Here is the latest look at the Leviathan stand at the University of Newport graduation show!

 

Leviathan at Graduation show!

So here is my little spot ready for the graduation show and the first public showing of Leviathan!
The show will be the evening of Wednesday the 19th of  June at Newport University in Wales.

very exciting!

Heres a little brand new screenshot to celebrate!

                                       

Leviathan Trailer.

Leviathan Production.

30/04/2013

So I'm deep into production now and programming Leviathan myself at the same time as producing the art and overseeing  various other bits and pieces that need doing such as sound and the piecing together of the trailer.

With being so busy recently I haven't had much time to blog and dropped the ball in that respect, to give an accurate depiction of these final jam packed days I will be doing a daily blog that is much more diary like to give a cutaway kind of look at the ups and downs of building just the end slice of Leviathan.

Two weeks time is the hand in but the graduation show is about six weeks away, I intend to continue the blog right up until the graduation show itself. Teams doing a really great job!

Sam.

Playing card design

The Devils hand.

It was always my desire to have the player play against the devil in a non violent game that would allow your opponent to cheat. I wanted the player to have to play a very rule oriented game of some simplicity, something along the lines of cups or cards. The player would have to play by the rules and the devil could cheat his way through the game. These are the card designs for the game you would play with the devil, I will be using these designs for business cards and possibly promotional material if there is no chance to implement  them in the final game.

Sam.

Promotional poster, Character set.

Promotional Poster.

I have also got prints back of my final poster designs which I handed round at my last presentation some of these are designs I've shown before but one in particular is four simple colour posters I'm using to represent the characters. These four images can stand alone or be viewed together as a set and were designed to be striking at a distance.

Sam.

The cult of the Leviathan.

Concepts fot the cult of the leviathan. These designs were made to tie together aspects of the human/leviathan alligiance to make a recognizable force throughout the game. I have used the leviathan statue as a symbol of the leviathan cult itself on posters and in bronze masks the cultists wear. These will be used in the game in the main town to show the player how much influence the leviathan is exerting on the human population.

sam.

Leviathan presentation.

The trailer for leviathan is above or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXal-6tmzJw

This is a trailer I built primarily to show how the choice system will work in game.

The Leviathan statue.

The Leviathan statue.

This is one of the most important pieces of the entire game. This statue is the main way a player can interpret how their actions are changing the game. The statue is in the centre of the town that the player runs around and all the villagers pray to it, as the player completes tasks the statues appearance will change. Help the leviathan worshippers and The statue will get more tentacles and look shiny and looked after, Harass and hinder the leviathan followers by helping the mythological beasts and the statue will became aged and dilapidated  There is even a few sneaky middle ground ones I'm working out but we will get to that later, I want it to be a lot more complicated than just good and bad and this leaves the player free to judge what the statue represents, I don't want it to be perfectly clear so that aspect of the game is open to player interpretation, to a degree obviously if you go around killing everything you will see this reflected very fast in the statue.

The statue design didn't take long to nail, I already had a pretty clear Idea of what I wanted, something symbolic and a touch abstract, After a few thumbnails I had it.


I started colour testing, This turned out to be harder to nail than I thought and needed alot of tweaking, it was important I chose a colour that felt neither good or bad but a happy boring medium but also stood out nicely against the town backdrop.

Still didn't quite have it...

I tested the statues against some backgrounds  one was a rough concept for the town (above) which was built for the purpose of the test, its the same grey as the majority of the background will be.


Heres a test against the most complete backround I have drawn by Max Perkins for 'Stop hitting me'
my mini game tech demo.

The final I went for is bronze although the base had to be tweaked to let the statue stand out. Bronze stands out well in the backdrop while not dominating the backdrop, it also ages well turning green in its age giving me some nice colours to play with when I go on to mess around with it later.




(Below)
Little design addition I did was to add the shape of the priests daughter into the leviathan statue, The leviathans stolen the priests daughter and I wanted some kind of symbolic representation of that within the statue, I like the idea the player may be able to spot this little easter egg him/her self although its only a very small detail.

