of Tyler was critiqed by the team – he looked too much like a girl. I agreed it was pretty obvious. Now he could probably be a male model. A step to the right direction.

Tyler has bloody hand due to the blood mushroom, a detail which Jess enjoyed – Feedback

Marcus

“We’re are safer than you think. Marcus is like a chubby Bear Grylls.” – Tyler

Marcus is the quiet one of the group but is secretely the most useful. He is dissmissive of himself so he finds himself being ordered or talked for by Sierra or Tyler. Has earthy clothing similar to Tyler and has a collar which looks like the bottom of a mushroom. He’s also got boy scout pins which I think makes him look a little cute but also indicates his experience and interest in hiking. Marcus has a rounder sillouhette to emphasise his friendliness.

My mistakes with Marcus was the consistency of his face. I had to redraw in three times, and all of them look slightly different.

Mushrooms

The mushrooms planned to be drawn were all common to find in Autumn at the Pacific Northwest. I ended up a lobster mushroom and a fly agaric. Ideally, if the story was complete, I wanted Marcus to laugh at Tylers terrible knowledge of mushrooms. If Tyler gave him lobster, chicken or golden chanterelle mushrooms, Marcus would clock in his survival skills and make a fire to cook the mushrooms.