Aether's Reach Portfolio
Tegan Kirsopp s5431160
Tegan Kirsopp s5431160
I'm Tegan Kirsopp, a 3rd year game design student who focuses on concept art and anything 2D art. I have a passion for designing characters but also love designing environments and love a challenge. This portfolio is centered around my work done for the game Aether's Reach. Aether's Reach is an endless runner phone game that has a tranquil and fantastical environment. My work for the game included 2d asset sprites for both backgrounds and characters. The game draws inspiration from cultures across the world with each biome the player goes into and intends to draw a player into this fantasy with its story and art. We focused on bright vibrant colours and simple easy to understand shapes to maximize readability and to stick with the overall vibe. I talk more about specifics below.
These are far away background sprites for the second biome of the game, The ocean. They are intended to look like mountains and trenches with clusters of tall seaweed growing off of them.
These are far away background sprites for the third biome of the game, The Forest ruins. Originally I designed these to look more like the tops of trees however I wanted it to feel like the player was flying through a forest not on top so the tall trees are designed to make the player feel small.
The ocean people were made to be in line style wise with our main character so very simple flat shapes and colours with the occasional gradient for polish. I designed these little people based on Maori and Polynesian traditional clothing and took specific inspiration from traditional dancers in those cultures with the lei's.
Made with the same style guide as the ocean people, these sprites were heavily inspired by Aztec and Mayan cultures with their clothing and accessories. The colours draw more inspiration from the colours we personally chose for the forest biome and not from the culture as we decided the bright reds and blues didn't fit our aesthetics of the biome.
The same forest people however for some variation in what the player is seeing, a version of the forest sprites with vitiligo
These are some corals trees made for the underwater biome. Lots of different colours to made the ocean feel alive and like a real coral reef. The colours were based of colours from the great barrier reef and colours I thought contrasted well with the background. Underneath are two more variations
Some of my favourite concept work I did for some of the creatures in the game was for these parrot dragons, a flying dragon in the third biome of the game. The colours were based on Macaws and the shapes took inspiration from the dragons already in Aether's Reach.
This a sprite sheet for the ocean houses made to looks like all different types of shells with seaweed growing out from them. The houses were designed with our style guide in mind the colours largely came from the houses in the sky island biome in the first level. Underneath is variations and earlier iterations for these houses.