Wk 9 and 10:

Key Creative and Technical Showcases and Decisions.

Production is moving so much faster now that we've finalised our player movement and camera. As a result, our artists have made wonderful progress in developing the final look and feel of Waybound.

With the finalized camera we were able to make more polished mock ups and concept art, finalizing our games visual aesthetic. We finalized the design of our main character Nellie! Producing a turnaround sheet, detail sheet, and movement sheets. Nellie was designed to completely contrast with the environment to help elevate the story, using rounded shapes, and saturated red to contrast with the monochrome city. 

Making the environment monochromatic was a very intentional choice, it took inspiration from the Film Noir style, with their strong shadows and contrast being able to provide the oppressive and dreary tone we were looking for. There is also an added layer to it with the story, using the colour choices to visually communicate how our main character feels. To them the city is an oppressive, lonely, alien like place where they are scared and not welcomed. While Nellie's themself and the nature elements throughout the story are highly saturated in full colour, showing how those elements are familiar, comforting, and safe. 

The same principle is applied with the shape language, the city having sharp, hard edge, and angular shapes communicating danger and offense. The round shapes of Nellie and the nature, show softness, friendliness, and comfort. 

We were able to make great progress in our style guide, particularly in the art direction segment. Much of our art direction revolves around the environment, specifically the city. Getting its mood and feel right is essential to communicating our story and emotional tone. The city is not intended to be a representation of a particular real-life city but does take inspiration from a few real-life locations. To keep our world more grounded we decided to investigate industrial cities in China and Hong Kong, taking inspiration from their brutalist architecture and high density living. A particular place that inspired us was Kowloon Walled City, a densely populated, largely ungoverned enclave in British Hong Kong. The city existed during the 1980s but was demolished in 1993. We thought that the areas’ chaotic structure and look was perfect for communicating a hostile, and oppressive environment in the eyes of our Red Panda. 

We finalised and tested our first level design this week. The mudmap is a work in progress, and after the initial draft and 3D test, we've iterated upon it -- adding a few more interactive points.

The main goal for the first level is to introduce all of the mechanics to the player in a low stress, yet still engaging way. We've done so by utilising the 'teach, test, twist' method. Level one aims to teach, but also subtly test along the way. Moving forward with future levels, we want to continue testing the player, as well as twisting the mechanics later on to keep the game engaging all the way through.

We completed the first version of the Animatic Script for the Demo's cutscenes, a crucial step to test and showcase our text-free narrative direction, while also establishing the artistic style reference for all future cutscene development. 

Additionally, the first narrative asset list was finalised and handed over to the art team for discussion and production. This list ensures we will have sufficient environmental storytelling assets to fully realise our vision for environment-driven narrative in the coming development phases.