Since this game is inspired by Polynesian culture and the geographical make up, I wanted to look at art work and media that can showcase this vision I have.
E-Jay’s original mood board in his presentation:
I had 3 medias in mind that I wanted to do a quick observation on how it draws in the viewer with their stunning and unique visuals.
First media I looked at was Bee and Puppycat. As I had recently finished watching season 2 with E-Jay not too long ago, I looked at the visuals and colour palettes of this show. What I love about this show is that it has gentle absurdity in its every day occurrences and makes it feel normal to our characters. Environments also feel lived in and messy, making Bee feel more human like the rest of us.
I have noticed that this show uses a lot of colours that lean into the “dreamy” colour wheel. This includes a lot of blues, pinks, and purple hues, which is very fitting for the show considering that I associate it with a dreamscape and space. Although the backgrounds are flat, they feel layered as they use multiple layers with different colours to come across as it having a lot of depth. Additionally, throughout this show, it uses soft glows, sparkles and floating shapes to add to the magical, cosy, space themes. The lack of emphasis on the line work creates a calming and bed time story atmosphere. I thought that this show would influence our game’s aesthetics as it’s set in a beach town and has very magical and supernatural themes to it.
Another media I looked at was Hilda, personally, I have never seen this show before but i really liked the art style and wanted to zoom in the stylistic choices. Visually, this show reminds me a lot of Over the Garden Wall, which is a show that has been recommended to me by my autumn-loving friends.
By comparing the previous show to this one, it feels a lot more muted and cosy. It reminds me of autumn and would be a show I would watch during the transition from summer to autumn. The line work is bold and clean, which is noticeably thicker. Characters in this show have more blocky and sturdy looking shapes, with minimal facial features, whilst being readable. The colour palettes are more earthy, leaning into colours such as green, blue, brown, and orange. It is more nature focused but has low saturation, making everything the viewer sees on screen appear more cosy and calming. This makes it feel more outdoorsy, adventurous, and peaceful. When I was looking for images to form this mood board, I noticed that the composition of the show is to imply how small the characters are in comparison to the surrounding environments, which may sound scary and vast, but honestly, it makes it feel gentle and calming. I wanted to look at this show to see how it deals with the environment and how I can incorporate what I have observed into my environments.
The final show I looked at is by no surprise: Steven Universe. This show was one of my favourites growing up. Although it had a very episodic feel and felt absurd to the point where it was unwatchable for younger me, it started to grow on me much later when “threats” were introduced. It was then I started to notice and appreciate the art work.
The main aspect of this show I will be delving into is how stunning the background work is. First thing I want to point out is how hand painted some of the backgrounds feel. The brush texture if you zoom in, looks rough and over fills the line work, making it look like a children’s story book, yet it looks magical and other worldly. In the very background, there seems to have a soft blur or a haze, making it feel dreamy and gentle. The colour palettes are chosen so well, there are a lot of gradients, rather than just a paint bucket of one solid colour, this makes it look like there’s more depth. In scenes where there is a beach in the background, the sunsets are warm toned and the skies are pastel. Lighting in this show corresponds to what the directors want to show us. In scenes where it wants to convey character reflection, calmness, or sadness, they will use blue. But in scenes where they want to convey memories, love, or family, hues of pinks are used. In conclusion, the background art of this show is to depict emotional storytelling, which is what I want to create in my work. I want to reference this show mainly for its beautifully unique art style.
Miro work
E-Jay found a lot of sources for me to look at, and wrote some notes summarising.
This is a mood board I made which was for the presentation:
I want the art style to be flat, but layered (although this may be changed depending on if I can do the challenging tasks done quickly). I have come to the realisation that I have a lot of work that needs to be done. That being said, I’ve had discussions with E-Jay about SFX to make the scenes feel lively. I also want to keep true to the island life colour palette, for that reason, I will be sticking to mainly blues, greens, and yellows.
More mood boards
Here are some mood boards I have made to narrow down the art style and gather inspiration when I make the assets for the game.
Island environment:
Player character:
NPCs (if the scope is within reach):
Foreground + BG assets:
Concept thumbnails
I referred back to the pipeline I did research in to help me with the creation of these thumbnails:
Software: Procreate
Above are thumbnails I have done, these aren’t styles I want to incorporate into the final cut, however, I wanted to show what type of world the player will be getting themselves into. For foliage, I used someone else’s custom brushes just for the sake of keeping within time limit and not to exert myself. I also experimented with gradient maps and different blending modes in order to get the coloured results.
Below is a video showing my processes when it comes to environment art.
All of these thumbnails follow the same process, I start off with a simple sketch to rule out where the main focal point is, this step doesn’t take any longer than 2 minutes with a solid reference.
Then I move onto blocking the environment into greyscale. I’ve learnt that to make it more aesthetically engaging, using a technique called chiaroscuro to give my environments more volume and dimension. This technique is used when darker things are close to the foreground and the background is the lightest, I found this quite difficult to use as I still wanted to show value and dimension with objects that need shading or has a different colour.
After that stage, I lower the opacity of the sketch or remove it completely. I start to play around with the environment and add details such as grass, foliage, and trees, ensuring to give them light and value as well.
The final stage is to play around with colouring methods; for these thumbnails I primarily used blending modes and gradient maps I make. I tried to use a gradient map for the first thumbnail, but I didn’t like how it looked in the end, so I switched to a blending mode. I find that using gradient maps are perfect if you want to make a piece that evokes mood and if you want a specific time of day. In the second thumbnail, I wanted it to look eerie, yet quiet by using blues (even though this game isn’t supposed to be spooky) as the geography suggests this- I made the formations of rocks look massive, they also look triangular, which is a shape that’s used when an artist wants to convey danger. To further add to the atmosphere, I added some mist and clouds to make it look like uncharted territory.
If we look closer, I applied compositional rules to my thumbnails to make it look more balanced. I used rule of thirds where the focal point lays in the intersection, rather than the centre, I remembered to keep most of the information on one side of the screen rather than scattering pieces of irrelevant information. This creates good negative space.
One last thing I made were these concepts of the player character- I want to make more of these as I don’t think these fit the concept that well.
I want to keep on exploring my creative freedom and think beyond the boundary.
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