It’s Cold
The weather is changing, the leaves are falling, and it’s a horrible double edged sword. I love the colors of the fall, wearing cozy sweaters, and comforting warm drinks. But I am not a fan of falling temperatures and short days with long nights.
This week I worked solely on an evolution stage for the suit creatures. I like the thought of designing for a game like Pokémon, where the player goes around capturing creatures and collecting all of the forms and types. The country in my game, Taliasia, is separated into four quadrants. One for each of the suits and this pikai creature has adapted differently depending on which quadrant it lives in. Some of the creatures that I actually have looked to for inspiration of this idea were Pokémon like Deerling and Burmy.
♢♤ EXPLORATION ♧♡
To start, I created an inspiration board much like I did with the primary stages. I started with the idea that each one would pull more features from varying insects and items to show the elemental natures. I pulled ideas like a hand fan for air, a diving bug for water, a stag beetle for earth, and a bombardier beetle for fire. I liked the elements of the long torso from a dragonfly, the forelegs of a praying mantis, a butterfly’s proboscis, and the wings and antennae of a moth.
As I moved onto my sketches, I began in thinking that either the body or the wings of the creature would be made of cards themselves. I then went on into more of a different direction where each suit had more distinct and different qualities about it. My initial sketches have the Diamond Suit being highly inspired by a Stag Beetle and being grounded with small wings.
♢♤ COLORS ♧♡
For the colors I decided to pull from the previous stage’s palette. This way the evolution would remain cohesive as well as which variant the creature is being easily noted. I took some inspiration from a work I saw on ArtStation of a dragon design (pictured above in the inspiration board). In the design, the dragon is very dark, but has one very vibrant blue stipe running down the side. I took this aspect and tried having one spot on each of the designs where there was a color of interest.
♢♤ LINE ART ♧♡
When I began working on the line art for the evolution designs, I decided to create the evolution as an identical base body and have the features of the evolution change depending on the suit. With the additional aspect of wings and being able to fly, this changes the boundary of not being able to travel between the quadrants. The evolution no longer is restricted to only one elemental area. Because of this, I created only one turn around sheet and then created front views for all four. I took inspiration from the moth in the form of the fuzzy chest, wings, proboscis, and antenna. The forelegs take inspiration from a praying mantis, and the head shape is taken directly from the previous evolution.
For the Club Suit I wanted to keep the rounded quality of the first stage, and also keep the theme of it lighting various parts of it’s body on fire. This creature has a tendency to light it’s antennae, wings, and cerci (a pair of caudal filaments or the things that look like tails) on fire.
The Heart Suit has kept the transparent, bubble or vial like aspect. It’s wings, antenna, and abdomen holds liquid it uses to attack from it’s proboscis and cerci.
With the Diamond Suit I chose to change a few things from the others. I made the wings smaller and crystalline. The abdomen is angular instead of oval shaped. There is a single stinger instead of a pair of cerci. The legs are more stiff and rigid. And the antennae are inspired by stag beetles and twigs.
The Spade Suit variation takes heavy inspiration from kites and hand fans. It’s legs are more conical and pointed than the other variations, and it does not have any cerci at all.
Until next time!
-Kae