EPITAPH - OPENING SCREEN ILLUSTRATION AND UI
Opening splash screen and buttons drawn for Epitaph, a student-created game created in Fall 2023 within VGDev, Georgia's Tech's game design and development club.
Used Adobe Photoshop.
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Initial Sketches
Epitaph is a 2D hack-and-slash game about a lone exorcist coming to a town to help them fight off an enraged spirit. The visuals for this game were pixel art, with the main color themes featuring darker purples and cool-tones with stark points of contrasts coming from light/magic sources (bright oranges and turquoise).
I really wanted to embrace the solitary feel that the protagonist of the story had while contrasting that with the idea that she wasn't really alone (since she had to fight off magical spirits that would not let her be by herself for a second). I also just wanted to have fun playing around with composition and lighting (which is one of the reasons why sketch 5 is one of my favorites -- those clouds....).
One of my main challenges was finding ways to not have too busy of a composition (so I could also fit in the title and buttons... which I ended up getting carried away and forgetting about after sketch 2). I fix this in later iterations of the sketches, where I enlarged the main tombstone or expanded the forest on the side of the screen to fit in certain UI elements.
My favorite sketches are 5, 6, and 7 (I love the little skeleton hand), although the ghosts in 1, 2, and 3 have a special place in my heart :)
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Second sketches
After running the initial sketches past our art team lead (and the rest of the team), sketches 3 and 5 were deemed the favorites, and I was asked to try and arrange them to fit the title and the main buttons for the opening screen (I initially thought that these would only be the "Play" and "Options" buttons, but in later sketches and the final you will see that there is room for a "Quit" button as well, which I learn about later).
CHANGES
3: I changed the position of the ghosts, providing more room next to and below them for buttons. I also enlarged the tombstone to make room for the title.
3: I changed the position of the ghosts, providing more room next to and below them for buttons. I also enlarged the tombstone to make room for the title.
5: I widened the tombstone for the title.
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Final sketch
After running the sketches by the lead and the team, I was asked to merge the ghosts of 3 with the background and other elements of 5.
I also included room for a third button ("Quit").
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FINAL ILLUSTRATION
PROGRESS SHOT
After running this by our team lead, I increased the contrast in shading on the ghosts, as their features (like their hands) were hard to differentiate. I also reduced the grain on the gravestone, following references to give the stone a more cracked effect.
Final illustration
BUTTONS
ADDITIONAL UI ELEMENTS
I was also tasked with drawing the menu screen for the controls, which was drawn in a similar theme to the above buttons. However, the text and icons for this are blue for easier visibility for the user (the actual text showing which keys control which action were assembled onto the image by the programming team on the Unity game engine).
