2D Sprites Pt.1 - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

As we draw ever nearer to the end of the project, and the concept phase is left behind, I've been transitioning slightly into creating quick 2D Sprites that can be dropped into the game to add details easily and at low cost. Below are some of the initial images I've put together.

Cracks

Cracks should be useful to drop onto areas of wall or floor to break up the environment a little more and give more character to the scenery.

These three variants could also be combined into larger formations of cracks quite easily by overlapping and re-positioning them. In this way, hopefully, they should be quite useful for use in the game to break up the modular construction of the environment somewhat.

Dirt Patch

I tried to create a sort of dirt mark that could be placed about the scene at different sizes and angles, but unfortunately I had trouble creating this image. The result below is quite unsuccessful, and looks more like a country than a mark on a wall. 

It seems to me that a lack of references and clear idea of what this was meant to look like have lead to a confused and oddly coloured sprite that just wouldn't really work in the game. In this instance, I dropped the dirt patch all together and moved on to more important images that were beginning to be requested.

Torch Flame

This was the first sprite sheet I put together, using a couple of paintings of flames as a basis and then combining and altering them to create other versions.

They aren't the best fire sprites ever made but they do seem to work well as particles when applied to a torch, and that's all they really need to do. They provide just enough variation to keep a flame looking at least passably convincing, and the colour and brightness are easily adjustable in-engine.

Hole in the Wall

This sprite was created essentially just to see if it might work in the environment on a whim. The idea was to include only a very small amount of holes that would vary in size and appear in only a small number of locations.

This design seemed to work well enough, if perhaps a little over the top with the cracks, and so it should be making an appearance in the game. There was brief talk of including a set of blinking eyes in the hole, but it quickly became apparent after the test piece below that it would require quite a large sprite sheet with numerous animation frames, and it wouldn't really be possible to commit to that at this late stage with other larger pieces requiring more time.

Roots

We knew we wanted vines or creepers in the environment in some way, and while much of this could be applied in a better way through 3D texturing processes, it seemed worth a try to draw out some ideas and see if they worked well in the game. I came up with the three ideas below.

Originally these were envisaged as wall-covering objects, but once they were placed in the game project, they actually seemed to work better in most cases hanging down between corridors and walkways, which was interesting. While they are clearly 2D assets in the game, at the distances and angles they are viewed by the player they actually seem to work, and that should add another layer of detail and character to the level. 

All of these sprites were done fairly quickly and meant only to be embellishments for the final environment, and so while some of them were right-offs or not quite as refined as they could be, most of them achieve what they were intended to, and so it isn't too important if they aren't the most polished drawings in the world.