Designing enemies

Rorkimaru

Does anyone know a useful tutorial or have a few tips on how to design enemies to fit in with a game world?

I'm currently working on a small 2.5D metroidvania game project and I'm having trouble comming up with a great look for the baddies. In general the game will be quite cute and dreamy but I don't want the enemies to be too cute because then you'd feel bad about killing them. I was concidering drawing inspiration from pokemon's cave enemies but who would really want to kill those little guys?

I don't want the enemies to be slimy sculpy zbrush monsters either because they will hurt the asthetic of the game. So far the best thing I can come up with is partially amorphous black smoke like enemies.

I'm not asking anyone to go off and design a bunch of enemies because the game is quite personal and I'd like to do the design work. All I'm wondering is if anyone knows any exercises I could do to to help with getting the creativity flowing? I can't even start thumbnailing because I'm stuck looking for a cohesive apearance.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips or tricks about concepting they would be most apreciated

kwakkie

Start with logic: Why are the enemies there? Why are they your enemies? Are they natural to the environment? etc.

Steve Schulze

You could try coming up with a bit of a background for your enemy guy - where he lives, what he eats, whether he's civilised... all that malarky. Once you've got that down you might be able to do a few variants and from their with any luck you'll have your head a bit more around your ecosystem and will be able to fill it out without too many issues.

Emperors Teeth

This article on Giant in the Playground (a webcomic site loosely based on D&D) may have some relevance to you. It is an article about creating believable villains for a D&D campaign. I read it recently just cause it sounded interesting. It's pretty well done, and I learned some things from it. I feel it may apply here, especially as some tof the things mentioned by the other posters are noted in it.

http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEivnsYuZrh94H1Sn.html

Also, read the comic, it's great!

rolfness

first you start with the boobs.. then you make them bigger till they look abnormal then make them even bigger when you have done that add some tentacles..

Jeremy Wright

Just a side note, i was watching a documentary on Moebius and it mentions how he worked on the Alien movie alongside Giger and O'Bannon. Scott (and Jodorosky who they all worked with before on the Dune movie that didn't get made) wanted different elements designed by different artists to clearly define that the they were created by different species/races.

Tumerboy

kwakkie wrote: »

Start with logic: Why are the enemies there? Why are they your enemies? Are they natural to the environment? etc.

or, you know. . . don't. . .

jocose

^^^^

lol

Rorkimaru

Thanks for all the great replies! It'll help me a lot. I'm off to read that D&D article and then get a bit of concepting work done =D.

&Rolfness, I've one design worked up a bit. The boobs are large but not abnormal. I'll try to get them a bit bigger before the serious augmentation. Then it's all tentacles...

Elhrrah

What's wrong with cute and cuddly? Perhaps you could work that into their motivation, being too cute for their evil deeds.

I'm not exactly sure how to verbalize the way I go about it, really, it all depends on the sort of environment you have set up for them, and the overall style you're aiming for.

Rorkimaru

Elhrrah wrote: »

What's wrong with cute and cuddly? Perhaps you could work that into their motivation, being too cute for their evil deeds.

I'm not exactly sure how to verbalize the way I go about it, really, it all depends on the sort of environment you have set up for them, and the overall style you're aiming for.

Naw, I don't like killing cute things in games, It keeps me up at night! I'm still developing the black smokey idea but giving it a bit of a feral cave-dweller twist. I'm considering aiming for watercolour style graphics too (think okami). Smokeys would fit in well with that.

If I get a chance to work up a bit of concept art after college tomorow and post it here... or maybe in a wip thread in an apropriate board and linky...

crazyfingers

Just take a shot from the game, bring it into photoshop and start making shapes.

Don't even think about it, just do little cloudlike forms and eventually you'll see something you like that fits. Or, you could just find games that look a lot like yours, and draw "inspiration" from that. Your call

konstruct

you might find this useful

Rorkimaru

konstruct wrote: »

you might find this useful

A humorously written and useful link. Thanks, it will help quite a bit not only for my current problem but for all future design efforts as well.

Anyone clicking in here to find a solution to this problem, I suggest you read this article!

Richard Kain

The visual aspects of your average game enemy aren't really all that important. They're only going to be on screen long enough for the player to kill them anyway. Oh sure, it's better for them to look pretty kick-ass. But don't worry about that too much initially. You can always go back and polish up the look of them later.

What's really important is how they move and react to the player. Focus on figuring that out first, and a lot of the visual design for them will make more sense.

Quokimbo

rolfness wrote: »

first you start with the boobs.. then you make them bigger till they look abnormal then make them even bigger when you have done that add some tentacles..

I snorted when I laughed at this...

Ryno

You can't go wrong with Nazi zombies. I love killin' me some Nazi zombies. Fun for all ages!

TWilson

red and black with a mask and goggles

warby

Rorkimaru wrote: »

I'm having trouble comming up with a great look for the baddies. In general the game will be quite cute and dreamy but I don't want the enemies to be too cute because then you'd feel bad about killing them.

i feel your pain man i have the exact same problem for my current project
i settled on a deisgn that is cute but also most definitly hostile ... so itsa sort of self defense ish situation i am not entirly happy with but there you go ...

http://warby.bitproll.de/wip/alien_enemy.jpg

Rorkimaru

warby wrote: »

i feel your pain man i have the exact same problem for my current project
i settled on a deisgn that is cute but also most definitly hostile ... so itsa sort of self defense ish situation i am not entirly happy with but there you go ...

http://warby.bitproll.de/wip/alien_enemy.jpg

Beautiful design and execution! You should be very happy with it, It's brilliant.

You did a great job hopping over those hurdles. I love the colour palate as well. Anyone who's played Devil May Cry 3 knows anything purple in a computer game is ultimately evil and will kick your ass =D

I did a bit of testing with texture and form last night I think I'm breaking through the block. I'm looking at fantasy style silhouettes and shadowy colours. I have to admit that that alien is making me consider richer colours instead of darkness. Perhaps rather than blacks greys I'll run along a sea green to blue to purple spectrum depending on area. That saves me from having too much darkness on screen! I'm going for something a bit animalistic or possibly insectoid. I'm thinking animals but I'll have to incorporate some obviously threatening aspect.

A big thanks to everyone who posted here. It helped me more than I thought possible. (too much even, I spent a lot of the time I should have spent studying drawing in the back of my notepad!)