Poku

An update on the project, which is now called "Poku"

New teaser and screenshots =)

Work in progress of one of the rooms for Pingo for which I showed the concept a long time ago now in 3D:

Pingo: Kitchen Concept Sketch

Concept Sketch for a little kitchen in Pingo

Pingo Update

Some may have thought so but the project is not dead :P. We are busy and working hard behind the scenes to get our heads around the short story for this game. We don't just want pretty graphics, we are aiming for something that will give everyone a great experience and story is a huge part of this. For anyone that ever tried to write a cool, short and fulfilling story before you know that there are a lot of iterations and that it takes a lot of time to get it right.

We are approaching the project in a blend between storyboards and walk through  this way we can kind of read the game as a comic and in a short glance see if the story is working on a meta and micro level (and also see all the animations we are going to need). It's much easier to iterate in this stage than to change stuff when full fledged animations and characters have already been made and you need to cut stuff.

The environment was designed beforehand so we could get a good sense of what this world is like and tell our story within the borders of that world.

Next to that we've also been painting a lot more and a new member joined our team, a character concept artist that will be doing the remaining characters so our character modeller can focus on modelling. =)

I've postponed the video a bit because I want to combine it with another announcement we'll be making in the future.

Cheers

Felt like doing something non Pingo related and started with a blank canvas and this came out.

Pingo Vegetation

Been doing a couple of tests for the vegetatation in Pingo, I want to grab the feeling that artists like kazuo oga have in their trees. For the background trees I'll be doing the same kind of stuff as they do in their animation, which is just working with planes and alpha. However for the close up trees that the player is able to walk around this is a bit more tricky but I like where it's going now, It just needs a little more depth here and there.

and here is a little turnaround:

Age of Wonders 3 Announced

Triumph Studios announced Age of Wonders 3 recently, a project I've been heavily involved with for the last (almost) 2 years. I'm working on the Environment and Interface art. I've made about 95% of the Environment assets you see in the following screenshots:

The project is shaping up pretty well and I'm enjoying every day of it! There is a huge variety of environment so I'm working on different stuff every day =)

Hey Guys, an Update (Finally xD)

I'm currently in the process of laying down the large scale colors and values on the outside area and this is what I currently have, it's very rough and wippy but I thought I'd share something because it's been a while, I'm not totally happy yet but these things usually take more shape over time. Everything is painting in Mari now:

In general the project is getting back into swing and we got ourselves a name for now: PINGO (which is latin for "to paint, to portray, colour etc.) I also made a little logo that goes with it. We might change the name if it doesn't feel right in the end.

Next to that the interior is almost completely painted (which I will post soon) and we are working on setting up art documents that we are probably going to release in the end as well.

I recorded around 8 hours of footage so far and when I have a bit more I'll edit these into a nice workflow video.

You can now also follow the project on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/projectpingo where we will post all updates as well.

cheers

Hey everyone, another update=)

Last time I told you that we were going to make this into a little game project, by now we got out design and story fleshed out and the programmer started working on some code as well. 

In the meantime I've been doing a lot of sketches and also started fiddling around with a blockout for the main area in the game. We are hoping to have a couple of uniquely styles areas (cave/interiors/exteriors) that all connect to this. I won't spoil anything more in terms of design though:P.

When I get this blockout cleaned and mapped I'll start the painting process that I will also record so you guys can look at my workflow.

Enough talk, the images:

Hey Guys, I made the decision to make a little point and click/adventure like game with this handpainted style I did lately as a portfolio project. I joined up with a character artist, designer and programmer and we are working hard on getting an idea of the ground.

In the meantime I have put the village on the backburner and focussed myself on interiors to see how those would work and dug up an old unity test I did once which you can look at here(click on the image):

(move the cube with the arrow keys)

Next to that I've been doing some sketchwork for the game project:

and a paintover WIP on top of that sketch

Will keep you all updated on the project =)!

A small video showing the environment from multiple angles

First showing a turnaround with and without wireframe. After that you'll see te current texturesheet I'm using with all the little pieces, the big mess you see if objects that haven't been mapped correctly yet and still need a little work on their topology. Then you'll see an exploded model floating above the proper one that I'm using when I can't reach certain places of my mesh. The UV's of these 2 versions are overlapping so when I paint on either one the other one updates as well.

I polished an area to the level I'm aiming for, also showing multiple angles so you can see how this handpainted style works out from different angles

Continuation on the little handpainted scene I posted 2 weeks ago, I also wanted to explore some architecture before I was going to continue the other one to see how this style would transfer, it is still very early wip but I think it's getting somewhere.

I'm trying a little higher contrast in my work as it all seemed so dull though the contrast might just be to much now.

Pen sketch of a port town

A Friend is doing some handpainted brick work lately and I got inspired to do one myself =)