Capstone Project - Employee Thumbnails : Gremmie

Moodboard -

The first character I wanted to design is one of the Employees by the name "Gremmie the Thumper". I had a very strong idea of the kind of character she would be and her overall visual style. As she is a hunter employee, I want her to read very clearly as a warrior, wearing trophies of her battles on her clothing and having a very strong and confident build and posture. Below I gathered some references that I want to draw upon in my own designs, I have included mostly images of interesting clothing silhouettes and materials that I would like to implement. I particularly like the use of long fur juxtaposing shorter animal skins, i think it gives an interesting silhouette and really reads well as a caveperson. I need to remember to keep my outfit designs relatively simple in the sense of construction, so lots of drapery and minimal sewing. This reflects on the level of ability at the current timeframe in history.

I think the designs in The Croods are a great reference to look at, they combine historical elements with comedy and almost modern fashions, which fits in very well with the theme of my game. The exaggerated proportions are also very important to showing off the nature of the character. The character "Eep" [Pictured on my mood board] fits well with how I want Gremmie to be portrayed, she looks physically strong whilst also having a fun and bouncy appearance to match her personality.

Thumbnails -

My first set of thumbnails was mainly to explore how to translate my research into Neanderthals into my pre-established art style. This art style is inspired by artist VERFACE and the way that they combine accuracy with cartoony simplification. I tried to keep the general proportions of a Neanderthal correct whilst exaggerating certain aspects just enough to fit a more cartoony style. For example, the head and face region is massively simplified, however i have retained the prominent brow bone, shortened forehead, and larger nose to make her identifiable as being a Neanderthal. 

At this stage I am not sure which line effect style I would like to go with [sketchy, clean, or stylized to emulate cave paintings] and I may even push the stylization further, but I just wanted to get some ideas down of how those styles may look. You can also see i looked into making the eyes of the characters very simplified, reminiscent of the far side comics that inspired me, however I think it looks out of place in comparison to the level of detail of the rest of the character. Once I have a solid design down, I might revisit this and see how a really simplified style might look for the game. It will be easier to pick a final art style for the game when I have all the characters and other asset designs finalized, then I can see what does and does not work across the board.

Iterating on the full body design i created on the right, I drew 3 different outfits each with a different vibe which would serve to be a starting point to iterate from in the future. I first created a more traditional "Warrior" silhouette with cape motifs, a sword like weapon behind her back, and shoulder pads.

The middle design goes for a more whimsical monster costume motif, which i think fits the comedic theming of the game. I also experimented with a more unique weapon design, however I am not sure how I feel about it at this point.

The final design draws from the motif of a "strongwoman" combining more modern themes with historical elements. I really like her overexaggerated hair in this design, it feels more intentional and helps push her very whimsical and bubbly character.

Feedback -

I asked some of my peers their opinions on these 3 designs, and which approach they thought i should pursue for further iterations. This is what I gathered:

Design 1:

The hair feels less intentionally exaggerated, everything else in her design is very grounded in reality and so it feels very out of place. This is also true for the skull shoulder pad, however this could be fixed by just adding more straps to her arm.

I also noticed looking back on this design, the shape language in this design leans more towards square shapes than triangular, and so the pointy ponytail does feel slightly out of place.

Design 2:

The weapon design feels rather weak, perhaps increasing the thickness of the rope could help it feel more sturdy. The hood is an interesting design however and could be iterated on further.

Design 3:

By far the most popular of the three designs. The balance of exaggerated to realistic elements feels much better and fitting to the comedic approach of the project. Think more about the purpose of the accessories more, perhaps using them as depictions of her hunting trophies would be an interesting take.

Implementing Feedback -

Using this feedback, design number 3 was the design i decided to iterate on. I created a set of silhouettes to explore more exaggerated designs whilst keeping the "Battle Trophy" trope in mind. I approached this by including more fur elements to the design, which i think reads better as a caveman overall. I also used more triangular shape language in both the pose and design of the character [the pose might change for the final card however].

Then, using these silhouettes, I made a set of 8 designs. I also tried to think more on the purpose of her accessories, giving her shin and arm guards made of bone [which also ties into her being a hunter], shoulder pads made of plant material, and rocks tied to her belt that she could use as a secondary weapon.

For her colour pallet, I originally chose warm colours that could be found in cave paintings, however the lack of a secondary colour made the contrast of the design quite poor. To remedy this, I chose 4 colours on the cooler end of the colour wheel to help build a more complementary based colour pallet, this really made the character pop off the page much better [i also increased the saturation from my first set of thumbnails which also helped the designs stand out more]. 

Personally, of these designs I'm most pleased with number 1, 2, and 4. I think these fit best with my vision of what Gremmie would look like however I was interested to know what my peers thought of my new designs.

Feedback 2 -

Out of all the feedback i recieved, number 2 got the most votes and was generally decided to fit the caveman hunter vibe best. Following this, designs 1, 3 and 4 were also chosen a few times so i decided to do one more round of thumbnails combining these ideas to narrow my designs down even further [mostly because I was still struggling to choose which i liked best of these designs].

Implementing feedback -

Here is the final set of iterations i created, these combine the most popular elements of the top 3 designs. Personally, think design 1 and 4 stand out the best, i like how simplistic but immediately identifiable design 1 is, and the distribution of colour and unique clothing elements of number 4. On a whole, I think the wolf pelt hat is very whimsical and i think i might keep that for the final design.

One of my peers agreed with me that the first one reads best as a caveman hunter, so that was the design i settled on.

Colour iterations -

Here I explored some alternate colourways for this design, with the second one more closely following the cave painting pallet and the last one experimenting with some different patterns. I still think design number 1 stands out the best however, it has a  nice even distribution of warm and cool colours that helps it stand out the best. Moving forward, I will use this design to create a mockup of the final employee card once I have some of the mechanics more firm.

Trello -

By creating this design I am now able to compare how the creatures and the human characters will look side by side. This will help me develop the overall art style of my game further. Next I would like to shift my focus to designing a piece of furniture or one of the caves, that way i can finalize my art style choices and begin making some mockups of the cards. This will go hand in hand with my pipeline research which i will be my next written focus.

I have a lot of time left for this project and overall I'm feeling both confident and excited to continue to work on this, I feel very accomplished with the work I've done over winter break however I do feel I need to catch up with my pipeline and industry research to fulfill MLO2.