When finishing up my presentation, I gathered all of the extra work and research I had done before I delved deep into my coding sessions and found out I had done some cool work. The first thing was all of these extra characters or NPCs that I had in mind whether they were just a part of the level itself or part of the overall story, I will document them here.
The first thing is a mythological creature called the Medieval Scholar, it depicts a hare riding atop a snail with a wise old man's head poking out. The hare has a shield and a jousting lance. This is an unusual character but would fit in quite well with some of the medieval aspects I have in the Death's Homeland level. The snail has been said to have been wise because of how strong it could carry objects, just like ants. The hare is depicted in tons of middle-aged tapestries and paintings either jousting other animals, hitting people, or playing instruments.
Medieval Scholar
Ideas and leftover designs on a mood board.
Some early ideas that never made it off the cutting board was a true villain to oppose my heroes in the game. Because who could oppose Death, the Godly being above dying and darkness, let's not forget Time, the Godly being who oversees the history that has transpired. Well at first I thought of a skeleton, one with a moth body or even something of my own design; An Elixir. These are giant skeletal winged creatures who seek shadows and aim to suck the living life light out of their victims.
There would also be revived versions of Death and Time to set up a sequel game that would look slightly different in their new lives. Time would look like an Eskimo whereas Death would be a cloaked priest. My initial design showcased this well as Time was slightly taller and had a white/grey cloak. The idea originally came from Pokémon "Snorunt" which you can see above on the leftover designs page on my mood board.
Line Art level design. When making my initial ideas for "Death's Homeland", I got really inspired by a picture of Lennox Castle in East Dunbartonshire which is an abandoned castle up north. I went to visit similar venues like this in Kent where I went camping in the countryside. I took some photographs as seen below from a past trip. Some parts of the castle however have collapsed and are unsafe, so I had to use some images from Google Maps.
I used some of these photographs to draw over them with the line tool in Adobe Illustrator. I first did this in black, then in white. I outlined the most important shapes while keeping in some of the background designs like windows.
Birds eye view of Lennox castle
Dutch angle of Lennox castle
Destroyed and caved-in pitfall castle with a sinkhole that has erupted.
Ruptured pathway with rubble platforms in castle courtyard
These two photographs above were my first thought of what the level was going to look like for Death's Homeland. The picture on the right has a crane, this could have been how Death would traverse across the rubble of his family castle. The picture on the left however is one of my main staples for this location. There are shattered windows and an erupted sinkhole center that the player must weave themselves around to reach the door on the other side. The two doors are what inspired the rest of the 6 levels to have an entrance and an exit door at the start and the end of the level.
Castle door idea bits for Death's Homeland with clues for Death's homeland
Upward shot of Lennox castle
All main versions of photograph outlines
When making my line art pictures, I started with black lines around the most important shapes on the outside, I then moved inward to capture some of the remaining details like windows, hallways, slits, and trees as well as some indents in the castle walls. When I made the lines white later on for better visibility, I added a black background behind the pictures with white shapes to set the scene. The black-outlined ones were also put on top of a white background which made the white shapes filled in stand out more. I then coloured both of my two designs with a simple grey, green, and black palette to reflect the photographs they were originally based on.
White outline of photographs
St James catholic church
I used Illustrator Ai to make Time for myself
More AI pictures of levels, areas, and enemies.
One of the first and final things I did when creating my characters was use the new Illustrator tool to make things from a suggestion box out of AI-generated content. I asked it to make Time; A Cloaked short-statured figure in a hood wearing a jester hat. The picture above shows the result and it isn't half bad although mine is still better.
I did make a lot more AI-generated content at the start of my pre-production process to grasp an idea of what some locations could look like in the game and as part of my game world. I used this for characters too, like Death, Time and the Sirens to name a few. Some early enemies were made too but scrapped of course.