In game Gretel

Well I've got an in game version of Gretel that I've been playing around with in Flash. Here's the pencil version:



Here's what she looks like in game. I might change it later but I'll use this one for now for coding purposes.



Haven't really put a background in, as you can tell. I put two items in for her to pick up when clicked on. She can move to the items (without animation) but they disappear. They're supposed to reappear inside the inventory box. I had a friend help me with the coding but it still doesn't work yet. Need to play around with it some more methinks. If I can I'll try upload the swf file so you can see for yourself. For now you can just imagine it all going wrong aha.

Rendered backgrounds... sort of

I've been debating with myself and teachers over how I want my backgrounds to be rendered. Here's an example I've done in Flash 8:



It's very clean and I like how clearly everything appears, even if there isn't much to see at this point. You can get very clean lines in Flash and the colours really stand out. However I'll be rendering the characters in Flash aswell so I don't know how clearly they'll stand out if I also render the backgrounds in Flash aswell.

Here's another example done in Painter 10:



I really like the painted style and how much detail I'll be able to include, but if the objects are going to be rendered in Flash then they'll stand out too much. I could make the objects in Painter then import them to Flash, but that means I'll have
to make loads of dud objects so it won't be too easy for the player to spot them. The Flash rendered characters will really stand out if I use this method, which is what I want.

I'm probably going to go down the Painter route as I'll be able to achieve the detail of the backgrounds I want, whereas I would be kinda limited if I did it in Flash.

Background art

Time to show some background stuffs.



These are roughs for the inmate, Kuchisake-Onna's cell and the reception area. That weird door is where the receptionist (Fem Pinocchio) will be. I want the door to have lots of haphazard signs nailed to it that says 'hell' in different languages for... story reasons. I need to make a story post sometime.



Some reception designs... wow these are really rough and bad, I need to post some cleaner designs aswell, oy.

Character - Baba Yaga

Here we have another inmate, who is probably the main antagonist in the game, Baba Yaga.



I wanted to put a straight jacket somewhere in the gama as this is an asylum so why not the main villain? She sits on her giant mortar, with her pestle and rudder floating behind her. Somewhere in her cell there'll be her hut thats balanced on... chicken legs, like in the tale (I couldn't even begin to make this stuff up. I'll probably include a picture of the protagonist of the original tale, Vasilisa I think? Anyway she'll just be a reference for people to catch really.



So she'll be playing a central part in the disappearance of Gretel's brother, which I still need to storyboard.

Kuchisake - Onna storyboard

Now for something slightly different. Here's a really badly done rough storyboard of a possible scenario between the protagonist and one of the inmates, the Kuchisake-Onna. Its not really a puzzle but its a dialogue based... scene that can leave Gretel dead.



God its baaaaaad.

Character - Bluebeard

More characters means more arts. This time its Bluebeard.



Much of the art I've seen of him depicts him in medievil or cavalier type clothes. So I'm using those clothes but styling them with modern business clothes, so its gonna be a really weird combination :D.



I'll be styling his wives the same way aswell. Floaty dresses but with that modern 'business-like' twist'. You won't see much of them because well... they'll be dead but I'll probably have pictures of them hanging around or something.

Character - Fem Pinocchio

Another one for the game, my female version of Pinocchio.



She is the receptionist/nurse of the asylum. I wanted to make her look like a flawless doll. She'll appear to be very robotic in the game and I wanted to leave her lower half exposed because technically... there's nothing there.



I want to hide all of her upper joints so it's hard to tell she's actually a puppet... but that doesn't really matter since I added her mouth lines... oh well at least I can make her outfit cool.

Character - Frog Prince

Here's another character, The Frog Prince.



I decided to give him a more hideous, monster like design ala the beast from 'Beauty and the Beast'. He doesn't look as scary as I want him to look yet, needs more tweaking. He's also a bit of a stalker, because in the story he's rejected by the princess (as a frog) so now he pursues her much to her terror. I made the princess look very punky for some reason... why did I give her giant hair? Ah well :)



Looks slightly more sinister in this picture... yaaay.

Character - Princess and the Pea

Hey, sorry about the slow update. Been busy with my other game project. I'll try not to slack off too much this time. Anyway another character for Asylum:



This is the princess from the story 'The Princess and the Pea'. I don't know all the details of the story but I know that she lost some sleep so I exaggerated that and now her appearance has aged because of her lack of sleep. I decided to have her in her pajamas to keep with the sleep theme.



Here's a slightly older concept for her. Her pajamas are in the style of bloomers and I put lots of ruffles and ribbons on it because I figure that she would want to retain her once youthful looks so she dresses younger to do so. I imagine a blue and pink colour scheme for her when I eventually colour her.



Oh and I'd say she's in her mid-teens... I think.

Character arts

This time I've got some character designs for my game, which will be a third person adventure game. The basic story is the character's quest to save her brother who is trapped in an asylum whose inmates are various legends from folklore and fairytales. The game will be largely horror based. Anyway on to the characters!



This is the main character, Gretel who will be my interpretation of the brothers Grimm's character. I'll make another post with the story at a later date.




Here is my version of Rapunzel. I really wanted to remove her from the medieval princess image thats commonly associated with her, so I created a 'trampish' look for her. Essentially she's a homeless girl.




This character is based off a japanese legend called the 'Kuchisake-Onna'- meaning slit-mouthed woman. I wanted to include figures that aren't just from well known tales... it's nice to bring in other cultures, kinda educational... well for me at least.

Yeeeaahhh well I'll make a separate post on the story and character bios sometime. Til next time!

First post yey, animation frames

Hey, welcome to the development blog fro my third year game design project, Asylum. Here I'll be posting my progress in animation, art, prototypes etc. It's gonna be mostly art at this stage, so have some rough animation frames! I referenced them from a walk cycle from the adventure game Broken Sword 1:



Here's a close up of frame 4:



Here's the frames of a quick hair blowing animation i tried to do. Felt I needed to get better at animating as I'll be doing a lot of it for my game. No reference used.



Another close up of a frame:



More to come!