Hey Everyone, this is the start of a sketchbook which i will try and update as often as possible, I'm hoping of using this as a portal to other artists to get feedback and critique (and maybe some fans for our next game).
"Domination" is short for Domino Nation, a game we are developing on mobile that allows players to construct domino rally's using various domino's and toys. We also have a "construction yard" mode where you can use everything you have earnt in the main game to create big levels of your own, save and share them online with your friends!
The art style for Domination needed to appeal to the limitations of mobile devices, and i also wanted to be able to create beautiful scenes full of life and excitement. For that reason, i chose to do a low poly art style similar to Deviant Artist "Stephanie Stutz" :
I really like the focus on scale, composition and colour pallete. The style also has a simple aesthetic that gives instant recognition of elements. For example, although the scene above is abstract and alien, it is clearly a mountainous area on water, with clouds floating above. I found it really interesting that such an informal art style (which kind of reminds me of cubism and surrealism) is so easy to read, and also intriguing.
Hopefully this art style will give the game eye catching visuals and interest people from the get go.
Here are a few blockout I had done recently:
These are just a few environments we could work with within the game. The variation in colour palettes is great for the "acts" we are using within the game, so far we are only creating 3 for the release - The Abstract Blocky one, A jungle theme, and an egyptian or arabic theme.
The levels have been brainstormed and im now in the process of creating the meshes from a list of assets for each area. The main focus in the game is to collect golden dominoes, and these will be dotted around in the environments using a sense of visual narrative, for example, int he jungle area there will be rocky areas with "gold" deposits which you need to use TNT to extract, in the egyptian areas, tombs will be lavished with "golden dominoes" as respect to the buried. This running theme will follow throughout the game.
Here are some shots of trees i created for the style:
These are hosted on our deviant art page
here.
Hope you like this intro thread, my next threads wont need to explain so much, except to answer any questions you have about the game. One of the programmers at chillsters has taken my prototype and refactored it to be more resource economic and we will have a demo ready soon.
Thanks for reading.
Your friendly Neighbourhood Chillster Artist!
Replies
And I agree, the larger trees could use some more definition for their roots, thanks =]
This was the first attempt and a thankyou message to our facebook fans for reaching 700 likes
( http://www.facebook.com/chillsters )
Tomorrow I will be creating a kit bash set as my reference library seems to fit that method nicely, especially to modularize it for game use.
Heres the first level of Domination, a tutorial to help you learn the basics of domino placement and physics activation.
I created a kit bash set to allow me to create fast levels, its quite improvisational and adlib too, which makes it quite a fun process.
Another level concept for the Abstract act. This one is about weaving and thus a fish / dragon like style has been used. In the final level there will be multiple sections like this connected together.
We will have a demo in the next few weeks to show how players interact with these objects.
Made a little trailer!