Car Concepts

Keeping in line with the recent blog post about our game, I thought I'd share with you some of the conceptualization that went behind the look of the game.  When I was thinking of how I wanted the game to look, and how to make it look if not unique at least a little different, I immediately remembered some car designs that I liked in The Art of Monsters vs. Aliens.  The concept art in the game featured a retro 50s-60s look (think diners and drive-in movies).  These caricatures of cars really caught my attention so with gusto, I set out to sketch some of my own cars.

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Obviously cars aren't my expertise, but I had a lot of fun sketching a Honda Jazz and trying to simplify its look to turn it into a game sprite.  I sketched the jeepney from pictures (thanks, Google Images!), because frankly I didn't feel like standing in the hot sun explaining to curious passerby and suspicious police why I was so intently looking and sketching a public utility vehicle.

I had a lot more fun sketching cars than I thought I would, and by the end of the exercise I felt I was getting more and more proficient at it.  Unfortunately it really wasn't really time efficient, and I found (unsurprisingly) that when I finally shrank the images I made down to sprite size (roughly 40x20 pixels) any superfluous design elements had disappeared.  So in the interest of time I decided against preliminary sketches and instead went straight to the game sprites.  Seeing as we're already behind schedule (real paying work gets in the way of passion projects) I think it was the only move I could really make.