I was one of three members of an art team working alongside three programmers on Princess Tina at the Global Game Jam 2014 in Richmond, VA. We had 48 hours, and the theme was "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Taking that theme, our team made "an action platformer about a girl who is lost in her imagination, with the ability to magically make platforms appear and disappear by changing her dress."
I designed the main character, did rough keys of her animation (which our animator then cleaned up and made look gorgeous), did the painterly ‘cutscene’ story slides, and made a lot of assets - flowers, patterned platforms, rocks, etc.
I designed the main character, did rough keys of her animation (which our animator then cleaned up and made look gorgeous), did the painterly ‘cutscene’ story slides, and made a lot of assets - flowers, patterned platforms, rocks, etc.
I still can’t really believe all of what we accomplished. The way that everyone worked well together was incredible, it was envigorating to my work, and a great example of how collaborations can go really, really right.
You can play the game here!
The image above created by Erin Conley with work from all three of us, showing the final product
Character Design
I designed Tina herself, knowing that we wanted a young girl to be our protagonist, and that the way her dresses changed would be a key gameplay mechanic. Nicole suggested a storybook-style look for her, and I wanted to go simple as well, for ease of readability and animation.
I looked at a lot of different storybook types, including golden book style paintings, etc. I tried replicating a bunch of children’s drawings as well to get the sort of feel that Erin was going for with her monsters, so that the two wouldn’t clash so badly.
Nicole and Erin liked the starred one, and I drew a couple of variations of her, and then went home and cleaned it up in photoshop. I drew up a couple of different art styles we could use, as well as color schemes for the character herself. Nicole ended up going with the inked style, with brown hair and black eyes for the final animations she did.
I also drew these rough keyframe animations for her, using an animation program for Mac called Pencil, and exported the frames, which Nicole took into Flash to color, ink, and in-between, giving them the polish you see in the game. It was really fun to collaborate on something like this, and see the end result! The hit animations at the end were not used, since we didn't have the time to incorporate combat with the monsters as a gameplay element.
Cutscenes
I painted these storybook-style illustrations as ‘cutscenes’ to transition between levels. Our team was going with a theme of delusions/coping mechanisms, as our interpretation of the jam's theme. While you’re playing the game, you’re seeing the world as Tina sees it - with crayon-drawing monsters and cute colors- and these scenes get to give you a glimpse at what the real world around her is like.
A lot of the ideas for the scenes we bounced around collectively, and I was able to play around with them and do what I wanted to with the final image. I used colors from the levels to tie everything together, and keep it consistent.
Game Assets
I created a bunch of assets for use in the game as well, from background elements to on-screen icons. I learned a lot from Nicole Hamilton while making these - using the pen tool and drop shadows to get a cut-out paper feel that would be consistent with the backgrounds Erin created, and the other game assets Nicole made.
Elements for the HUD, and collectible items
Level assets
Some light rays that I don't think made the final cut
Level assets placed on their appropriate backgrounds - backgrounds created by Erin Conley
I also created a huge amount of platforms for use in the game, and added textures created by another member of the team. I wanted to give our programmers as many different sorts of platforms to work with!
