For now enjoy some artwork for a side scrolling platformer I've been working on in my spare time with a group of talented individuals.
I started Sketching some ideas for the titular character, one "Kremlin the Penguin."
At first when I was testing ideas I found my designs were very contrived, I was thinking too much (for the initial stages at least) once I realised this and loosened up, my hands began to glide into existence a menagerie of varyingly bizzare mutants
Eventually I had a selection of shapes to work with and I could start being more obsessive and precise with my details.
Designed from left to right in chronological order.
The character of Kremlin evolved with the drawings too, I started looking to simply make him cute, but eventually he turned into a wild eyed mad man (sorry penguin) held as a political prisoner for years until freed by his comrades in the Russian revolution!
Once I had the character design down I started working on a kind of production still for the game, figuring out an over all style for everything. The challenge was to create a scene that made the world feel rich and populated whilst avoiding becomming too prominent, it's job is to sit in the background and not be too distracting to the player.
The style I went for was part Lou Romano, part Genndy Tartokovsky and part (theme fitting) soviet era illustration (but mostly Lou Romano) If the world is to be more than a few screens long it needs to feel rich but it can't require an excessive amount of time to create. To this end I chose a style which focuses on the essentials. A strong (almost abstract) silhouette and minimal surface detail is enough to communicate what the object is but avoids the pitfalls of being too distracting and/or requiring too much work to complete. and through layering and clever colour choices it can still create a very "deep-pan" world.
As for the colour scheme I went with a very obvious set of cold and warms. I'd like to pretend there was more thought to it than "oo that looks nice" but sometimes just playing around with gradients yields results.
