My Fmp project will still consist of creating a concept art book for a hypothetical project based on the book ‘the wonderful wizard of oz’ with a sci-fi twist. The difference however is that this will definitely be for a hypothetical Game now with the genre being that of a one on one fighting game , the closest example I am aiming for in terms of tone and visuals is the street fighter series.
I have chosen this as these games are very character based usually featuring a diverse cast with unique visual designs . On top of this the requirements for the environmental concepts in these games is very simple as these game just consist of ‘stages’ where the players fight each other back and forth on what is basically a two dimensional plane regardless of the three dimensional look of the characters and the environments behind them. With this the environments will be a lot easier to ideate and subsequently allow me to create finished and good quality final concepts. This is especially important as while I feel that I can design characters at a quick rate my environmental work is a lot slower. Overall I feel this fits in nicely with my current idea a modernized/sci-fi interpretation of the wizard of oz book’s theme.
Below you can see a list of proposed ‘assets’ that I will be creating concepts for:
Characters:
• -Dorothy
• -Toto
• -Tin Man
• -Scarecrow
• -The lion
• -The wizard
( -head form
-lady form
-monster form
fireball form)
-the west witch
-the south witch
Stretch goal characters:
• -King of the Flying monkeys
-The kalidah
The north witch
-Oz Guardian
The bee leader
The wold leader
The crow leader
The characters in this project will be larger than life modernised and slightly sci-fi versions of the books characters. Games like street fighter and Mortal Kombat have fantastic character designs, each with unique colour palettes and silhouettes to the point of becoming iconic. I hope to replicate it here .On top of this desire, while the book is in public domain, the film is not and any similarity in visuals to the designs of the 1939 film could cause copyright issues. This I feel is more of a benefit than a hindrance as it will push me to create my own unique interpretations of these characters. For the project I’m aiming to create thumbnails/design sketches finished beauty shots and orthographic diagrams for each character as would be seen in real game production. I feel that while this may seem like a lot of characters for most people, I am very confident that I can create concepts for each of them within the given timescale as I have proven with previous style matrix projects (the Viking project in particular I was able to design and create beauty shots for 8 characters in the timescale of approximately two weeks). As a further stretch goal I may even create alternate costumes for the characters which is a further feature of my chosen genre of game and possibly explore some brief storyboard/sketches showing various moves that the characters can perform.
Stages :
Kansas
The yellow brick road
Emerald city throne
Witches castle
Stretch goalstages:
Crash site
Forest
For the environmental aspect of this concept art project I will be creating a handful of stages. Due to this following the format of a fighting game I won’t have to take many considerations into account regarding gameplay that I would if I was to be basing this project on an action/adventure game. The considerations I’d have to maybe take into account is the scale of the actual stage or plane that the characters can move back and forth on and where the said area ends. I can measure this via street fighter 4 which I own, by using a standard character as reference to measure the size of the stages .While These stages feature three dimensional backgrounds they are purely cosmetic so I will be able to create some varied and unique designs with little constraints. As a stretch goal I can also propose some various interactive action events that can be seen within the stages of the Mortal Kombat games. Like the characters I will be creating various design sketches and ideas from multiple angles following the general pipeline of concepts in game development.
UI:
In game HUD (health bars etc.)
Title screen
Character select screen
Lastly I will also try my hand in developing some UI concepts as fighting games are well known for their iconic UI which include in game hub assets such as health bars and combo metres. Also the idea of a character select screen would be interesting to develop. I am keen to take on this particular part of the project as many concept art postings mention having an eye for graphic design as a very desirable and sometimes required component to the job role. I feel that this will make the project a lot more believable and give a nice polish to the end product
The hand-in format:
The proposed hand-in format will definitely be a printed book. I am aiming to research in depth the best way and the process of getting the best end product I can over the Christmas holidays before the project starts .I’m also going to order a test book as soon as I can to try out the process and find out what works and what doesn’t
Below is a proposed timescale this is the most basic plan of what I will try and accomplish:
(Bare in mind no exact timescale has been set for the UI elements, this is because they will be explored throughout the project and also that they will be low priority compared to the other elements)