Initial Enemy Designs - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

After our first group meeting about our Game Project, a few of us went away to come up with some initial designs. I set to work coming up with some creatures to fit into the magical dungeon we had decided to set our game in.

We knew we wanted a few different types of enemies: a large, tough but slow unit, a smaller ranged unit and then an even smaller swarming unit that only posed a threat in a group. I started off with a few rough sketches before trying out silhouettes.

Sketches

These very quick sketches were to plot out some initial ideas for shapes and types of enemies, but unfortunately none particularly worked well or stood out. A few of them may have been usable with development in a different sort of game, but for our purposes it was back to the drawing board.

This was no matter, however, as it helped rule out what direction I didn't want to go in, which is just as important as settling on a design.

 Golem

After the lack of success in the sketches, I took a different approach and took to silhouetting forms. From initial discussions, the idea of an inanimate statue of a humanoid being brought to life via magic in order to patrol the prison had been quite popular, and so I began by gathering some images and creating a moodboard, as well as working from one put together by another member of the team.

Once I had these references as a guide, I began drawing out silhouettes with a few variations on this theme.

I knew I wanted the character to be broad and heavy at the top, possibly balanced out with a very slightly caricatured smallness in the bottom half to give the form a strong appearance and visual flow. After picking out some favourites, I began creating slight variations. 

Eventually I started to know what I was after, and what was beginning to work a little better. With this in mind I settled on a few last variants, all fairly similar in most ways, and built up the level of detail a bit more. I then splashed on a few colour schemes to see how they read.

After consulting the team, it seemed that variant 3, with its more face-like metallic head and mystical purple and yellow glow was the favourite, and so I painted it up to a more detailed final image.

The result was fairly successful, ignoring some technical issues with the drawing, such as the elongated leg to which I had attempted to apply, for some reason, an element of perspective even though the image is essentially a flat, front-on view. It looks fairly intimidating, mystical and also powerful, which is exactly what we were aiming for. Hopefully this design will transition well into 3D, but I think it should look fairly imposing to the player. Next I moved on to the ranged unit.

Enchanted Archer

I began again with silhouettes, this time focusing on a smaller form, but not one that was scrawny or too thin. I felt this enemy still had to look quite menacing, but clearly less brutally strong than the Golem. I didn't create a moodboard for this design, mainly because I wanted the character to tie in closely with the Golem concept, and so instead used that image to inform my choices.

Once these initial roughs were in place, I knew what direction I wanted to go in with them fairly quickly. I didn't like the idea of the bow very much, it seemed out of place and too cumbersome. I instead decided to have the unit simply cast magic at the player with its hands, and then moved on to variations.

The rolled-back head was an accident that came out of the previous design phase, but it lent a sort of unsettling menace to the figure that reminded me of the zombie enemies from the first Halo game, and so I went along with it. I once again did a few colour variations and showed them to the team, but I was fairly sure we would end up pursuing a matching palette to the Golem, and so we did. Once again I produced a higher detail colour image of the unit in the same mystical colours as before.

I think this piece works fairly well. While not a proper three-quarter view it offers a slight inkling at what the character would look like from the front and side, and gives an overall impression of what it would be like to encounter the enemy in game. 

Skulker

As a group we had talked about including a smaller, weaker enemy type that would only present a real threat in numbers. However, to begin with we had no real idea what this unit would look like, and the only real concepts flying around were phrases like 'attack dog'. I started drawing out some silhouettes to see if anything sprang together.

Unfortunately, nothing really came of this. The designs I began just didn't fit with what we wanted to do with the game, or the other units that I had come up with. Also, the top right silhouette above is just plain messed up. No other way to put it. Where did that come from.

The initial design that we eventually went with for this class of enemy actually came from another member of the group, after I hit a road-block, who produced the below illustration:

From this atmospheric mood piece, which set out the function and bearing of the creature very well, I drew out another version and included some elements to tie it in with my designs a little more, such as yellow lights all over the body and a sort-of control unit.

This unit is a nice change to the other humanoid enemies, which should add a bit of variety to the combat of the game and look quite intimidating in a cluster. I'm mostly happy with the illustration here, which is quite line-heavy, but in a way that works well with the colour. Once again, I seem to have forgotten that this piece is entirely flat and devoid of perspective at some stage and have drawn an oddly sloping shadow, but this should be easy to fix when I go on to do model sheets for these enemies.

Once the whole group is satisfied with the designs, I'll draw up model sheets for each of the units so that 3D versions can be made up for the game.