Game Art Design Year 2 - Concept Devlopment

Was at this point struggling for ideas inwhich to take my robot design further, So I was just searching the internet one day checking out some games that were gonna be released before christmas, and I remembered the game Donkey Kong country returns which was to be a released soon. Im a huge fan of the Donkey Kong country franchise and I just thought the idea of interpreting the monkey into the robot was a good idea, as I believed would apeal to all ages and could make the robot act like a monkey and be very light hearted, humerous and imature which could be a good apeal to all ages. I also like the game setting of having a monkey kind of robot in the jungle which could be a great contrast, and potentially camouflage him, I think one of the next steps forward is to create a storyline which could influence the aesthetics of my character.



Around the same time I watched the trailer for the new film Megamind, and one of the characters stuck out for me was this robot that was been controled by this fish in a bowl as you see below. It then influenced me to come up with an idea of maybe a monkey, potentially conroling the robot through some source as to which im not sure. Maybay having the monkey ride somewhere on the robot been able to control it or been able to control it though brain signals.



My previous point of having the monkey controling the robot also lead me onto th idea of something similar to Wallace and Gromit The Wrong trousers, which im sure everyone is aware of, but having a similar concept of maybe the monkey controling the robot through a remote.



I was then told to come up with a storyline for the character as that would help me design the aesthertics, so I came up with this rougth outline that this kind of crazy monkey got fed up of not been able to find enougth bannanas on the island, which was inhabited with other monkeys. So he came up with this idea of designing a robot in his hideout, which is like a secret labartory hidden in the jungle and he uses his inventioon to collect all the bannanas and the other monkeys are out to stop him. Not the most creative stroyline but its easy to understand and would apeal to the target audience.

Heres a Side,front and back view of my character design.



Heres the design for my character which Im quite pleased with, Ill just talk to you a bit about the design. Firstly I gave the robot really large shoes for two reasons, one is to decrease the potential for falling over in the jungle, as its a very folliage place and easy to trip over vines so this should prevent the chance of that happening. The other reason is that I have equipped him with a Jet pack for obviously reaching those bannan's which are high up in the top of the trees, and he can control the flight through is shoes aswell to help with steering. I purposely gave it a kind of safe like body / chest area as I thought that would be great place to keep the banana's rhich are collected on the island, and could be a great thing to interact with for the second part of the brief. Ive mentioned a bit about the jetpack which will be located on his back. The purpose of the hands is so when the robot is in mid air, the hands will expand to collect the banana's from the tree. The texturing of a good proportion of the robot will be in camouflaged, to hide away from the rest of the inhabits on the islands. There a few of the main features on the robot. Overal im very pleased with my idea and think its a great concept to take forward on to maya.



Heres some finished concept art which I did using adobe illustator, I also included the monkey in this concept, I just wanted it to be a normal looking monkey and look no different to the rest on the island, obviously his intelectual powers are superior but apart from that he just looks like an average monkey, Im really pleased with the way the finished concept art looked.

Game Art Design Year 2 - Timesplitters

After looking at my drawings, for some reason some of the characters reminded me of those included within the game Timesplitters which I thought would be a great position in which to start my reasearch, another reason is that Im going for a kind of crazy idea and Timpesplitters features many great concept designs such as the snowman and the duck for example and is designed in a light hearted feel and very humours which is the kind of attributes I'd like my character to contain, also Timesplitters features some great level designs which could come as great research for when I have to build an environment for the character to live in.




Here is a great video on youtube I found containing all the chracters in the game, as you can tell there are many unique designs such as mentioned before the duck and the snowman which you dont see in many other first person shooters, Im looking for something different for my character. I'm mainly concentrating on the robot chacracter featured within the game as thats the route im deciding on heading down. So the idea is to gain some ideas to potentiall improve my concept designs to create a robot im happy with.

I Really like the robot at 2.08 in the video and the way it is modelled through the use of simple shapes and would like to take influence from this design as its a kind of similar feel im looking at, the shapes are used really well and I like the way it has a kind of synful feel but is taken as light hearten and something that is suitable for ages which is something I want. Overall there is some great charcters included and I could potentially take influence from another charcater as im not wanting a basic robot design, Im looking for something more whacky and humerous as I want my design to be fun and stand out upon the many robots included in media. whether that be having a kind of fire demon robot or even a zombie robot, these are routes I could experiment in, overal this have been a great reference of research.








Heres just a few example OF Timesplitters charcter concept art I found while searching on the internet, while my designs wont really be influenced by these examples, its nice to look at some concept art and get ideas on how to present mine and its good to look at the posses, overall I really like the art and choice of media they've used.