Welcome back! After taking looking at some of the technical implementation last week, it’s only fair we look at how the art side was created.
Lewis Sanderson started the concepting by looking at inspiration from existing games such as R-Type as well as looking at current plane designs melding them together. To try and get the sci-fi aesthetic we used sharp lines and mixed this with wings shape and engine effects from more contemporary planes.
Several passes later, refining the bottom of the ship to ensure the player’s silhouette was clear enough to see in game, we ended up with these final concepts.
We decided with a blue colour for the player, and going forward, made an effort to make enemy ship colours and shapes contrast with these designs as you can see with our early enemy design below.
After the design concepts were nailed down it was time to bring them to life in 3D. Rob Kavanagh brought in the concept images into 3DS Max to start building the shape from reference. You can see using a humanoid character here to get a sense of scale.
After modelling from the reference we focused on getting the silhouette right for the game. The most important angle is side-on as the player will be seeing the ship from this perspective for the majority of the game.
But we also wanted the ship to spin and bank so the underside of the ship was also important. Rob spent some time experimenting with the engine designs and went for a futuristic and industrial mix.
The final step was to add materials and lighting. We needed the ship to be bright enough to stand out but at the same time not be too colourful as it had to match the tone of the game.
Here you can see Rob trying different materials and lighting. The first one is the brighter one whilst the second is the final render we used which has darker metal whilst keeping the overall blue colours and theming. After putting it into engine I added some spotlights to boost the colour a little and make it stand out from the background.
You can see through the material work that Rob added some weathered edges to make the ship feel more “battle hardened”.
Next time we’ll look at how the enemies were designed and created!