Concept Art

These are a few pieces of concept art I've done for the project so far.

I started this one a lot earlier in the year and tried to establish the overall mood of the game.  I was quite stuck on how to approach the character design proportion-wise.  I didn't want to aim for realism as I feel that's a bit pointless in 2D games which have so much potential for stylistic art.  The eyes are definitely too large and exaggerated here though.  I've also really noodled in to the textures of the character and completely overdone it.  I think next time I'm painting skin etc and my blending starts becoming muddy I'll just start over that section again.

Lighting the scene was also difficult.  There was potential for a lot of really dramatic, contrasting lighting and I feel I've rendered everything too dull.

I've also added too much detail to the trees in the distance and failed to portray the atmospheric perspective strongly enough.

For the ground I experimented with using the polygonal lasso tool which I think came out quite well - the sharp edges created using this technique contrast nicely with my rough, gritty brush strokes.

In this one I was trying to explore how the exterior of the school would look. It had to appear ominous, old and be relatively small in size.

I also really struggled with the lighting on this one.  The lighting is far too light and subdued for the night time scene I originally intended.

There's also something a bit off about the level of blur on the fence compared to the tree on the foreground.  I feel the scene would look a lot more believable if I made the fence slightly more blurred to match.

The rendering of the stones on the building also looks very rushed and I should have taken more care and found better reference.

The building itself also appears quite flat.  Drawing the building at a different angle instead of front-facing may have helped.

However I feel the trees in the background turned out nicely, as did the jagged slabs (created using the polygonal lasso tool again) of the pathway.

In this scene I was experimenting with the scale that could be used in game.  I also tried to be more adventurous with lighting.  In the scene I wanted to use lighting to direct the player to potential hiding spots (in this case the lockers) via a potential hole in the roof letting moon light through or an old flickering light on the ceiling.

I was also trying to think of interesting colour combinations and thought the sickly green and rusty red might be interesting however it just kind of makes me think of Christmas colours.  Perhaps a more bluish turquoise colour might have been better instead of the green.

The texture of the floor is also unclear - It's not obvious whether it's wood or carpet etc and looks too similar to the dirty wallpaper.  The stone pillars are also rendered quite strangely - the lines are a bit too clean compared to the rest of the scene.

The blurred foreground assets enclose the scene and feel a bit claustrophobic - however that might actually be a positive in terms of horror game design.

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To sum up, for future pieces I need to:
- Start over as soon as my blending becomes muddy.
- Do more lighting studies, specifically of night time scenes.
- Experiment more with character proportions.
- Experiment more with colour palettes.
- Do some material studies.