Character Design Week

Another 2D technical art brief, we dipped in on character design and how to portray what kind of person someone is/what they do etc. I was given 'Abertoir worker'. You'll see my concept sketches below (6/10 I know) and you'll see me developing the kind of character I wanted to portray by the end of it. He's supposed to be a guy who despite killing animals, feels every cut. Deep.

Vectors

We have a module dedicated to teaching us a range of different software in preparation for conveying our game ideas. Since many 2D games are created using vectors to save space, we were shown the basics of Photoshop's vector tools. Here is a piece I made after being given the title "Blinkies Balloon Race"

I've used photoshop a lot before but never really dabbled with the vector tools, s'alright like.

(Project 2) Our Own Board

This time round we were given far more time to create a board game of our own. Instead of being given a video game with pre-existing rules to take from, we were given a fairy tale. Ours was Goldilocks.

Our game orientated around the story of Goldilocks, focusing on the chase for her. You play as one of the three bears, starting on the house board. You make your way around that house board, picking up cards corresponding to space colours that will aid your chase of Goldilocks. On the Garden board you race your friends (and a timer) to catch Goldilocks first!

Here are some examples of assets we created. 

 Cards

 Ruleset (Page 1)

 Garden board (Left half)

 Garden Board (Right Half)

House Board

Board Game Design

Our first project of the year was based on teaching us fundamentals. Starting with board games gave us a taste of what it is to concept, design, change, test and create a working game. It confirmed for me that I'd taken the right course - it was an eye-opener to what my role as a designer entails.

The gist is you're given an old arcade game (in our case, Scramble) and then you make a board game out of it. Here are some example of board designs, rule sets and model-making our team came up with.

Working in a team was a pleasure and I hope it's something this course keeps going throughout the massive changes it'll likely go through what with it being so new. Some are bound to think it's a pain in the ass but my god is it an opportunity and a half.

also yeah I just clocked the spelling mistake "too" on the last rule, kill me now.