Side-Scroller Project

I am currently working on a project along with the entire year group to create a short side-scrolling platformer game. We have been split into six sub-groups, with four groups making a level for the game, one making characters and a final comprised of two engine artists. The group I am in is working on the level to be described as “Scary”. The tutors are taking the roles of art directors.

We have been in the asset-making stage for a few days now and I am quite confident that we are going to get a great end result. Each level team is comprised of three environment artists and one concept artist- as one of the environment artists I feel that at this stage I am finally coming into my element.

The first stage of the project was of course idea gathering, and we did this by using Pinterest to gather pictures and create moodboards. This lasted for quite a while, and I was often worried that we were wasting time by not moving on sooner but I know it was good that we explored a lot of ideas quite deeply before pinning things down.

The next stage involved designing the level, then concepting and whiteboxing assets. I found this stage quite difficult, as most of the assets I had been asked to design were either heavily reliant on other assets and the style guide (which had not been completed at this time) or required little actual design work. Add to that my lack of drawing skill in comparison to the group’s concept artist and I was left feeling pretty useless for quite a while, which was at times pretty demoralising. However we passed the whiteboxing stage without much issue, and could finally move on to asset creation.

To keep everyone in the loop we like to have a lot of meetings. As the project has moved along we have gone from quite long but infrequent meetings during the idea development phases to shorter daily “scrums” now that we know what we’re doing. Recently we have been discussing things like sharing assets between levels to save time and keep the style consistent.

As things are now, I have modelled and textured some crystals to act as hazards in our level, though I need to go back and rearrange them into clusters before I send them to the engine artists. I have also been sculpting a medium sized statue. That's what I should be continuing with today.