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[snackycactus]

Creative/Art Process for new levels in Go Go Kudamono

Hey folks, I'm workin on a new forrest level & thinking about my art process. I'm getting curious about how everyone else out there got from 0 to finished for this sort of thing. I'd love to hear anyone else's process!

For me, when it comes time to do something new, I'll generally make a huge photoshop canvas and just start drawing. I don't worry to much about design, or even art style and just try to keep working until I get an environment, mood and colors that I'm looking for / feels cool. I'll usually end up with about 10-15 iterations and a massive canvas full of cool things (and some total garbage). About half way though, once I have some colors and environment doodles I like, I'll then get out a pencil & paper and sketch some enemies to draw in the environments.

Here's an image (one of the better looking / more finished parts) from the corner of my new forest level photoshop canvas.
I think in about 1 more day of drawing I'll start cleaning things up / converting them to a more "Go Go Kudamono" art style (& start creating tiles).



Once I reach the final tile stage, I'll do another post showing the evolution from sketch to final.

[TheWing]

Looking very cool indeed, I'll be sure to keep an eye on this

[i.i]

It's pretty!!

[SolarLune]

Ah, that sounds like a cool idea - I usually just start pixeling stuff and throwing them together, haha. Your way sounds way more controlled and feasible when it comes to actual design.

[snackycactus]

Ok, I'd love some feedback on this.

I've started to simplify + cartoon the art a bit more to fit the rest of the game's style. I've also started thinking more about what I'll need structurally to build an actual level; 'walls' of some kind, bridges, etc. I've also cut down on the number of colors I'm using.

I want the forrest to feel very dark, so I'm making it very monotone feeling to emphasize the feeling that all of the light is being blocked and filtered though leaves. This image is also missing the 'super foreground' which'll have some brighter green leaves that fringe the edges of the screen occasionally.

Once I get this nailed down better, I'll move on to the interior (cave) parts of the level.

[snackycactus]

Hey folks, I just wanted to check in and share some more of my art process as I start talking my sketches towards being finals.
Here's an image showing my process going from A (sketch) B (final, but not quite the right art style) and C (final in the corrected art style)

[snackycactus]

Here's another example of art style update:


I often try not to worry too much about style when doing initial concepts, so it usually means phase 2 is designing to match the real style. One thing that's nice about this is I get to kill 2 birds with one stone by not only updating the art style, but also having it act as a second pass where I just generally make everything looks better.

[Connor]

This looks kinda fun. Gives me the whole sega genesis vibe from when I was researching for my current game, in terms of colour scheme and energy. Good luck!

[Pawl]

That bomb slow mo... 

As always, looking good!!

[snackycactus]

Currently I'm working on a new level and I thought I'd share some of my process.

Because I'm the only one working on this project, I'm not doing traditional pre-production and production stages. Instead it's more of a gradual blend from one stage to the other.

The last (1st) level I was working on was about 60-80% pre-production, %20-40 actual production. Because of this, I was essentially making up the level, design and mechanics as I went, resulting in a more hap-hazard process. Now that the game is farther along with many of the features and mechanics being complete, I'm much closer to 20% pre-production and 80% production. This means that my process is changing to be much more planning based.

This time, rather than creating environments and enemies as needed, I drew everything intended for the level at the start. Next I created a level map in photoshop showing level layout & enemy placement. Here's it looks like:


Here's an overlay showing the cave systems that connect the different level entrances and exits:

For the caves, I tried to make sure that (in general) the shapes will match up with entrances and exists above ground. The hope is that players will be able to have a sense of where in the level they'll be going each time they enter or leave the caves. You can see this image still isn't complete as I'm missing enemy placements.

Next I started animating and adding each enemy to the game.
Here's two gifs showing them being tested in-game:




Thats all for now!

[snackycactus]

Just finished the main bones of the new cave tile set that I'll be using for the underground portions of this level. Here's a lil' gif of my first in-game test. I've still got a bunch to do (like ledges you can fall off of) but I've got most of the basic structure in!

[snackycactus]

Here's another lil' update on cave progress: as per usual, once I started to work out the finer details it turned up a whole mess of visual design issues.

The main things I needed to solve were:

1. Because I wanted multi-level rooms in the caves, I needed to be able to increase the wall height to match the highest point in any room (to make it feel like a space & keep it from feeling like a cardboard diorama)

2. I needed a better way to visually show depth in the walls, especially on the sides of cliffs.

To solve these, I went back in to sketch mode. Here's what I came up with for now:

[The Armorman]

I could marry the way this game looks and have 3 beautiful children, one of whom I grow to despise over time.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Well, I don't know how I've missed this project, it's so lovely!

[snackycactus]

Thanks! :D

Here's another sketch of an alternate design for the cave. This sketch is a little more rough around the edges, but it has some merits. I'd love some opinions!

Here's the strengths this one has over the other:
- a little more magical (this is for a 'magic/mystic' forest level)
- a little less conventional

Detriments
- a little less structured and cute
- may be harder to convert to a final version

What do y'all think?

[vitorlanna]

Both look great, but I think the first one looks better. The second one I think goes a little overboard with purple. I think some props like crystals and roots (even as wall variations) would do a lot to make It more magical.

Game looks fantastic btw!

[snackycactus]

Hey folks!
So I would have liked to have had this done earlier last week, but an unfortunate combination of getting sick and having a super hard time translating sketch to final delayed my progress a ton. Anyway, here's my art test for the new cave tile set. (Very Link to the Past inspired) Hope it looks good to y'all!

[fireboy]

His game is very interesting and diversified.
Awesome ... good job.

[jctwood]

This is beautiful and looks so fun and upbeat! I love link to the past and it came to mind when I first saw the game. I love the little bush enemy that jumps up at you. I hope you are recovered from illness.

[snackycactus]

Thanks!!! (it was just a stomach bug, nothing too bad)