#1 Theme - NightClub
Throughout the first semester, we started our project with the theme of a night club. Initially, we wanted our game to be set in a nightclub with the colour scheme of neon colours. At first, our game was supposed to not take itself seriously which gave me a lot of creative freedom. I began by researching different art styles from TV shows that I had watched.
Bernardo (my project leader) had an idea of how he wanted his game to look, so I had tried to find similar styles that would fit his vision. I started my research by watching Adventure Time, The Midnight Gospel, Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts. These three shows fueled my creativity in making unique character designs that would fit the theme we were looking for.
Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts stood out to me the most as I really like the design of the characters. The art style is not too complex, as the design of the character's eyes looked very appealing to me. Moreover, the show features various types of animals which were also great for my research as seen below:
Kipo had offered a huge variety in the design of animals as they had become humanised throughout the show. This show had given me a lot of inspiration and freedom to create characters either human or more animal-like.
I wanted to try both versions just to see what would be better for our game.
The designs below resemble what the characters would look like to fit the Nightclub theme:
This goat-like character was inspired by Kipo, the image to the left shows a 'buff' character that would be typical of someone who likes to go to nightclubs and party. The different clothing design shows the outfits that they could wear when attending the nightclub. To stick with the initial theme, I had decided to research typical night-out clothing styles and tried to recreate them here:
Beserker
Before we decided to cut down on the character amount, the berserker was a character idea. As seen on the left and also inspired by Kipo, this character features a powerful forearm and hand which can be described as being a gauntlet. The character design revolved around the main character in the show, of whom had animalistic features that started to grow upon her and change her form into that of a jaguar.
Necromancer
For the summoner, we had two ideas :
1/ a hot looking guy/girl that by using their charm would attract “minion” of the opposite sex to fight for them
2/ a lady of the night crating minions by giving birth to them - little fetuses crawling around attacking the enemies
The second idea seemed more original so I decided to try it out and see how it would look like. However, it might be a little bit too edgy and offensive for some people so we decided that going forward with it might not be the best idea
Bard/Dancer
This character resembles the typical clothing of a dancer on the dancefloor in a gay club. The clothing design is supposed to be over the top and make him stand out from the crowd. The leopard print trousers, as well as the pink fluffy scarf, are distinguishing when in a club. Additionally, the inclusion of a mohawk further reinforces this.
These sketches are all work in progress designs that helped me create the characters above. Each of them is an idea of a character that could have been. Using these sketches and further changing them to try and fit my theme was essential as it allowed me to mix and match with different colour palettes as well as fashion designs.