It’s been an exciting two weeks, as we’re in the process of implementing our art assets: replacing the placeholders we’ve been using since the Titanic sank (that’s what it feels like, ok?). We can make hundreds of changes in code, but nothing comes close to the impact of overhauling the visuals.
We’re getting close to finalizing the facial animations for all four prototype characters: Barda, Brand, Turbow and Eslan. Felipe (our animator) is working hard on animating with the texture maps our artist Gabriel made. We tried to make each character’s personality shine through, after all, the eyes are the window to the soul (lol).
Here’s a Frankenstein collage with the faces (eyes and mouth) from our characters, just cause:
This is what happens when you don’t use guides in Photoshop
We’re also close to being done with our ship designs, and our first arena has been modeled and inserted in the game. We tried to keep the ship designs varied and interesting, thank you space physics! So, we have traditional winged ships, but also some crazier ones that would certainly not fly in Earth’s atmosphere. We want the matches to feel like they’re being broadcast, so we created a satellite dish looking ship. We also thought about the in-stadium experience, so we created concession ships for the fans… so they could theoretically buy a dang hot dog!
We’ll also have a pizza ship, where fans can buy all kinds of pizza, except pineapple, cause that topping’s illegal in space :)
Gabriel and Lais also teamed up to conceptualize our other crazy arenas. They’re freaking awesome and we can’t wait to play a match in them. When you hit play, your arena will be randomly selected. Currently, we have 5 shapes, but the plan is to test these during production, remove the unpopular ones and come up with new designs and possibly give players (post launch) the option to pick the arena shape they want to play.
I guess I paid attention in geometry class. Just don’t ask me the shape names.
I also designed 4 team crests, for the 4 (or more) default teams the game will launch with. When you play without representing your union (your union will have its own custom crest, designed by your union leader), you’ll be assigned one of the default teams. We want each team to feel unique, so, sure, we gave them different uniform colors, but also different crests, and in the future, different uniform designs. We want players to have a favorite default team.
The home team’s crest will be seen in our arenas
Our dynamic artist duo is also hard at work designing our game’s Splash Screen. UniKaos is meant to be extremely chaotic and sporty and answering our questions is supposed to get your adrenaline pumping. It’s quite difficult to convey this message in one piece of art, but I think our artists are knocking it out of the park. Here’s a sneak peek:
See you in two weeks!
- Lucas
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