Week 2.5: Art Direction — Swarm!

Game Overview

Swarm! is a shooter game where the player must eradicate a human-mutant species created in an off-world science facility, rescue the scientific and security personnel from the lab and bring those guilty of the atrocity to trial. Failure of the mission will lead to the complete annihilation of the human race as we know it.

Style Breakdown

Frame

Swarm! is set in the near future. The game takes place in an off-world research facility where scientific personnel are conducting experiments that were outlawed on Earth.

Form

Using a limited palette consisting of mostly neutral greys, the game environment will use one or two accent colours to to indicate points of interest to the player and improve the overall readability.

Human characters will, obviously, be human but the ‘creatures’ in the facility will be hybrids of human and ‘something else’. Inspiration here is drawn from the animal and insect kingdoms mostly to create variety and obscurity.

Focus

Enemy creatures will use muted red/orange hues to indicate danger to the player. Green accents will indicate equipment that must be destroyed.

As the player descends through the game the environment will become darker and darker, placing greater emphasis on the lighting in the scene.

Filter

Given the constraints of time and creative bandwidth, the game will feature low fidelity visuals throughout. This will make the backgrounds less cluttered and help the main points of interest to stand out.

Character Design

Mystic

This was the first character I have ever designed so I wanted to keep it very simple and minimise the amount of sketching needed. I found the thought of a floating head very appealing so settled on a squashed ellipse/egg shape and added poisonous tentacles into the mix.

This is what I came up with; I call it Dr. Sotong (Sotong being the Malay word for squid).

Warrior

For this next attempt, I wanted to notch it up a gear and try adding a body rather than just having a head. Whereas before the basic shape was a simple ellipse, this time I followed the suggestion by Tim Gibson and drew on the strong triangular forms from a praying mantis. That in turn brought me to the idea of 6 limbs. Animating such a character would be tricky to avoid the arms colliding with one another so I started looking at a potential rig first which, by sheer dumb luck, also fitted with the triangular theme of the reference image.

I added scales for two reasons. Firstly, I need to work out how to draw armour and clothing and secondly because I felt if this was a lab-created creature it probably wouldn’t have clothing or armour.

The next iteration will add colour and value and address the body proportions as they don’t feel right in the sketch presented in Figure 4.

I’d like to experiment with different configurations and shapes for the creature’s eyes (thumbnails 2 to 6).

Speed and Agility

With one ‘floaty’, mystical character and one stalwart warrior I wanted to add a fast, agile character to the mix. I took inspiration here from the sci-fi and fantasy genres , looking at aliens and elves, and from my own cat.

Environment Design

The game is set in a hi-tech research facility. I wanted a neutral background to help emphasise the foreground and mid-ground points of interest. Inspiration came from science fiction and steampunk laboratories to produce the first iteration of a lab (Figure 8). I need to keep the detail low and the design simple owing to this being a solo project and my lack of artistic skills.

In later levels, where the most dangerous creatures can be found, I plan to create a huge vault door with radial interlock pins. Once modelled this should be straightforwards to animate, building on my earlier post, Open Sesame — Art of opening doors….

UI Design

TBW

Screen Mock-up

TBW

Conclusion

TBW

List of Figures

Figure 1. THORN, 2021 Moodboard – Mystic Character [Original images available at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/scaryblankpage/swarm/character-mystic/]

Figure 2. THORN, 2021 Mystic Character Concept, Dr. Sotong

Figure 3. THORN, 2021 Moodboard – Warrior Character [Original images available at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/scaryblankpage/swarm/character-warrior/ and https://www.pinterest.co.uk/scaryblankpage/swarm/creatures/]

Figure 4. THORN, 2021 Warrior Character Concept

Figure 5. THORN, 2021 Moodboard – Speed and Agility Character [Original images available at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/scaryblankpage/swarm/character-agility/]

Figure 6. THORN, 2021 Speed/Agility Character Concept

Figure 7. THORN, 2021 Moodboard — Environment [Original images available at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/scaryblankpage/swarm/environment/]

Figure 8. THORN, 2021 Mock-up of science lab (1st iteration)

References

Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash