Trojan Warriors

The main base model for the Greek/Trojan warrior is basically done and ready for rigging and animating. This character will act as a background NPC in the real world. The texture will be changed to give the Greek warrior model and the colour scheme will also be altered for use as the Greek/Trojan Generals. Some renders of the models can be seen below.

Promotional Image

The game is starting to come along now, in terms of the code and the art assets. As with all the teams in the competition, we are required to produce a promotional image for the game. We wanted to play on the whole death as a coporation theme with our image so went for a board meeting/alan sugar theme. Check it out below.

Fat (Accountant/Admin) Reaper

The fat reaper character is almost finished. There are just a few animations to get completed. We've tried to give him the stereotypical accountant look while maintaining the traditional 'reaper' elements. Some renders of the character can be seen below.

Security Reaper Character Model

The security reaper model is done and about ready to animate. This character will act as a form of blocking device to stop the player simply advancing through the level in the Ethereal world. As usual, here are a few test renders with a cel-shaded mock-up thrown in.

Enemy Reapers

The enemy reaper character model is done and rigged up and is now in the process of being animated. Some renders of this character can be seen below (both normally and in simulated cel-shading in 3D Studio Max).

Cel-Shaded assets

Following on from the cel-shade reaper test here are some environment assets.

Toon Shading Test

Upon talking with the guys from Blitz Games earlier (which was very helpful), we've been thinking about ways of doing the toon-shading in the game. We experimented with the main character model in 3D Studio Max and aim to replicate this method in code. The results are pretty cool and should lend itself well to the style of the game. A few renders can be seen below of the effect achieved on the mini reaper model.

Some HUD concepts

Main Character Model Renders

The main character model is now more or less complete. The bone system will be created today and then the model will be rigged up to the bones then the animating can commence! Below are a few renders of the model, some being normal renders with a sky light and the rest being a test with toon-shading (if...no WHEN we get it in our game). Textures are of a low resolution and the poly count is low to accommodate the platform we are developing for.

Programming brainstorming with a whiteboard = awesome sauce

This is why every team needs a whiteboard...

Character Reference Sheets

Most of yesterday (for the artists) was spent doing more concepts on the game and for levels as well getting the character reference sheets done for most of the characters to help during the modelling process. These reference images below are for the main character, the enemy reapers, the fat reaper, the trojan/greek warriors and for King Priam. The rest of the day will be spent designing and producing concepts for the HUD. Note: The scale guides are rough estimates at this stage.

End of Day 3

Its the end of day three and more progress has been made. The playable reaper character class has been created with movement and the animations working (video coming soon...). Had some texture, depth buffer, rendering order, gamemaker and scaling issues. Funnily enough, none of these were artist related....

All of these were solved, now to try and load a level in!

Also had a mentor visit from the guys from Rare Ltd., great guys who gave advise on design, art and programming issues.

Things seem to be moving in the right direction. Check back later for some photos and videos took during the day.

Toodle doo

Grimnir Games

Another Concept Piece

This is a piece of Concept Art for the Ethereal World. It has been designed to show the main elements of this realm in relation to the Greek Armada section of the level.

Some Concept Art

Some work has been done on Concept Art today for the real world sections of the game. This concept is for the battle of Troy, designed to show the main elements behind the gameplay in this realm of the game. The game logo can also be seen in this concept piece (slogan may change).

Plus, here are a few character concepts, ranging from the main character, to enemy reapers, the fat administrator reapers and the greek/trojan warriors.

Stay tuned for more concept art over the next few days!

All Systems Are Go!

We seem to have neglected our blogspot a bit so here we are updating it to tell you what has happened on the first two days of Dare to be Digital 2010.

Most of the first day was introducing all the teams to the competition and geting all the legal issues out of the way. After that the competition began for real and we got stuck into making our games. Unfortunately, we hit a few snags with the psps and the network. We struggled long and hard into the evening with no sucess, until we gave up and went home.

The following morning we awoke fresh to tackle the problems encountered on the first day, and by lunch time we were up and away! We have now started making our engine for the game and the concept art, which will follow shortly.

So after some minor setbacks we are pushing on and racing to catch up with the other teams. Its all systems go!