Beginning the Side Scroller Project

After two short projects we’ve moved onto a longer one.  We’re working with the whole year together on one project and we’ve been split up into groups within the projects; groups of three environment artists each with a concept artist for each of the four levels, a group of five character artists and two engine artists. Though we’re in our own separate groups we knew from the beginning that we’re going to be working together and across groups on a lot of things.

Our brief was to create a side-scrolling game that would take inspiration from Trine 2’s fantastical scale and colours. The Four levels would be themed; Hot, Happy, Cold and Scary in that order.

I was the concept artist assigned to the third level, Cold.

The game levels layout

Initially there was a lot of talk on changing things, the brief was received and we weren’t sure on some of the points; the game ran right to left rather than the more conventional left to right (a fact that some early concepts didn’t take into consideration) and the order of the levels was called into question; wouldn’t the first level, as your introduction to the game and your starting point be Happy rather than Hot? Though they were talked over, these issues weren't changed in the final piece.

Each level began generating ideas and building reference mood boards and the four concept artist’s met to produce a style guide. During last year’s Off the Map project we produced a style guide together so it was something I was familiar with but the larger scope of the project and the lack of art direction we’d received meant there were many conflicting ideas and aims that we had to reconcile. Groups immediately went in their own direction and pulling it all back into a cohesive game with a style that everyone was happy to work in was a challenge.

The concept artists came up with a style guide; We looked at everything from super stylized games such as limbo to realistic games like Hitman two in order to decide on a uniform style and theme for the game. In the end we drew from Trine for its fanciful scale though we chose a slightly more toned down colour palette:

The style part of the style guide and game colour scheme

In cold level we began looking at many different things to draw inspiration, from the colds of space to the submerged factories found by urban exploration. Though we initially steered away from traditional 'cold' images we were warned against colour schemes and images that didn't bring a truly cold feeling to the level and we picked something quite traditional. In the end our choice of a mountaintop castle or temple fitted in very well with the other levels ideas which seemed to lean towards a 'pilgrimage' style of narrative.