I have teamed up with an indie developer to make art for his game, Planitia. I've already posted these pictures in the mobile gaming WAYWO thread but I wanted to make a project thread to document the art as I make it. It's a god game in the spirit of the Populous games. (which I never played, so I can't comment on mechanics and similarities/differences)

He wants the models to be as low-poly as possible without straying into the region of minecraft men, along with a healthy dose of whimsy. I don't have any deadlines yet and Skryim went and ate my face so these pictures are about a month old. Here's to getting back to work in the New Year!

First I started on the villager. Basic model with solid colors and a very rough AO pass.


And the wires


DemonPrincess was wonderful enough to do a quick paintover for me with color suggestions.


So I submitted the villager for approval and the developer didn't care for, well, pretty much everything. So I incorporated his revisions and produced this:


He loved it, so now I'm working on textures:


I feel like I'm going in the right direction, but using a soft brush was a mistake. I'm going to re-paint the shading with a harder brush to try to get a more hand-painted effect (and tone down the contrast on the pants). I'm tweaking the model too to prepare for animation and make the texture look nice. Also to do is iterate on the face so that it reads properly at the tiny size.

This is my first time working on a commercial project and I know some people might look down on it because it's so low poly and it's just me (the artist) and a single developer (the programmer), but I want to do the best I possibly can and really make this game look nice.

I'll continue to update this thread when I've got new things to show, thank you for looking!

Woop! Finally got back to this and finished out the texture for this little guy. Going to present the AD with 64 and 128 versions to see which he likes better. The way the game works he'll have different teams separated by color. The shirt has an extra texture so he can change colors through sorcery, I mean code.




Still have to rig and skin this guy. That's got me scared, not so much the rigging but the skinning. I haven't skinned a model since 2004 on 3D Studio Max 5 (I STILL have nightmares about that). Now I'm using Maya and I've got my fingers crossed it'll be an easier chore.

I quite like this, I prefer the 64x textures though ;)

Cute villager :-)

Thank you both!

chrisradsby - I was surprised how much I liked the 64x version myself once I tried it.

Huzzah! Made my first maya rig, skinned the little guy, and posed him a bit:


Painting the weights was A LOT easier than I remember it being in Max.

I'm not sure I like how the rig feels. I followed this tutorial http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/t...mation/ID-125/ I'm also typing up documentation of the entire thing in google docs so I have more quickly accessible information for next time. I have a notebook full of scribbles, but it's not very readable at a glance. I'm more than willing to make my notes available to anyone who would like them, just let me know

It's a similar system to what I used in college in 3D Studio Max, so now that I've made one I'm confident that any future rigs I make I can adjust to make them more pleasant for me to animate with.

I'd like to get some crits on this. I'm worried he's too wobbly, whimsical animation or not.

Sort of a mix between "herp-a-derp" and "haters gonna hate". Since this character is to be presented at a much smaller size on screen, maybe something more to scale will help with feedback. Mainly because when characters are smaller, their animations sometimes have to be wildly exaggerated.

I suggest this as after zooming way out on it myself, I felt the body movements looked ok, but the head bobble was too much. They are usually a bit more stablized, focusing on direction of movement.

Thank you very much Chris, that helps a lot. I think I'm ready to send this off to the Dev now.

It's looking good! My main gripe is that, as of now, he looks very feminine and prissy in his walk. Unless that's intended. I think it's because of how the wrists flop around too much, as well as the combination of the overly-bobbing chest and hips. The latter doesn't look as noticeable from far away though, but the hands/wrists are.

Thanks SuPa. I see what you mean with the wrists. I kept that in mind with the run animation, but I think I'll leave the walk as it is and see what my client thinks of it.

Speaking of, here's the run I did today:


These are coming together a lot more quickly than I expected. Now that I look at the walk compared to the run I think the run looks a lot more stiff I think I'll revisit this in a few hours, maybe offsetting some keys will give me some more fluidity. I always welcome crits, you guys are great

And the last animation for now, Use. I'm hopeful that I'll soon move on to the combat units.

hahahaha, your animations are so cute! what is he doing in the last one though?

Originally Posted by Jessica Dinh

hahahaha, your animations are so cute! what is he doing in the last one though?

I think he's snapping the neck of a pigeon and letting it free. Ehm, that's probably not it...ehm maybe opening a bag of seeds then dropping it all over?

Chris gets the cupie doll! It's a 'use' animation, and the dev described to me he wanted something like the crafting animation from WoW (you know, where they kind of just rub their hands together) finished with a scattering of seeds.

Thank you both

Jessica, I haven't seen you post in your Panderan house thread in a while! Do you have another project thread you've been working on that I haven't seen?

Working on a logo, here's the sketch:



And here's my progress so far:



It's, ugh, I'm having issues. I've never done much, if any, handpinting landscape. I smushed some of makkon's brushes around but good brushes can't compensate for an unpracticed artist. I welcome any and all suggestions. I'll keep poking at the hand-painting, but I think I might try to cobble something up in zbrush and use that as a base.

I don't think this calls for anything realistic in the painting. I'd go for a very simple cartoony style. Forget anything detailed. It's just going to look wierd with the cartoony nature of the concept. Simple shapes and only hints of shading if that.

Thank you pseudoBug. I'm going to try again and concentrate on blocking large forms to try and get that cartoony style.

Update on the dirt. I learned that unfocusing my eyes as I paint really helps keep me to the large forms. I tend to get lost in details.

Finally seeing this come together, I'm pretty excited. Still have to put in the little people and the disasters, but I'm finally happy with the direction.

Looking good! Keep pluggin!


The grass might be looking a little bit to "paint drippy". Maybe try to put a little more variety in teh way they drop off? Dunno.

I'd try to paint the shadows in, it looks like you're using a drop shadow atm.

Originally Posted by pseudoBug

I'd try to paint the shadows in, it looks like you're using a drop shadow atm.

Buuuuuusteeeeed xD Thanks for the crits man, I'll definitely work on them

Was painting this tonight and hating it the whole way then suddenly I looked up and not only did I like it, I was done! I'm going to sleep on this and give it a final pass over the weekend. Crits welcome

Hey, this is a pretty cool thread, I haven't seen before. Chars and animations look very good, congrats!
On last painting, if was me, I'd prefer to make more large strokes, and would make smoke with a "solid" apearence, I mean, using the same large strokes, with a non textured brush. You know, aproximatedly like clouds on th sky of this Murph's painting. I think this kind of rendering could let things more cartoonish and simple. But of course, it depends on your goals.

Thank you very much jramauri. I think you might be right, especially when it comes to making a silhouette. I'll probably paint them again and see if I can improve them. I've done just about everything in this logo at least twice trying to get it right.