The Tale Of Dusk And Dawn : Sol & Lune is my graduation project, it's a teaser for a game I want to create in the near future and it features some of the initial ideas I have in mind for the game, I wanted to show how some areas are going to look like and the overall aesthetic of the game without giving too much context.
Idea
The original idea came to me about 2 and a half years ago, I wanted to create a game where it shows the contrast between the two main parts of a soul, good and evil and to avoid it being as straight forward as that I chose light and dark to portrait these traits.
A lot of my sketches are heavily influenced by mental illnesses and dark thoughts that might occur to someone, I also wanted to implement the feeling of being lost and confused in how the game and the story play out.
There are 3 main aspects I wanted to emphasize on, Sol the main character, Lune her sidekick, and her sword.
Both lune and the sword play a huge part in the story and what ending the player gets, although I wanted the game to be heavily story driven, the player will have many choices to make throughout the playthrough.
Character Design
Sol
The main character's name is Sol, the sun god in Greek mythology, I wanted a name that indicates the light the character brings to their world which is filled with monsters and darkness, but in the Greek tale Sol is referred to as a male and Luna is the female, I inverted that and made Sol a female and changed Luna into Lune so it indicates a male, and opposed to them being cursed to never meet in the Greek tale they're inseparable in the game, this plays a part in the story later on.
Sol's 360
Lune
Lune is Sol's sidekick in the game, his purpose is not shown in the teaser but he helps the player in various ways, whether he gives subtle hints to guide the player throughout the game or his role in the story, he never leaves her side unless during some parts in the game where the player gets to control him instead of Sol.
I wanted to give him a playful, childlike personality and he's extremely attached to Sol, I tried showing that in the teaser keeping him floating around her all the time and bringing her attention to the boss coming her way while she's activating the checkpoint.
I tried to make him look like a soul, floating and slightly faded, he might get more or less faded the more the player advances with the game depending on the player's choices.
Lune
Monsters
Whenever an idea of a character popped into my head I did my best to sketch a close reference to how I've imagined it, I personally enjoy horror games so I tried to implement that factor using my style in drawing.
Some monsters have a good and a bad state and the player can interact with them in their good state.
Here are some of the monsters and bosses I drew.
Storyboard
The Teaser
All the animations are 2D digital hand drawn using Adobe Animate and Photoshop, some are directly drawn, colored and animated through Animate and the other frames are drawn and colored individually using Photoshop, exported, then put together using Animate.
The music is courtesy of Team Cherry's game Hollow Knight.
Hope you like it!
