CAGD 495 - Sprint Blog 4

 I am the 2D artist for the team that is making Little Arthur. Over the course of this sprint, I completed 10 points. I wanted to try and match the level of output that I had in the previous sprint, but fell sick in the last half of the sprint. The primary focus of this sprint was for me to complete many of the in-game and menu UI assets that my team needed in order to make the game look and feel more polished. 

I completed five different assets that would appear during gameplay in this sprint. The first of these that I completed was an alert icon to show up above each individual player’s head. The intent behind this icon was to be simple but eyecatching, so that it would draw the player’s attention and give them a fair opportunity to avoid taking damage from the enemies. Another in-game UI asset I created was the boss health bar. This asset was modeled after the player’s health bar, with modifications for it’s placement and readability. The boss health bar was made symmetrical rather than asymmetrical like the player health bar as it would be placed centrally on the screen. I also included different flourishes and left a spot for the boss’ name and title at the top of the health bar. Lastly, I changed the color of the bar to red to indicate an enemy rather than an ally.

From the boss health bar, I was able to simplify and minimize it down to create the health bar for the war banners, which act as spawners for the enemies. It was necessary to make it simple and remove the flourishes because the health bar will appear directly above the war banners rather than on the border of the screen as a part of the greater heads-up display. I created a simple player icon border that would appear besides their health bars to show what character they are playing. To that, I added a grayscale “flag” that we plan on programmatically altering so that the color of the flag will match the main color of the chosen character.

 

The last asset I created for gameplay were wind streaks that would trail behind the player after dashing. This took a little more iteration than I initially thought it would, because my vision for the effect did not align with my designer’s vision. After some feedback, however, I was able to land on a good final product that reflected fast movement that felt like wind.

The initial vs. final design of the wind streaks.

From there, I moved on to creating menu assets. The first of these was also the most simple–a basic button background for any menu buttons. I wanted to make it simple as I felt that having thicker or more detailed buttons would not match the game’s current motif. I then worked on the tooltip background that would allow the player to read dialogue or text. I was fairly happy with how this one turned out because it is not so decorated that it would distract the player from playing the game or reading the text, but it is not so plain that it is completely boring to look at. 

The last asset I created was the pause menu background. Although I had a good foundation to build upon, this asset was difficult for me to figure out as I was still trying to find the balance between simple and over-designed. I believe that I was able to find a happy medium in the end, reusing the wing motif that appears in other parts of the game UI. I also made this asset symmetrical, which I typically avoid, but did it nonetheless as it would occupy the very center of the player’s attention.