Hello Everyone!

As of Wednesday the 22nd, it is officially fall! and you know what that means. PSL, sweater weather, Halloween, and school. But, ya’know what? It’s my last semester of college. I am officially graduating in December.

And because of that I have a capstone project to do! I’m going to be documenting my work here and hope to keep you all updated on my journey through this last stretch of undergrad schooling.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working out some kinks in my capstone, but I think the first thing we should talk about is the brief. 

In my project, I am going to create a series of character designs, turn around sheets, and some character art surrounding a central theme.

Basically, I am going to create a series of four characters based on a deck of cards for a made-up mobile game.

♢♤   THE GAME   ♧♡

A good place to start on this project would be to explain what kind of setting the characters will be in, and what kind of game they will be a part of.

The theory is that it is a mobile game with inspirations based on games like Pokemon, Haypi Monster, Pico Pets, Terapets, and Nexomon. It is an adventure, creature collector, battle RPG game.

Welcome to the world of Taliasia, where humans and Pikais live in a careful harmony. When wild pikais start running rampant, it is up to you to tame them and bring peace back to Taliasia. Travel throughout this dangerous world and discover the nefarious plot upsetting the careful balance between humans and the pikai while using your capture cards to complete your deck.

♢♤   MY JOB  ♧♡

In this capstone project I am going to be researching different decks of cards, associations with them, and their histories all to combine together into a set of characters. I will then use these discoveries to create, iterate, and finalize the designs. I am hoping to create a few deliverables in this project:

• Reference and Turn Around Sheets
• Collection Card Icons
• Promotional Character Art

♢♤   WHAT IS ALREADY DONE   ♧♡

To be honest, I’ve actually got quite a bit done so far. In the very early stages, I decided on using spiders as my main base for the creatures, because of the game “Spider Solitaire”. It is a game that many people know, and was one of the first card games that I had ever learned to play. I then decided that in creating a series of these spider creatures, I would base them on each of the suits. That then led me to the history of card suits, their tarot equivalents, and which element they align to. The elements are incredibly helpful, because that is a way to not only differentiate between them, but ties into the battle element of the game.

After creating these initial sheets, I showed them to my advisor and others in order to get feed back to further the designs even more. Some of the advice that I got was to emphasize the shape of the silhouettes. It is important to be able to identify a character immediately, and that means having very individual and identifiable characteristics, even without and color or detail. And so I set off to create a second version of one of the spiders to test this out.

I used the suit of hearts to not only further my design process, but to also create a proof of concept sheet that shows I have the ability and know how to create digital works as well as character reference sheets and turn arounds.

 

The element associated with the suit of hearts is water, and so I wanted to emphasize not only that it was the suit of hearts, but also pull in it’s individual elemental nature. In doing that I made the creature have a see-through like body filled with a liquid that it uses in battle. I also created a secondary color scheme and included it in the sheet.

I then researched a bit on what some terminology would be for the game background. I ended up deciding to use Polish as a base for the names used above. Mainly because I have a Polish heritage and enjoy pulling my background into what I do, but also because I liked the way the words sounded and could be changed. The name of the location in the game is “Taliasia”. This is taken from the polish word talia which means “deck” as in a deck of cards. And the name of the monsters that inhabit the land with humans – “Pikai”- comes from the polish word piki which means “spade”.

By next update I am planning to have more form iterations for the creatures as well as various color palette options! I’m going to do more research for what the creature species should be called and learn about color theory.

Until next time!

-Kae