Real Worlds - Environment Moodboards and Research
Real Worlds - Environment Moodboards
For the second part of this project, I chose the 2D pathway. Therefore I needed to create design sheets for one building, three pieces of street furniture, a 3D block-out of my environment, as well as a key illustration. Before getting to any of this, I think it's important to outline exactly what I want to go for with these environment pieces. Therefore, I started with mood boards.
Hero Building
In terms of the hero building I want to design, I think I would centre this around my Forge Father character. This is because in the character design phase, I created a boss that the player would face in game. For that, I think a boss arena would be really interesting to design for this phase. I also think it would make the most sense with my chosen game genre, that being a souls-like, since it is a genre which prides itself on unique, interesting and memorable boss designs (that also includes the variety in arenas).
I created a moodboard of the inspirations I had for the boss arena, and a diagram to show all the ideas I have and how I categorised them.
Firstly, with the moodboard, I really liked the Forge Fathers militaristic aesthetic as a result of their main design philosophy being "function over form", and since they are so technologically advanced, it advances their aesthetic design even more. Transferring this to buildings, I thought going for something that looks more new and manufactured would suit the faction much better. For the buildings near the bottom, I wanted to have a scale of how big this building would be, and I thought these images best suited the colossal scale I am going for.
Here is my diagram just showing how I am thinking about things going forward, as well as how this is going to fit into the game. One thing I will mention outside of the diagram is level design. This is really important for me as a concept artist, and that's why not only am I designing this to fit into the game genre, I'm also trying to design this concept of the level to have a good flow and be an overall good experience for a player.
Street Furniture 1: Electricity Pylon
For the first piece of "Street Furniture" I am going to create a pylon that generates electricity over the course of the boss fight. For this I had multiple ideas, the first of which being that the pylons would simply generate electricity over time until the Spark Master goes into his second phase, and the pylons begin to strike electricity down on the arena. The second idea is that the pylons will attract lightning strikes, which I think would add to the overall aesthetic and "gimmick" of the boss fight. Finally, the third idea is that the pylons lie dormant for the first phase, and become active in the second phase. When they do, the electricity coming from the suit of the spark master could chain to a pylon, damaging a player if they are near it.
I think this is a great use of semiotics to give away what the Spark Master is going to do in the second phase of his fight. I also think that the third idea specifically is my favourite just because of it serving a unique purpose in gameplay. In terms of where the pylons will be, they will be on the roof, where the boss fights the player, and there will be multiple of them.
In terms of the moodboard, I have a few images at the bottom giving me ideas for the general design and shape language of a pylon, and at the top a few examples of Forge Father heavy machinery for reference.
Street Furniture 2: Boss Gate (Electric Door)
In most souls-likes, boss rooms are easily distinguishable from other rooms, due to the uniqueness of the room, the size of the room, but most importantly and most often, the door. In previous examples of souls-likes I looked at in my previous research blog, bosses are separated by fog gates, making the player enter a lengthy animation, which adds suspense and a feeling of pressure to the boss due to it feeling like an important event.
I really like the idea of implementing something similar in my game, but I don't think something that looks like a fog door would fit. Therefore, due to the Forge Fathers having a focus on technology, I thought it would be really interesting to explore different designs for a door. This would most likely be a giant gate, that the player can pass through, and then the gate closes behind them until the player is either killed or defeats the boss.
In terms of the images I am going to use for inspiration, there isn't really much since I already think I know what I want, but the top left is Forge Father art, with a building in the background I am going to use for reference, and the other images are examples of gates I found.
Street Furniture 3: Storage Unit (Loot)
For my final piece of street furniture, I was considering two options originally. Either I create a fence which will be used for the edges of the arena, or I will create a chest that will reward the player with items once the boss is defeated. I decided on the latter, since the only reason I would've created the fence is to create a border for the arena which the player cannot escape from, and I obviously don't need this due to it being on the roof.
In souls-like games, upon defeating a major boss, you are most often able to claim a boss-specific weapon. I am still considering whether to make the weapon a physical object that can be looted by the player, or sealing it in a chest, but both options will involve making some sort of storage container.
For the inspiration, I wanted to get examples in different levels of detail. This is so I can change my aims with the design if I feel the design doesn't fit the Forge Fathers with relative ease.
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