Backgrounds!!

Cave - Parallax/static

Flower field - Parallax

These are all the current backgrounds we're using in our game at the moment.

A mix between static and parallax. I explained in a previous post why we have static and parallax backgrounds.
I designed almost all of the backgrounds, Josh has been helping me with the art, he's been great. He did all the GUI while I focused on the backgrounds.

Josh did however design the lave world and I simple edited the bones to break them up and a bit as requested by Peter and also adding more of a 3D look to them as suggested by teachers.

Forest - parallax

Josh is happy with the change to his background, I made sure that he was okay with it because it was his art in the first place and I didn't want to disagree with him over it.

Some of the backgrounds are made as gifs because I animated them for a bit of extra awesome. :) I'm really quite pleased with the animated ones.

The not animated backgrounds have particle effects on the in game. The cave has water drips falling from the stalactite.

The flower fields has petals blowing gently across the field.

Temple - static

and the Forest has leaves falling from the trees.

All the static backgrounds have transitions images that overlay the start and end of the background to smoothly transition one background to the next.

Josh did a really good job on the temple and lave world transitions. I just couldn't think of how to transition the temple so I left the job to Josh and he did really well.

Lava world - static

I think I've covered most of the informations on the backgrounds, umm how we got the ideas for each one was we'd discuss what kind of backgrounds we thought would look cool, Josh would draw up some thumbnails and I would take it from there and sketch it up in photoshop.

So that's pretty much everything about our backgrounds.

Waterfall - static

The game is based a lot on the art., because it's such a simple game play we wanted really interesting backgrounds to stand out.

 I think we've done well :)

Soul pit - static

Updatinggggggg

Persephone crashing animation!

yayay so that's her crashing into a 2 stack of blocks. There are a few extra details I need to add to the animation yet, such as flowers falling from her hair, however thats not major.

uuuh my brain's not working >.< umm what to say!

I also finished the 1 block crash. 
So I made two different crash animations because I thought it would look funny having Steph crash and not fall over when she hit a one block and if I have a one block animation I obviously need a two block crash too.

I'm going to now explain some jazz about my drawing process of Steph.
I found it rather hard coming up with a character design for Steph, as she doesn't have a exact image, she and her story change from person to person.
I googled a lot of different versions of Persephones story and image to get a feel for who she was. I then started sketching pictures of what I thought she'd look like.

Sketches

 once I thought about it for a few weeks and sketched out a couple of idea I came up with little chibi Steph :D

I wanted a more cartoon character for the game. I thought it would make the game more fun and light rather than realistic.

Once I had the idea for what I wanted her to look like I started sketching out a run animation.

 Josh found a good run animation online that we used as reference for Steph running.

Run animation reference

My first attempt at animating wasn't so great.... it was scruffy and nooby. I found it really had to draw he same thing over and over.... I have much more respect for animators now.

First attempt 

Third and final

Second attempt

So you can see it get better the more work I put into it. I used the same process for the other sets of animation (walk, idle, crash)

So that I think is my Persephones story so far.

If I remember more I will add another post.

Oh my glob

oh oh I forgot I had a blog to blog on. my bad.

well so it's been a while, ummmmmm I finished one of the crashing animations, I decided we needed 2 because it would look funny having Persephone crash into a block only half her size exactly the same way as she'd crash into a 2 or 3 block stack.

I've not been well for about a week so I haven't really gotten anything done hmmm I finished the souls background and the transitions. hmmm

I was also doodling on a few background ideas but I'm going to run them by my team before I work too much on them.

I think that's all.

Underworld

Update on the underworld. I'm still not having much luck coming up with creative ideas for this background :/
But it has improved since yesterday. I'm liking how it's going I just want more umm wow in it I guess... hmmm
 however here is the updated background.

I want to add green fire some where to add shadows to the bridge and just give a creepy feeling to the scene.

I like the chains but I'm not too sure how well it fits with the wooden bridge.. hmm

Oh and the roof looks better now :) I like that.


I'll be working on animating the fog and creepy grabbing hands tomorrow I think.

Other than that I have to draw the transitions for this and possibly the temple if Josh didn't finish them. He's so helpful :3

I have one more animation to finish. The crashing animation, we're thinking something really Wile E coyote style. really Smoosh kinda thing.

 I think that will be really rather funny. :) Poor Steph :P

end of update.

Quick update

Okay so quickly before bed I'm posting just a catch up on what I've been doing.

I finished the Idle to walk animation and the walk to run. I haven't got gif's at the moment but I'll put them up later.

I'm working now on a underworld themed background. I'm having trouble focusing though :S I'm tired and run out of creative ideas..... so tomorrow I will be working hard on that, staying focused and figuring it out.
The underworld we decided would look good as a kind of soul pit, or underground soul river type thing...

.... okay so while I was drawing the underworld I didn't like it.... but looking at it now from a distance it's looking kinda good. I will talking it over with my team tomorrow.

There is lots to do in the next week and my minds gone blank! D:

Things will work out. We're all working hard to get our game done. It's something we all want to be proud of.

alrighty, good night.