Articles - Pteromini Studios

Hello everyone, today's article will be about the main character of the game " Zé", how he was made (showing the process) and he is now (finished), hope you like it!

In the thumbnails we approached different types of shapes and sizes for the character

For the sketches we tried different types of styles, clothes, accessories, etc.

For the colour studies we tried some color variations and ended up choosing the blue on at the bottom right

We approached the different views of the character ( 3/4 view, side view, back view, front view )

Here is a final illustration of our main character

With all this we have finished our character concept and we are now moving on for the animations and implementation of the character in game.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our character or other part of the game feel free to comment or contact us on our social media.

Hello, hello! Today we will show some development we made on the design of our character!

As much as we love our test character, "Zé", we need to improve his looks... give him a glow-up! He is iconic and he will always stay in our hearts and in game tests!

We are using the moodboards we created as references for the child.

We made a lot of concept and we are not finished yet! Here's what we made so far:

We tried to explore his personality through appearance. If you have any ideas/opinions, feel free to comment down below and share them with us! Sharing is caring, after all!

The progress we've made character wise has been really satisfactory! We're happy that we are being able to convay a personality through the way he looks. See you next time and stay hydrated!

Hey hey! In this article we will talk about the process on the concept art, specifically how the environment will look in the game.

The game takes place in the region of Ribatejo in Portugal so we needed a lot of references of that specific region for the vegetation and buildings. Here are some of the photos taken by one of us for the references!

Concept Art

Since trees make most part of the environment for the game, it was the first thing we started working on. We already had an artstyle in plan for them and environment overall, we just needed to adapt it into new shapes.



We were not very happy about the result, so we explored the shapes a bit more.



We also made a composition to check if the new artstyle for the trees worked with the rest of the environment.



We also made a few studies on the rocks.




Conclusion

This was it for the concept art. Expect way more progress and stay tuned for more topics. Until next time!

Introduction

Hello there! Today we are bringing you the general idea for the game's mechanics and we will also show you some images that inspired us and the start of the development with Unity.

Main Mechanic

Besides the basic player controller that allows the player to move around the level, our main mechanic will consist of a slingshot that will be used throughout many aspects of the gameplay.

Back when our parents were young, mainly our fathers, they used to play with slingshots and used small rocks as ammunition to try and shoot small birds. Not the best kind of hobby to have as a child but, in our game the slingshot can be used in multiple ways from puzzle solving to finding collectibles that are out of reach for example!

For a 2D Game it is essentially very similar to a bow and arrow. The player can charge the shot and the stronger the charge the further the projectile can travel.

Here are two references to help you visualize this idea:

Early Prototype Development

With the general ideas in place and gears set into motion, we started to experiment and learn how to build a level with collisions and correct sprite order for a 2D Isometric style view. Utilizing assets from Unity we built a small grid with an elevated platform and a tree to test and showcase these aspects.

And with the basics out of the way it was time to code and find a first, but optimal, way of implementing our slingshot mechanic with a charge that affects the speed of the projectile once released. This will obviously be subject to be changed throughout the development but it will allow us to construct other game mechanics around the slingshot as we progress along our schedule.

Conclusion

And that concludes our third article regarding the game's mechanics! Stay tuned as we will post more updates regarding other aspects of the development soon.

Follow us at:

Instagram - @pteromini.studios

Twitter - @PterominiStudio

THE GAME ART STYLE

The style of the game will be a bit whimsical and cartoonish with a lot of warm
tones. Since the game takes place in the 70's, we wanted to give an old 70's cartoon vibe,
with noise and RGB Shift. The warm tones feel comfy and welcoming, so the game will
take place in the autumn season.
After much searching for old cartoons for reference, Doraemon's style was the
style that made most sense, most 70's cartoons are kind of realistic looking for some
reason, which was not what we were looking for, Doraemon had the goofiness that a child
in the 70's would like and that show and its characters are already known by both young
and older people.

Now we will show some moodboards that we will use as reference for the art style.

MOODBOARD FOR THE ART STYLE

MOODBOARD FOR THE CHARACTER

MOODBOARD FOR THE UI

MOODBOARD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

And the final mockup is here:

Hope you guys enjoyed the update, we will be making another article soon about the mechanics so stay tunned.

Follow us at:

Instagram - @pteromini.studios

Twitter - @PterominiStudio