Using Lee Petty’s (Petty 2021) 4 step model for documenting art direction, I will lay out my upcoming untitled pirate game style.

Frame - when and where is the game set.

  • Somewhere between 1650 and 1750. The height of the pirate era.

Form - The style of the game - shapes, colours

  • Simplified RPG style landscape
  • Modern, hipster colour palette
  • Desaturated colours draw from 1700s era art

Focus - what am I doing better than other people

  • The game is going to focus on detail and upgrades available
  • The UI should be easy to use and encourage frequent upgrades

Filter - what is the specialist view

  • You play through the lens of a hipster
  • Fancy beards and moustaches
  • Cocktails and Kombucha are available in the inn.

Moodboards

I decided to break the mood board into four sections. The first for selecting colours and ambience of the 1700s seascapes and ships.

Boats

The second for contemplating the filter of the game and highlighting the hipster style pirates.

Hipsters

The third explores options and styles for level layout and maps.

Maps

The fourth and final suggests options for indicating progression and captain rank.

Hats

Concept Art

While these mood boards help set the scene, having some more background helps imagine the game further. Some early sketches for tiers of ships, and visual options for showing the possible arcs of fire.

Early-Sketches

A second area I struggle with is UI, so I tried a crazy eight to try and come up with some ideas for screen layouts. I found this particularly helpful to be able to play with different ideas and see which fit the style best.

UI-Ideas

It also helped me think about essential components - such as a portrait, and how best to incorporate the upgrade system which will be a core component of the game.

Critical-Components

Modeling

Experimenting with the asset forge application helps rapid prototype simple 3d objects and export them as sprites. I’m going to experiment with importing these into the game to improve on the grey box prototype.

Ship-Model

Asset forge also has a great sprite export function, allowing the model to be converted into 16 direction sprite with ease.

16-sprites

Colours

I sampled some colours I thought would would fit well with both a hipster vibe, and created a more desaturated version to help with blending and hilights. I think this is quite an extensive pallete, and doubt I’ll use all of these once I get started.

Colors

References

  • PETTY, Lee. 2021. ‘Elements of Art Direction’. [online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwXThTYbZY4&feature=emb_logo%2F [accessed 21 Feb 2021].