I hadn’t made any pixel 2D games before this project, so at the beginning of the project my game arts partner and I tried to make pixel characters and their breathing animations at rest after a lot of discussion and searching for tutorials on pixel character creation.
We discussed the theme in the first week of the project, and it was a theme about the kingdom, so I looked for some references to the background of the kingdom as well as the characters. We communicated many times in the early stages of the collaboration and continued working on the character designs after combining everyone’s opinions.
When I was looking for a reference I was already thinking about the process of binding bones and how to animate them later on, as these factors also influence the overall style of the character and the attack or skill release etc. So my idea was to make a Viking warrior and I found some references for the character’s face and weapons.
The style of overwatch lies in the cartoonish, American cartoon style of each character. I chose overwatch as my style for making the characters and there is a lot about these models and the design drawings that I can refer to, such as the shaping and characterization of the characters’ faces, the characters’ features are all distinctive and stylized. The costumes are particularly vibrant and the colour scheme fits each character well. I needed to follow these stylistic features to create the characters.
This is a character created by an artist on artstation who created it in the overwatch style, and it is clear to see that many of the overwatch characters are sculpted in high poly form and then topologized into a low poly and then baked with normal maps. This ensures that the detail of the high poly also allows players to experience higher frame rates and smooth gameplay in the game.
During the four months of this project, I learned a lot about game art and my insight into game art is much higher than when I first started the animation course last year, both in terms of theoretical knowledge and skills in the field of game art. I have learnt a lot about the game production process, such as modelling techniques, and the placement of each model requires certain compositional skills to complete. I didn’t have a lot of skills when I first started this project, but during the four months I was taught by my tutor to modify the scenes step by step, and in the process I learnt how to think about scene composition. I feel that I have gained a deep understanding of the production process from finding the research at the beginning of the project to rendering the whole scene in the unreal engine. In terms of software skills, for example, exporting models from maya to unreal engine requires a standard way of doing things, and I think this skill is important. I have been taught by my tutor to use substance painter and zbrush in particular, which has also given me a greater appreciation of the profession of game design.
There are many parts of this project that I think I did well, such as the search for research before modelling, because I specifically went to play the game kena again before I started this project and looked for inspiration in the process of playing, I sculpted most of the models of this scene and then baked the mapping, so that the details of the high poly models could be preserved and used. This method allows for fewer surfaces and smoother graphics when the game is running. When applying the textures I referred to different researches to make the scene more stylised. To bring the scene to life, I added an animation for the steps in the final camera animation. I think I did a good job with these. But I think there are a lot of things that I didn’t do enough, for example I had a lot of trouble lighting the scene and I don’t think I added enough light to the scene to highlight the magic of the scene. The materials in my scene did not have the effect I wanted as I was not very skilled with the colour palette and I will learn more about the tutor’s methods in future lessons. I added the background to this scene from the background that comes with Unreal Engine and I think I will spend more time on my next project to create a better background myself. All in all, this project has made me feel more confident in the game art.