Ranged Enemy Design Process - UQdeco2800/2022-studio-1 GitHub Wiki

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Inspiration
Pixel Art Style Inspiration
Real Life Inspiration
Colour Palette
Initial Sketches
Low Fidelity Sketches
Medium Fidelity Sketches
Medium Fidelity Feedback
Final Design
Image References

Design Inspiration

Inspiration for ranged enemies comes from Atlantis related sea animals. The features we aim to create in our own enemy include:

Evil eyes
Tentacle/ Webbed Features
Dark colour palette
Glowing features to suggest magical power

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Pixel Inspirations

Inspiration for pixel design initially comes from the images below. Attention to shading and how detailed features are constructed were made.

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Electric Eels

Eels are sea creatures with long fish bodies, known for stunning prey through electricity. This animal was chosen due to the following reasons:

Eels are eerie sea animal fits theme of Atlantis and sea creature
Took inspiration from natural electrical ability as something that can be used to cause damage to buildings and characters

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Colour Palette

The initial colour palette of the eel was taken from the Design Guidelines to conform with design objectives. To achieve an electrical look, we added a palette of yellow to the design.

[7] [8] [9]

Initial Sketches

Various initial sketches were made based off the inspiration of electric eels:

Low Fidelity Sketches

Intial Sketches were combined into low fidelity colour sketches to tweak and add detail to different features of the eels. Some important features of the sketches to identify include:

Eel like eyes
Seaweed hand and face to represent "sea monster"
Eel like body and mouth
Electric chest and features

Medium Fidelity Sketches

The low-fidelity product was a large inspiration for the medium-fidelity product. The aim is to create four facing directions SW, SE, NW, NW. Changes from low to medium fidelity are based on studio feedback and achieving studio cohesion in design for characters. These include:

Refinement of pixel canvas size
Refinement of dark outline
No blurring in pixels
Added shading to enhance 3D look.
Change eyes to be more cohesive with Team 9 and appear more "menacing"
Created 2 back facing directions

back eel other face

Sea Monster V4 Sea Monster V4 Other Direction

Medium Fidelity Feedback

Detailed results and analysis are provided in - Medium Fidelity User Testing. The main changes to the design were in regards to the colour of the body and face of the eel as the majority of feedback found the colours too dark to distinguish different features. Furthermore, as the colours were so dark there was confusion regarding the outline being black as enemies need to have a dark border. Therefore the colour palette of the electric eel was lightened and the face structure was slightly altered.