2D ART: ILLUSTRATIONS AND LEVEL DESIGN
For this project, we had to create and develop concepts for three different areas defined within a popular Portuguese tale. We also had to include in our concept art 4 different symbols or conceptual interpretations of these. In a first phase we delivered mood-boards and the project planning; in a second phase we had to deliver quickly sketched thumbnails and some more detailed sketches as well as some studies of color. Lastly, we delivered the final illustration, the sprite-sheet to be used to construct a game level and a mock up with this sprites being used to construct a level in unity.
Below, it's all the material created and delivered for this project - all developed using Adobe Photoshop.
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THE ALMOND TREES IN BLOSSOM PORTUGUESE TALE
"Once upon a time, long before Portugal was a country – even Al-Gharb belong to the Muslims a famous undefeatable king fell in love with a Nordic prisoner: a mesmerizing blue-eyed princess. In love, the king granted her freedom and courted her, until she married him. They were happy… until one day the queen fell ill with her longing for her homeland – and, in love with her, the king left in a quest to find something that would diminish her sorrow. In his journey he came upon a flowering almond tree, covering its roots with small white petals. Surprised the king ordered that all fields that could be seen from the castle were to be planted with almond trees – and when the following spring came, all fields were covered in white small petals resembling the snow from the queen land. And as she looked through the window she was marveled and happy once more."
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MOODBOARDS
We created 4 moodboards for this concept. One regarding interesting elements to include in the composition, one with colors, one with shapes that transmit danger/adventure we wanted to convey, and another with the almond tree – the main element of our tale.
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THUMBNAILS
19 thumbnails developed, each took between 5 to 10 minutes to be draw, but had a
much complex and time consuming research process behind.
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SKETCHES
We developed 5 sketches for two of our favorite thumbnails (chosen based on
composition and presence of relevant elements for the tale).
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COLOR STUDIES
We explored different possibilities when it came to the environment colors, changing the color of the ground, the way light hit the almond tree, color accents, which green to use to paint foliage – although a more blue-ish approach might have been interesting it was left unexplored, as we felt the more warm colors contributed to give the idea that the tree was secluded in a protected environment.
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FINAL ILLUSTRATION
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SPRITESHEET AND LEVEL MOCKUP
The spritesheet was constructed on Photoshop and it’s possible to fit all assets and tiles on a 1024 x 1024 px image.Taking advantage of the unity tools, we used some overlay of the sprites with black in order to reuse sprites and add more depth. We decided to set the finishing line as an almond tree flower, representing the moment the king finally finds the tree.
