Plumber Friend - UQdeco2800/2022-studio-2 GitHub Wiki
Inspiration
After doing some research on how a plumber would look like, I received some inspirations from these 2 images. I found similar features where people stereotype plumbers, they stereotype them by having overalls as part of their clothing, a cap on their head and a moustache. They are also most often visualized with plungers and tools to fix the piping systems in buildings.
Draft
Above is a rough sketch on how the plumber friend will look like when implemented into the game. The features that I have placed into the design is the overalls and boots. These two features are based purely from the people stereotyping plumbers. The two other features that I added to stay consistent with the theme of the game are a beard and baldness. These features are implemented as the Player Team had designed their player model to have baldness and a beard. I also added a belly to his design to signify that the plumber isn't fit and he only fixes pipes when he is needed.
First Iteration
This is the first iteration of the plumber friend in pixel form. The features that I had designed from my draft have been implemented into the pixel design.
Second Iteration
In the second iteration, not much changes but only changed the top of this head to be more human like because the first iteration, his head looked flat and blocky.
Final Iterations
Added some animation where the first image shows the animation of the belly moving up and down after he breathes and the second image was just an iteration of adding ripple effects onto the belly.
Collaborations with Weapons/Items Team
The above images are collaborations that I have done with Weapons/Items Team (Team 4) where they had produced an items for my Plumber Friend NPC. I had requested to have items such as a plunger and wrench, to emphasise that it is a plumber and not a person in overalls. The image contains the plunger and wrench items where the plumber is holding in his hands with animations done by the Weapons/Items Team.
User Testing
I did some user testing on the final iterations to go about on how the Plumber Friend looked. The first image is asking about if the Plumber Friend resembles as a plumber and all of the responses were saying that it does have some resemblance.
The second image is asking about what they think about the animations and if there is anything to improve upon. The majority of the responses liked the animation of the belly and most of them suggested to have some changes on the Plumber's head. They suggested to have some animation on the head and eyes to make seem like the plumber isn't staring into space.
Future Directions
Based from the user feedback, further iterations will be done in the next sprint. In future sprints, I would potentially user test more in between my iterations so I can improve my designs and decrease amount of iterations.