Sam.

The Ceartas.

The Ceartas is the boat that carries the priest, after he is changed into a puppet to traverse the devils prison world the player must sail this vessel up to the island Tartarus. Ceartas is Gaelic for justice.

The Boat was always something I wanted to feature in the game and will be used at the beginning to teach the player the games controls, for instance the player will be required to jump up the mast and interact with it at the top to shift the sails. The player will sail the boat up to the island Tartarus and the games beginning to start the quest.

THE DESIGN.
The Ceartas is the boat the priest puts together out of the ruins left of his home town after the leviathan destroys it. The boats figurehead is a mixture of a selkie (half seal half women creatures of scottish folklore) and blind justice, this came from looking at the purpose of figureheads throughout history, they were mostly used to convey the name of the ship in a non-literate sense.

I researched into scottish fishing vessels quite a bit but disliked alot of what I saw so I had the priest construct the boat himself giving me le-way in my design to create something more suitable.

For a look at some early Scottish fishing boats that originally inspired the Ceartas take a look here.





With the boat done I started doing some concept bits and pieces to hand over to other team members, finding a look between real and puppet world was interestingly more complicated than I thought it would be.

Writing and  drawing a walk through of the game is my task now. The theory is really important, if the ethical game-play doesn't communicate to the player then the whole game wont play as I wish.


Sam.

Animation style.

Animation.



The character sprites are coming along nicely. Originally I wanted the characters to have a very realistic puppet movement with the individual sections of the characters being drawn on separate layers in Toon Boom then animated by rotating and moving the individual parts. This is the closest I could get to building a puppet in 2D.

After looking at the test animations done by the always wonderful debs I found that this style of animation was very boring and difficult to exaggerate, the characters stood out far too much from the background losing the overall effect I wanted. I deserted this flat animation style and will now animate the motions in individual drawn frames. deb will do the animations as roughs and I will draw the character out frame by frame over the top. This should preserve the free flowing style I want. The character will bend and move in ways his joints may not allow although hand drawn animation can bend these rules of physics.

Sam.

(For more of debs animation work look here)

The game takes shape...

The background art is in full swing although the rooms are still being cut and changed as I solidify my idea of the puzzles. This is the wonderful work of max who will be doing the backgrounds and some of the items.
You can see more of maxs art on his own blog here.

While it looks fairly simple this room is filled with purpose within the game and has a few more bits and pieces I havent shown here as not to ruin the game. Everything in the backround will have purpose and theres alot of hidden bits and pieces I hope to include, eyes peeled!

Sam

The walking priest.

After cutting up my character and building it back as individual pieces (much like a real puppet is built) debs animated the character to my specification. Debs animation is fantastic and she picked this up really fast (kudos madam).

With the animating now in full swing I hope to get more of these up here soon. To see more of Debs beautiful work just look here.

Sam

The art team.

Tuesday!

Today has been fantastic and the game has really come together, I'll elaborate.

Today after a few leviathan team meetings the team all undertook individual roles, the team was picked with specific jobs in mind and there work has been fantastic. I while involved with every aspect of the games design and look have taken a more directorial position. Max is drawing the game backrounds and deborah is animating the characters.

Most of today I was redrawing the characters as individual pieces to put together and animate in toon boom. Toon boom gives a great cut out puppet effect animation that was exactly what I was looking for although I began animating using photoshop and then debs freehanded it. lots of experimenting to get the proper look.

The game Is now moving forward at a great pace and After a few sprites and backrounds are done I'll move on to game maker which will give a nice system of three.

Also today the game underwent yet another large iteration plotwise and puzzle wise that has really changed gameplay for the better, this is largely due to the team being able to build designs I would have found difficult and time consuming. Im now going to write out a full walk-through of the puzzles and what art pieces will need to be made then onwards! 

Week 3

week 1

A bit about me from my peers and people I've worked with....