Hey world! Our artist MigCoe has been hard at work to make this game a visual reality for you and you're about to witness that.
After defining the gameplay and doing further research, we had to start conceptualizing what the game's art style was gonna be and sketch some ideas.
Moodboards:
With our target audience being of a younger age, like mentioned in the first article, we decided to follow a more cartoony and colourful art style reminiscent of illustrations from children's books with a texture as if it was painted with coloured pencils. With that in mind, our artist gathered many inspirations in a moodboard for the artstyle, characters and outside of the workshop with pictures of Marinha Grande.
When it comes to the characters, moodboards were also done to explore possibilities of appearance, fashion and stature.
Rough Sketches:
Once the overall look was established through the moodboards, our artist started doing some rough sketches of the backgrounds we'd see during the dialogue sections between Beatriz and Grandfather's Zé outside of the workshop.
These dialogue sections would have a look to them similar to that of a visual novel game, with static sprites only differing in expression next to a text box with a glass-like texture.
Characters:
Some early sketches of the characters were also done by our artist along with the rough sketches previously shown. These aren't the final look for Beatriz or her grandfather but they help set an idea of what we want them to look like and what personality they should portray.
For each character, three colours were assigned to their design. Beatriz's main colours are red, blue and pink. We established that in her outfit a reference to rabbits was mandatory. A mixture of round and pointy features to her silhouette would allow for an innocent but bubbly personality. Grandfather Zé's main colours are brown, blue and grey. To give him an aura of stability and calmness, he would have a square shape to his design.
That settles it! What do you think of Beatriz's design? Isn't she adorable? Before I go, here's a quick illustration I, the game designer, did based on this idea that's been on my mind that Grandfather Zé would give the best hugs ever.
Goodbye World!