Murder in Paris!

In the last post, most of the concept work for our crime game was for the first region, New York. Our second region takes place in Paris!


Here are some backgrounds:

A Parisian street background for our game board.

A generic street scene, repurposed for Paris.

Place du Dublin...including injured mime!

I liked composition I stumbled on in Google Maps so much, I ended up photobashing it.
I usually don't show off photobash stuff, but I'm pretty pleased with how this came out!

The "headquarters" of our criminal, hidden in Sacre Couer's basement!

A fashion show being held at the Grand Palais!

And here are some map buildings I UV painted!

Gare Saint Lazare!

Grand Palais!

And that's our Parisian adventure! 

Murder She Painted

Here's some concept work I did for an crime-based game! Let me share with you all the gory details!


TESTING
First we did testing on what audiences would go for in terms of crime and mayhem, which I happily painted the gore for!

From the tame...

To the not so tame! Don't worry, the severed arm is just ham!

BACKGROUNDS

Once a story was written, I created backgrounds for players to investigate as they searched for clues and interviewed suspects.

MAP

Of course, players needed to be able to get from location to location, so we needed a map. This went through a LOT of iteration, so I'll just give you a super-condensed highlight reel.

Two really rough and dirty mock-ups, pulling assets from our City game, exploring how map layout and function:

A concept of how I wanted buildings to be lit and rendered...

A concept of how the first section of our map might function more as a city:

But the team had trouble visualizing the whole map based on this sample, so I ended rendering an entire city!

Once we had some assets done in 3D, I threw together a (ugly, unlit) map prototype to help simplify the path shape, keep it still feeling city-like, yet also flexible enough that Game Design could plug and play without art having to reorganize our very dense, tight map.

We ultimately ended up following another game's design more, but them's the breaks sometimes!

In addition, I also helped concept landmarks (which acted like gates for our players) for our first region. Once my concept was modeled, I would go in and paint the UV map!

My concept on left, finished and painted model in middle, the UVs I painted on the left.

I also worked to help figure out different modes for the landmark to show player progression, though what we have now is very different.

We did a ton of landmarks, so eventually time became so crunched I would create Maya rough mock-up of the buildings with some notes, have 3D model it nicely, then I would go straight into painting the model based on what was in my head.

So many landmarks...

But this one is the best one!!!

GAMEBOARD PIECES

I also did work on pieces for this game. These took a lot of time, and a lot of teamwork. Pieces are proof that it takes a village to push a pixel!

I concepted ideas for our in-game boosts as well. These were a ton of fun to work on, and I was really excited to see them animated!

Tweezer One Piece Hit.

Taser Row Blaster.

LUMINOL RAINBOW!

CHARACTERS

I also did a bit of character concept very early on!

Of course the best work I did was this sketch for our villain character...

Hope you enjoyed this crime spree! Our next region is Paris, which is getting pushed out next week, so I'll have even more new stuff for you then!

Add an extra scoop!

Here's one more additional region I did for Frozen Frenzy--Ube! For the Ube region, I only had time to do the map region before I was moved onto a new game, so this comes without the background and character. Still, I think it came out pretty sweet!

Halo halo!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!

Here's some maps, backgrounds, and characters I created for the game Frozen Frenzy Mania, which you should all go out and play! This game was super cute, and a lot of fun to work on...even if it gave me an awful sweet tooth...

Regions are shown in the order they were created!



Our first few regions:

Our first region, Vanilla!

Chocolate includes a Planetoid, which were used to help break up maps and lessen loading time.

Strawberry also had a Planetoid!

Mint was a super popular region, for some reason.

Here, regions began lengthening in unity, so their concepts had to lengthen too...

Cookie Dough was a real challenge, since it was mostly brown on brown, with no real topping being associated with the flavor.  I think the addition of macaroons helped add some pops of color, and I'm really proud of how well this region turned out, considering all the fussing.

In the game, characters are often posing or doing some activity. I wanted to have a sunbathing Ulf, but I was down voted. But at least you guys can see him here, in all his voluptuous glory!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Taking the Rocky Road!

Here, I began taking over characters from Sueann as well:

Here I feel is where we really hit our stride! And Willie!

I LOVE how this region turned out, one of my faves. And Neapuffington!

I asked Nick, can we have a chinchilla that insensitively wears a fur coat? And Nick said yes! Thus, Sherry the Cherry Chinchilla!

Regions get even looonger!

Our Christmas region! Peppermint reindeer needs a catchy name, though.

THIS region was so much fun! Nick asked me if we even needed a rainbow level, since we had sherbet, and what flavor  "rainbow" was anyway. It's flavor is MAGIC~!

This one turned out nice, and even has a hot springs monkey, which I'm sure we'll use again for coffee.

Hope I didn't give any of you guys diabetes!

Watercolor Trials

Here are some digital watercolors I did in July I forgot to post.  Been trying out how to mimic watercolor is photoshop, but it is a tricky task!