Devlog 2: Establishing the Art Direction

Hello again! We hope you enjoyed our last Devlog entry.

This time, we’re talking about art and the various steps that ultimately led to our current style! We’ll be using Plantopus, the very first creature we designed as an example. 

Before anything else, we needed a creature to start off of. 

A quick (and awful) sketch based on loose ideas then came to life. A land octopus infected by a parasitic plant, slowly altering its behavior pattern and abilities. It needed to be cute, look a bit slow in every sense of the word and a bit unnatural.

Plantopus V 0.1

It was not great, but it was good enough and hopefully it would get better.

We used complementary colors to clash a bit with the plant elements, put the beak on the face making it a bit reminiscent of a small parrot (everyone knows parrots are absolutely adorable) and have leaves/fins growing out like ears, just like a dumbo octopus. 

Plantopus V 0.2

With better proportions and a clearer vision for the creature, it was time to explore rendering styles.

It needed to be adaptable for a pixel art style while keeping a cute and childlike aesthetic.

Plantopus V 0.3

Attempt A we went for more cartoon proportions, a darker but very steady linework and watercolor coloring, reminiscent of children's books.

Attempt B we tried a thicker outline and made it look sketchy, like a drawing. 

While the 2 first were more unique and striking for a creature collector game, both wouldn't render very well in a pixel art style and made it look like the creatures weren’t real within the game world.

For this reason, we chose attempt C, who still had a very happy, colorful vibe with the thick colorful outlines and the soft shading.

And now,

how did it translate to pixel art?

Plantopus V 1!

We’d like to hear your thoughts!

Thank you so much for reading,

We hope you enjoyed the process, please stay tuned for more news!