2D ART (by Stephen)

Assignment: Painting the Polygons Tools: Godot, Asesprite, Photoshop

Assignment Name: In-Game Scene

Tools: Asesprite, Godot

This one turned out differently than I thought -- the game is designed as a rhythm game, so it's hard for me to conceptualize what angle the "basketball game" that is represented via the rhythm elements. But since this is meant to be "in-world" art only, I had to try. Here's a background view of the character, a depth view of the court, and a ref that's not stoked on what he's seeing.

Build of the game is here, pw is "2dart"

Bonus: a few panels of the original "concept art" I made for my friend as a joke a few months before starting school. It has a certain pizazz that I feel may be missing in the current iteration, but that might be largely to the omitted UI elements?

Assignment: Character design

Tools: Pencil, pen, paper, Asesprite

Description: The G League: a rhythm game where you play as a disgraced basketball star absolutely stomping on Eastern European JV children, running up a score well past the point of reason. Losing the game isn't even a possibility here.

I drew inspiration from the Spongeball basketball meme and NBA 2K covers for this one, although I still think it could use more energy/action in the scene. Not pictured: the rhythm elements, or the "Advertise sketchy products in a language you don't speak" minigame feature. Sketchups of the scene:

Inspiration pics:

Assignment: Character design

Tools: Pen and paper, Asesprite

Assignment: Character Design

Tools: Godot, pen and paper

Description: After his 29th failed drug test and several dubious performance-enhancing surgeries, disgraced NBA superstar H.G. Aych is relegated to the Euro G-League, a micromarket junior-varsity league for Eastern Slatvian 11 year olds, leprechauns, and amputees. Playing as H.G. Aych, you must perform rhythm combos to run up the score differential into the quadruple digits and attract sponsors (vegetable oil, sexual-enhancement pills, potato fertilizer).

Assignment: Environment Design

Tools: Pen and paper, Asesprite

Description: A drawing of an interior space, a massive tree within a larger cave system. I started by drawing over my original pen sketch in GIMP, but god GIMP is a bad program. So I switched to Asesprite instead. (I should've just started again from scratch though, since I ended up with a ton of greebles.) I think the half-opacity rays of light were a major step in making this feel more textured and real, as were adding the background holes in the cave wall that allow you to see the sky. One item you can spot if you look closely: a set of grappling hooks for sale, for the enterprising tree explorer.

Assignment: Environment Design

Tools: Pen and paper, Godot

Description: These are two diagrams of the "hub tree village" concept for my game. The central area is a massive tree, with small huts built into the side of it. The tree itself is within a larger cave system, but is emerging through a hole in the cave ceiling. I don't think "cave" comes through very well here, since I couldn't quite get the cave working in my Godot build of the inspiration mockup. But I think the village feels nicely nestled and you can see a clear progression of where a player might travel.

Inspiration pics:

Tools: Asesprite

Description: A collection of bacterial guys. Some definitely turned out better than others. One thing I noticed was that the mitochondria were out of place for all of them, but I could only see this once I got them all in the aggregate. So I reuploaded them with the mitochondria a bit higher, so the face wouldn't block them as much.

Tools: Asesprite, Godot

Description: A cool guy on a hot day. I wanted to do some concepting on a game we're working on where you can turn into steam, but this is a much sillier version of that. Particles for the sun rays, sweat, and steam clouds. Next step would be to dissolve the character. I'm not loving the different pixel sizes that occur from scaling down sprites at this level, since the entire scene is rendered to 100x100. But that's showbiz, baby

Assignment 4: Pixelizing Monstrosities

Tools: Asesprite, wacom tablet

Description: Incandenza Vociferans sprites

Feedback: Unfortunately, I hated my monster from the previous assignment, but there's only one way through that problem: forward. Rounded elements are tricky here, as is the fundamental glass/lightbulb texture of the creature. It was unclear at first whether I should "fill" the body with color or leave it transparent, but at a small enough scale the transparent is unreadable and at a larger scale it's not "enough" of a drawing.

Industry from Biology

Pencil + ink

Description: I had the early idea to use a puffer fish as the inspiration and quickly realized they were VERY hard to draw in 2-point perspective. 3-point became a better solution as I sketched out balls bounded by the "isometric" box. Drawing the box "inside out" also helped, using XYZ axes rather than planes to define the center of my view. The interior of the hovercraft still looks somewhat strange, it's tilted towards the viewer too much relative to the exterior, but I think the spikes and headlights turned out well.

References:

Incandenza Vociferans