Howdy folks! It's been a while, so we figured we should post a new update at last. Let me present a new monster - The Spitter!
Designing a character always begins with a sketch; an illustration or just a rough scribble. This particular monster is supposed to be half-snake and half-human. It spits corrosive acid, hence the name. Our character designer, Vesa-Pekka did the rough sketch, and I made this painted version. The illustration gives you the basic idea of the character, it's poses and the colours of it.
The snake in question is an adder, which can actually found from finnish nature, and is one of the venomous species we have out here. Although Kalaban is set in a fantastical alternate universe, it should be grounded in reality somehow. I like to compare the game's fictional lore to Watchmen, which clearly mirrors the political atmosphere of the era it depicts, but also takes many liberties, like adding sci-fi and comic book elements to it. Our game has a simpler story of course, dealing with a mutant outbreak and the strange forces behind it.
Unlike the animation of our main hero, Bob, the enemies will all be done with 3D models prerendered into 2D sprites. It would simply just be too laborous to animate all the ingame characters by hand. That's why I built this hi-poly model of the character, which I later posed for the animations and then shoot from different angles. I tried my best to simulate that painted, hand-drawn look.
Thanks for tuning in! We've had a long break partially because we worked on Neurotron, our pocket RPG for the Android devices. And also because we've done a huge rehaul to the game lately. All the previous code was essentially scrapped. Now that Neurotron is moving along nicely, we can get Kalaban back on track.
-Harri J.
