Character Project: The Pitch

Character_CRIT.pdf by Rachel Baldwin

Character Project: Raw Veterans - Draft Concept

Raw Veterans: Draft Concept

After studying other app-based marketing layouts, I have decided to give Raw Veterans a cinematic look to demonstrate the atmosphere of the game.

Character Project: Developments & Font Styles

Raw Veterans: The Power-Crazy Leek

Raw Veterans: Font Styles

I have decided to feature the Leek as the antagonist of the game due to its naturally aggressive features and deformities. The gameplay will still focus around the abilities of individual characters, with an opening cutscene to introduce the mechanics. The suburban house of a family away on vacation has been struck by lightning turning all the food into mutants and technology haywire. As the self-proclaimed Raw Veterans have been left in the trash outside, they are still healthy enough to combat their way towards the fridge where their Commander (Carrot) has been left behind. The team must strive to reach their leader and ultimately clear the house of decaying foes before they themselves meet their grizzly demise.

Character Project: Red Onion Developments

Raw Veterans: Red Onion Designs & Colour Palettes

Character Project: Design Developments

Raw Veterans: Home Furnishing & Costume Designs

Character Project: Developments

I started this week by drawing out quick sketches of the characters in their standard action poses. I have accentuated the scale and degree by which household objects are drawn in order to make the levels appear more interesting and stylistic.

This hand-painted representation of the kitchen level now begins to show signs of life and chaos as the troupe approach their target.

For the moment, the game is set as a race against the clock to reach the end goal before expiration.

Character Project: Development & Ideas

Game Poster (Work-in-Progress)

Until recently, I feel my characters have lacked any kind of purpose or direction in their pursuit for the outside world. I have written a short synopsis to reflect the themes and abilities above:

"An extensive food fight between every major food group has reached a grizzly end. For the home-owners, this means an unexpected day of spring-cleaning - but with the surviving soldiers safely hiding on the verge of expiration, can these 'Raw Veterans' make it out live?"

Kitchen Environment - Night Time

I will continue to overlay environments with objects of interests and interaction points specific to each character and their abilities.

Character Project: Environment Concepts

Kitchen & Pantry Concepts

Living Room & Garden Concepts

The idea of these concepts is to provide a base level around which the characters will climb and navigate as a team in order to reach certain objectives.

Character Project: Progress

Initially I cropped real images of vegetables and turned them into silhouettes, over which I added random limbs and accessories to gauge character from them. Using unique abilities, the player must find and guide the vegetables through various levels of puzzles in order to complete the game.

Here I have also outlined the various elements which will keep the vegetables on their toes. The screenshot concept shows that there are various layers to the game, explaining that the carrot is able to find hidden treasures in the dark and the broccoli can smash through walls.

I changed the (cool as a) cucumber to have sunglasses and gave the onion a moustache so as to not confuse it with the potato.

The game itself and its characters are still without names.

Character Project: Initial Research

Project Cards: Cleaning, Food & Flight

For the character project I have been dealt the CLEANING card, the FOOD card and the FLIGHT card. I have instinctively placed them to correspond with a logical purpose in the game, so ultimately I have decided on food-based characters.

Influence Map: Food

I wanted my research to reflect the creative uses of food, so I looked into certain building mechanics such as chocolate bricks and sandwich stacking. I toyed with the idea of having culture-based levels which take the player around the world picking up traditional foods to form a squad that will help each other eliminate obstacles. I will continue to upload influence maps based on the cleaning and flight cards to further my ideas.

Initial Doodles

Some very basic character doodles seen here show the team-like determination and playfulness that would be found amongst app games such as Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. At this point I feel that the game design should reflect the style of modern apps to give it a fun yet professional look.

App Games: Colour Palettes

Having decided on a basic starting point, I looked into the stages that bring doodles to the final outcome.

App Games: Character Design

After studying the fundamental illustration processes and techniques, I quickly drew out a basic character to test the skills I had learnt. At this point I am contemplating the idea of using a fast-food kitchen as the environment, through which food characters must reach the end of the level using their individual skills. At the end of each level is a Happy Meal plane-part and a new food character, all of which must be collected to build the plane at the end and escape the kitchen.

Just a work-in-progress for now!