sketchbook stuff

Shortly after deciding on our idea my computer broke, so I was unable to do any digital drawings. In that time I was working exclusively out of my sketchbook drawing and making notes.

The first page is some notes and ideas of how the infection might work.

I was using the infection in Princess Mononoke as inspiration for the infected animals, though we decided against it later as my group felt it was too similar.
The notes aren't very legible but on this page i was just proposing the idea of animals with a more severe infection would some how morph together in a grotesque kind of way adding some challenge and unpredictability, in the example I used was a boar morphed together with a large chicken, the idea would be that rather than something boring like the pig simply attaining the chickens wings to fly, the whole bird would actually be inside the pigs body with extremities liek the wings, the head and the feet sticking out and articulating, I thought it adds quite an element of horror to the design which works as a device for illustrating the danger for the enemy.

On the second page I wanted to simply come up with some environment thumbnails so we could get more of an idea of what the game and the island was actually going to look like

The first thumbnail depicts just a general scene of one of the successfully built villages or camps, with people working and socialising in the scene.

The second is a look at a more specific building, it's a shop for warriors so it's hidden amongst the trees and foliage.

The third is a scene of a potential encounter with a spirit, it looks almost God like as it stand on the stone in the centre or of a field with ll the rocks upturned in it's direction, I added a volcano in the village thumbnail and this one to give a sense of location.

The third is just a sort of action shot of a warrior fighting with the same spirit.

In the third page I wanted to explore the weapons in the game

I started off with a simple drawing of the marquesan club, from there I explored how I wanted to develop further weapon types based on that same overall design for continuity.

First of all I simply modified the design and proportions to take up new functions, the original club would have been used for bludgeoning, so I wanted to design a new one in the form of a war hammer, a spear and a mace.

I developed a rule that the common design trait for all design needed to be the 'face within a face' of the original club, which I illustrated on the bottom left corner, I felt that this would help keep the design consistent.

One of the last things I did was to consider how I could incorporate weapon customisation. I took the bottom face of the marquesan club, which to me always seemed quite 'alien' and decided that perhaps this was a sort of power gem that could be crafted after killing the spirit, each gem would be respectively shaped after the spirit in question, the default would be a human head, after killing the first spirit the player could craft a gem that took the form of say a tiger if that were the first spirit boss. The gems would them be interchangeable at will, and would affect the weapons performance and appearance to a certain extent.

The last thing I looked at was simply the imagery on the club, the eyes were quite striking to me so I just made a simple note to perhaps involve that imagery further into the project.