Capstone Project - Art style considerations

 Art style Considerations -

In this drawing I explored what the style of my game might look like. Using my artist research, I drew on the techniques used by artists Curtis Lanaghan and VERFACE to build a very stylized, simplistic, but also accurate style. The first thing that I considered was the colour pallet I was going to use, I have two main options with variations on both.

Option 1 - 

Inspired by cave paintings, I would use a very warm colour pallet for all the characters and assets within the game. Pair this with some unique line art choices and I think this could look quite interesting.

Option 2-

More realistic colour pallet relative to each creature or asset within the game. If i combine this with option 1, having some elements have a warmer pallet and others a cooler, this could create some nice colour contrast and make certain elements pop more than others.

When it comes to line art, at this stage i had 4 ideas:

Idea 1 -

Clean lines with patterns reminiscent of artist VERFACE's work.

Idea 2 -

Line art inspired by cave paintings, intentional sketchy elements with a brushed background effect.

Idea 3 - 

A cleaned up sketch to give a more loose looking art style.

Idea 4-

A combination of ideas 2 and 3.

I could push this even further, having all of the art being drawn very similarly to the stone age paintings, which could be very unique. I won't know how this looks however until I have designed more characters and assets.

It is also to note that when I had drawn this piece, there were going to be dinosaur and plant cards within the game. I still want there to be dinosaurs in my game as I am very happy with how these designs look [They are still within the game's mechanics, just not explicitly shown, I'm not sure though? I am still working on what will and won't be shown on the cards] so i think maybe adding them into the game's player manual could be really nice.

Reference material -

This is a collection of reference material I used to create this art style, The dinosaur pictured is a Pentaceratops, which I chose because I think it has a really unique appearance.

Feedback -

I asked my peers for some feedback on which style they liked best at this stage, at the moment design 6 is the most popular for its sketchy look and complementary colour pallet in comparison to the warm background. As stated before, I won't be able to make a final decision until I have created more concepts to compare the style across the board. I do really like the idea of a style fully matching the old cave paintings, so I might have a go at replicating that once I have at least 1 character design, 1 furniture design, 1 cave design, and 1 misc card design.

Title idea 1-

I also created a mockup of a title for my game, this is just the first iteration and it may change later on, but I really like the colour choice and the font [Chelsea Market] which gives it a bold yet whimsical feel. I also really like how the arrowhead looks a bit like a cursor, 

I thought it was funny to imagine if Cavemen had the internet the link to the booking website for their Cave bnbs would have a little arrowhead cursor.

Here is the design on a cave wall background, I used this in the explanation video for the rules of the game.

Trello -

Its clear to see from this post that before I can settle on a final art style for the game, I need to create some concepts for several elements to compare how the art style will look. I am currently working on my final concept for one of the characters within the game so once I have that completed I will work on creating a concept for one of the caves. This will give me 3 points of reference for how the art style will look. I hope to get the drawings [of the character and cave] completed by the end of winter break so that I can settle on a final art style. 

I have also completed some of the general research section of this project, I will continue to add to this [especially in the cave and furniture section] as I go. I think it is still important for me to look into the pipeline and industry research section, so I will prioritize that task next [after the cave and character drawings].