Elysian Shadows

Current concept for the main character


some of the concept explained:
So the aim of the game is to bounce the character up the level.
1. His going to be moving alot, so by giving him a long tail, ears and shaggy hair we will be able to emphasise the motion alot in the animations.
2. I was trying to keep him cute so hence the tiny stubby legs and body, I think the eyes and wings make him creepy however.
3. The psuedo-wings help emphasise how light he is, although he can't fly.
4. I wanted him to be a bit heroic looking, hence the 'mane' giving his shoulders some breadth. Furthermore I wanted a distinct and memorable aspect, so I emphasised the mane further and made it so it will cover his mouth in most situations.
5. The red on his back should convey danger as well as providing another distinct and memorable feature.

... Your thoughts? Is he memorable, likable, interesting?

zeid wrote:Current concept for the main character


some of the concept explained:
So the aim of the game is to bounce the character up the level.
1. His going to be moving alot, so by giving him a long tail, ears and shaggy hair we will be able to emphasise the motion alot in the animations.
2. I was trying to keep him cute so hence the tiny stubby legs and body, I think the eyes and wings make him creepy however.
3. The psuedo-wings help emphasise how light he is, although he can't fly.
4. I wanted him to be a bit heroic looking, hence the 'mane' giving his shoulders some breadth. Furthermore I wanted a distinct and memorable aspect, so I emphasised the mane further and made it so it will cover his mouth in most situations.
5. The red on his back should convey danger as well as providing another distinct and memorable feature.

... Your thoughts? Is he memorable, likable, interesting?

I think thats pertty damn impressive, i agree with you about the eyes and wings though they are a little creepy lol.

He would be less creepy if the eyes had pupils.

A few new game objects.
Keeping in mind the premise of the game is to get to the top of the level by bouncing your character...
The green floating thing turns into a duplicate of the player temporarily when collided with making you have to look out for two characters. The fan pushes objects in it's path away from it. The helmet when collected lets the player smash through any objects he collides with destroying them. The feathered squid thingo was going to grab on to the player and fly them upwards helping them to the top of the level, however I'm not sure about this now.

It's like DoodleJump, but with cooler graphics.

It's like DoodleJump, but with cooler graphics.

:P thanks. Hopefully with better gameplay as well

I just spent a little time working out how my art pipeline's going to go with this project. Obviously many of the images I've made are only good for concept art due to their angles/poses/etc. However here's the first look at one of my in game sprites (some more minor cleaning up might be done later):


Note: because of the way my iPhone game loads and handles images, partially transparent pixels are supported. As such I am giving soft edges to all my sprites so that they will fit nicely onto any background colour. (As can be seen in the images above). Furthermore the transparency allows me to make the wing membranes partially see through which might not be too noticable here, but when the objects moving over a bright colourfull background it will become much more interesting (I don't think i've seen this done in a 2d game before).

My art pipeline is going something like this:
*create a series of higher res images, like those you see above for each frame in an animation.
*resize the image to the appropriate size.
*cleanup the image using a variety of pixel art techniques
*cleanup and add the transparent areas so that the image works on any/all backgronds.
*smile contently.


This image is at the cleanup using pixel techniques stage. I likely wont use this character as it will be incredibly tricky/time consuming to animate, although I really like the thick feathery look.

EDIT:
tweaked and ready for a little animation -

These are brilliant :D

First animation.

It's pretty bright so (I might tone it down a bit) but I'm pretty happy with the results of my approach.
Edit:
The start of the characters first sprite

zeid wrote:First animation.

It's pretty bright so (I might tone it down a bit) but I'm pretty happy with the results of my approach.
Edit:
The start of the characters first sprite

I think the animation looks great, and the sprite of the main character looks more cute than the concept :D

zeid wrote:First animation.

It's pretty bright so (I might tone it down a bit) but I'm pretty happy with the results of my approach.
Edit:
The start of the characters first sprite

Lookin really good man, the animation looks great

@Everyone with the compliments - Thanks :P
The main characters Up, Swap Direction and Down animations. WIP

A little more tweaking will might be needed before I'm completely happy with it. The tail is going to be animated separately for my convenience. (I might also make the tail shorter so it better fits my size restrictions).

Wow! I'm extremely impressed by your artwork, your style is really awesome.
I don't post much on people's work (whether it be game design or artwork etc) but I always look at it, and I found this to be awesome work.

Keep it up, I love it.

Wow, that looks superb!

zeid wrote:

Wow this looks freakin' awesome, Your art so far is straight up fantastic!

LeonBlade wrote:Wow! I'm extremely impressed by your artwork, your style is really awesome.
I don't post much on people's work (whether it be game design or artwork etc) but I always look at it, and I found this to be awesome work.

Keep it up, I love it.

Couldn't of said it better myself!