For this week, I did some concept work for color pallets and themes of our in-game company brands. I created color palettes, main logos (in several different orientations and layouts), and abbreviated app logos. I tried to keep the colors, styles, and fonts unique from each other, but similar enough to be consistent within the world. I went with very modern and simple designs. When coming up with the new brands, in addition to the existing Uoober Foods, I tried to keep in mind the fun and cheeky abbreviated versions in mind. In the end, I was able to finalize three brands which will each represent a company that the player is 'working' for.
Using the logos and color pallets from the previous week, I continued to work on branding in the form of billboard ads. For each of the three companies, I made two billboard ads based on them. I kept with the very modern and simplified aesthetic. I tried to imagine what types of promos and so-called "deals" there would be in the future for food delivery. So I ended up with six humorous and almost absurd billboard ads with deals like free delivery with a purchase of $1,000 or tag lines like "Why eat something fresh? When you could have Leftovers?".
This week, I did concept art for the landmarks that would indicate to the player where they generally were without having to look at the map constantly. Honestly, it was pretty difficult to try and think about what the buildings might look like in our grappling gun future, however after studying some references and using some AI art generators for inspiration I was able to come up with several designs. I had buildings such as a clock tower, skyscrapers, apartment complexes, corporate offices, a city hall, and water fountains.
I did more concept art this week. I did some sketches for some vehicles that the team would like to see in our game. These included a car, motorcycle, bus, flatbed truck, billboard truck, and drone. Each follows the same sleek rounded square vibes that match the rest of the city. On the bottom side of the vehicles is a grapple point and on the top side of many are platforming areas. Next, I began to think about what the traffic lights might look like. I did mockups of three separate light shapes both with and without a visor. Then I came up with a few different types of technology that could allow the lights to hover or float in place. I ultimately landed on fans and hover technology with a variety of different stand shapes and sizes.
Using my sketches from last week as reference, I made some block out models for two types of cars. The first has a rounded roof to make platforming more difficult, while the second has a flat roof, making it much easier to run on. On the underside of both cars are two square pads, which will be used to create the vehicle's grappling points. They were both put into the game and scaled to match the old car model.
For this week, I modeled a truck with two styles of cargo, one that is a box that the player will be able to wall run on and one that is a billboard, which will have some of the brand advertisements displayed on it . I also made a model for a bus which will likely have a bunch of grapple points on the bottom.
This week I began to work on the textures for the vehicles. I was able to complete the textures for the two car models. I made several iterations based on feedback from the team and ended up with a blue and orange accented gray flat top car and a purple accented pink rounded top car. This was in order to make it clear to the player that the flat top car was intended to use as a platform and the rounded one was meant for grappling. Both featured metallic materials for the body, colorful painted accents, bright hover pads on the bottom, and red rear lights on the back.
For this week, I upgraded the car model, bringing it from block out to the final model. I went with a very smooth and rounded design to match the rest of the world. The car featured several vents on both the hood and sides, a headlight bar, tail lights, and a turbo boost engine on the back. After creating the basic car, I began to think of ways to create some variation among them. I came up with a turbo hot rod car with engine pipes, an extra boost engine fin on the top, and a big spoiler. After getting some feedback from the team, I attempted to make the textures for the car as well. However, this was also my first time trying to use Substance Painter, so I was struggling to make them have the same level of detail as the rest of the assets. I ultimately had Ginger take over the texturing after this, but I definitely felt like I learned a lot and gained a good bit of experience in Substance.
I did a number of models for this week. First, I made a taxi variant of the basic hover car, by attaching a taxi sign to the top of it. Next, I worked on creating a bus model. Trying to keep the style and shapes the same among all the vehicles, I went for a smooth and sleek, slightly rounded design. Keeping in mind that the player may run on top or possibly along the sides of it, I kept the sides flatter for easy maneuvering. Based on feedback from the team, I also included indentations on the bottom to make attaching the grapple point feel more natural. I also incorporated these features in the next two models I did, which were a cargo truck and a billboard truck. Once I had completed all the models and gotten the team's approval, I began work on the UVs, so that Ginger would be able to start texturing.
This week, I finalized all the UVs for all the vehicles (other than the car), updated the logo with the new robot character and grapple gun, and created an application icon for the game. For the app icon, I wanted to make it something that would be easily recognizable even at a very small scale. After talking with some team members I went ahead and tried to incorporate the robot character into the design. I made two different versions, one with the head and upper body of the robot on a white rounded square background and another with just the head of the robot outlined in white. I originally based the design on the green robot, featuring the FU logo. However, after getting feedback the team and I decided to try and match the theme closer to the Grapple Grub logo, incorporating the colors and replacing the FU with GG for "Grapple Grub". After tweaking the colors and fonts a few times I finally came up with a version that both I and the rest of the team liked best. After that, I worked on documentation and made sure that the assets I made were in the GDD and that the asset template was up to date.