Artifact 2, Heartbeat bat
So this is week two of
my blogging about the group 12 game project “heartbeat bat” and this week I am
going to write about the construction about the bat character that you play as. In heartbeat bat you play as a bat that is trying to fly as fast as possible without
getting hit by any obstacles that slows down your speed or get caught and slowed by enemies. By gathering speed boosts the bat can fly faster.
Since we
chose to have a cartoony visual I wanted the bat to also look cartoony and fit
the rest of the game environment. The reason for choosing a cartoon visual is
because we wanted to stay true to the original game design document made by
group 7 which had a cartoony visual. Group 12 liked their visual style of
heartbeat bat so we decided to stick with that. Our whole game are therefor going to be
in a cartoony visual style but also with a touch of realism since we didnt want our game to be to abstract looking.
I started
my work with trying to figure out what kind of colors that would fit on the bat
and with our environment. I first tried a brown color with dark brown eyes but realized
that I thought it would fit better with a more grey color scheme.
I therefore
chose to use grey and shades of grey for the main part of the bats body. The
colors of the bats wings are grey and pink shades since I thought it would make
a nice contrast to the grey with some pink.
On the eyes
of the bat I decided to use different purple tones. For the shadows on the eyes
I chose to use shades of wine-red and darker purple.
After I was
done with the basic colors and shadow shades for the bat I decided to also give
the bat dark brown hairs on the whole body and a purple red nose to make my bat
look more animated as I mentioned in my last blog entry.
I used Photoshop
for this whole progress with a mix of soft brushes and hard brushes. For the
brown hairs I used a slim shaped custom made brush.
When I was
done I tried different colors for the bat with the help of “selective colors”
in Photoshop and decided to change the bats dark color to be a bit darker and
the grey colors to be a bit cooler.
In the end
I also tried to enhance to eyes of the bat to be more expressive so I used the blur
tool and the dodge tool to change the eyes to look more realistic and glossy
since I wanted the bat to get more character.
In my work
with the bat I experimented with a lot of different textures and filters but I
decided to stick with my original made bat since I thought it looked more cartoony
and fitted our game environment better then.
See you
next week!
Bats are cute, and this one right here is a very cute bat, Tara!
SvaraRaderaIt’s great that you decided to stick with the original cartoon style in the concept and it shows up in the subtle color scheme you’ve chosen here. From what I’ve seen from the game this far the background will be dark, night time and with a lot of detail going on. Against that this far lighter character will stand out and be easy for the player to localize.
The roundness of the body added to the soft coloration and happy face makes this a very inviting character for anyone to play. You’ve made good use of the cartoon themes and it separates the bat from its surroundings even more.
I do believe that you could have thrown in a little stronger color variations around the face and ears and still keep the cartoonish look intact, if you wanted to go that way.
You made a good choice to stay off the textures here, I think. The cartoony style is usually very free from textures that show too much of the surface material. I also think you saved time when it comes to animating this character when you can focus of form instead of getting the textures right.
I wish you good luck in finishing this game! It’ll be great to see it fly!