Little King

Eliano Achilli| Makayla Guelfi

Link To Walkthrough Experience:

Project Name: Little King

You, the Little Boy, are tasked with a simple mission of collecting apples from an apple tree just down the path of the forest. However, you choose to do so without so assistance of your childhood Teddy Bear who warns that the journey may be too much for you to handle alone.

As we grow up, we tend to lose touch of ourselves and who we really are. We hide the fact that we are incapable of completing such tasks or carrying on in life as ourselves due to social expectations. We wanted to explore this issue in a specific situation. The social expectation for when an individual grows up means that they should let go of their childhood and adapt their personalities without them. For some people, their childhoods are what make them who they are, but struggle to express themselves through this personality as it goes against social norms. By denying help from his childhood Teddy Bear, the Little Boy (The Main Character), is willing to force his childhood behind him as to live up to the social expectations.

Our project's inspiration for style and aesthetic comes from a similar roleplaying, storybook, fantasy game 'Hoa' and the roleplaying, slice-of-life Nintendo game, 'Animal Crossing'.

Process

Eliano Achilli

My role for the project was being a 2D Animator. For this project, I had multiple animations to produce while maintaining a certain style so as to complement our project's narrative and aesthetic.

When creating the characters, I was aiming for a simple, innocent, child-like design.

On the left are concept artworks of the Teddy Bear. The bear is displayed to have a mixture of missing limbs, dirt patches and sewed up parts. This was intentional as to demonstrate the Teddy Bear's age and how long the Teddy Bear has been with the Little Boy. Through all these features, it also implies how the Teddy Bear was the Little Boy's favourite toy to have lasted so long.

The focus of the Little Boy's design was that he was conceited and thought he knew better. Thus, indicating why he wears his crown as it symbolises his arrogance. Upon this feature, I also wanted to focus on the little boy having a modern-day look so as to present to the audience that the Little Boy is meant to be symbolic of modern-day young individuals.

Normal Walk Cycle

Normal Idle

Scared Walk Cycle

Scared Idle

Little Boy and Teddy Bear Walk Cycle

Little Boy and Teddy Bear Idle

Shooing Butterfly

Butterfly Landing on Nose

Little Boy Getting Scared

Teddy Bear Helping Little Boy

Makayla Guelfi

My role for the project was being the 2D background artist, but I also took on the responsibility of producing an epilogue.

Backgrounds

For the background, my main aim was to create an environment that reflected the little boy's mental state

Starting scene, where the player starts

Climax

Light forest

Final scene

Other key assets

Cottage assets

Spooky forest trees

Epilogue

With the epilogue, the main intention was to give the player a sense of enlightenment by completing the experience. To do this I enhanced the vibrancy of the colours, exaggerated expressions and uplifting audio.