Hi again, everyone! Chris here, to give more insight into my artistic genius. As you know, I’ve been tasked with creating and recreating some of Collapsus’ art assets this past semester, and here I am to talk about some of the different methods that went into their creation. So many people liked my last article, that I’ve been given permission to do more! So without further ado, let’s jump into it!
This one is all about… <insert drumroll here>
The Burst Powerup!
Just like Jolt, this can be broken up into parts. Currently, this is what we have:
A nice placeholder, but really REALLY boring. Also, since it’s using Unity’s particle system, it’s a little more taxing on the hardware than it probably should be. Also, nothing really… happens?… when it “explodes”. Let’s go ahead and change that.
In addition to these, we have more notes from Jay: “ The Burst block should be centered on the bottom of the block with flames rising to the top of the block (Much like the current effect). The symbol on the block should still be readable. When it breaks there should be an explosion taking out the surrounding block. It should have a bit of ash and smoke if that will look good, but be mostly a fire-colored explosion”
Let’s break this one down: “ The Burst block should be centered on the bottom of the block with flames rising to the top of the block (Much like the current effect).” Makes sense.
“The symbol on the block should still be readable” Also easy, just gotta make sure we don’t make the fire cover the symbol on the middle of the block.
“When it breaks there should be an explosion taking out the surrounding block. It should have a bit of ash and smoke if that will look good, but be mostly a fire-colored explosion” This is our second part, one that doesn’t really have something to base it off of. Plenty of room to experiment!
And, just like last time, we have some more doodles from Jay! Woo!
Alright, let’s get cracking! We’ll start with the explosion, since I’ve done one before for a personal project. They’re fairly simple, you just have to keep track of how fast your individual clouds are moving, and keep your shapes consistent through the frames. And again, in order to fit with the Collapsus art style, we’re gonna keep it in all flat, bright colors. Here’s the first pass:
Boom!
It’s a great start! However, it’s not quite as pop-y as I’d like. I’m gonna add a single frame of a white circle to the beginning to give it some oomph.
BOOM!!
Perfection! Let’s throw it up on some blocks real quick and see how it looks!
Kablooie!
And the breakdown!
Alright, now with that out of the way, all we’ve got left is the fire of the block. With this part, it was around a month of prototyping, never really being completely satisfied with how it looked. Let’s take a quick trip to the the;
~~~FIRE THAT WASN’T REALLY VERY GOOD HALL OF FAME~~~
So smol
Another color!
Spiky!
So at this point, I got pretty frustrated with how these looked. None of them quite looked like fire, and none of them felt alive like fire does. So I took a break for about a week to work on other things for Collapsus (like Jolt, some multiplayer animations, etc.), then came back to it with fresh eyes. After that, Jay gave some in-person critique: It needed to be wilder. With that in mind, I came up with this:
Much better! It covers the symbol a bit more than the others, but not enough that it’ll impact playability. Let’s give it some color:
o r a n g e
NICE! And now let’s give it a bit of an outline to make it fit in more with the rest of the block, and some yellow in the middle to make it more fire-like:
Perfection! Now here it is on the rest of the blocks:
Green!
Orange!
Purple!
Red!
Yellow!
Awesome! Now we can put the two parts together on a board, animate it, toss in some screen shake, and see how it all looks
K A B O O M ! ! !
And thus concludes the second part of a look into Chris’ demented artistic mind! Hopefully this aimless rambling associated with pretty pictures made any sense, and someone can get use out of it. At this point, I’m home from my second semester at Wraith to spend Christmas with my family, and I’m endlessly thankful for all the opportunities Wraith has given me. This year was absolutely incredible, and I can’t wait to see exactly what 2020 has in store for all of us. I’ve done so many things I could never have dreamed of doing when I was a kid, and like I’ve said before, this is my family. I may write some more things while I’m back in school next semester, so stay tuned! See you all soon!
~Chris
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