Life at an underground game company.
Posts tagged monster
New branding! New Artwork! Gremmies!
01 year ago
I love being able to release new stuff. It’s been a busy week here at Double Cluepon. Between WireWorks, and trying to add a new developer, well…it’s been a little crazy. In addition to that, Sprites and all kinds of other stuff is being painted. But, when the artist needs a break, I set her loose on the other little things that need to be done.
Like proper and coherent branding for our home page.
New home page logo. It's hard to control gremmies. They think everything is theirs.
Of course, we also needed to make sure we did one for the dA channel. And, of course, Amy did a stamp as well:
So, these will be appearing at a website near you. Get em while you can. Or before some curious gremmie steals them all.
Our first release…of a creature.
11 year ago
by Azrael
in Emerald Kingdom
Silly Gremmie. Gremmies can't read!
Meet the Gremmie.
Gremmies are one of the first creatures we have fully designed for the game. They were contrived one night while Amy was working her regular job. While designing them, the original intent was to avoid your usual smattering of creatures. You know the ones I speak of. The ones you see in EVERY OTHER MMORPG: Kobolds, Orcs, Trolls, Goblins.
We wanted to take a fresh approach to something you are going to see a lot of. Gremmies were thought of originally as some kind of Gremlin. However, we wanted them to be less of a mindless chaos devoted creature. While we wanted them to be dangerous when provoked, we did not want them to be 100% fearsome.
Indeed, in beginning their article on our development wiki, the following was thought up:
Very little is known about them, or their culture. They tend to speak in very broken speech patterns, but with a soft sing song quality. To an observer, whether what a Gremmie says will make sense is completely subjective. They have a very nonsensical quality in the way they construct sentences. And while they seem to know how to speak, they have almost no glyphs or symbology. They have next to no writing, and it would seem they do not know how to read. Gremmies are absolutely fascinated by technology and machines in general, and can often be seen looking through ruins and remnants for anything from working items to any bit of junk they find fascinating. Mortals often find them underfoot, and Gremmies typically cause trouble at times by tinkering with working machinery.
We have already begun to use the fellow you see here in branding. All in all, we are very pleased with his design. Our target for their behavior and communication is best summed up as a conversation I had with Amy (Who is really the soul and core creator of these guys).
She wanted them to be kind of loopy, I felt they should be “always underfoot” but not stupid. I proposed to Amy the idea of “What would happen if you took Ed from Cowboy Bebop, toned down the articulation a bit, but kept the aloofness and some of Ed’s speech patterns, and had a whole race like that..and then mix in “The Jeep” from Popeye” … she agreed that would be both funny, and add a great deal of dimension to them as a monster/creature.
I could not agree more. They look loveable, but not something you would approach by throwing caution to the wind. They can be free spirited and yet feral…but always facinated by bits of junk or machines…and frustrated by their inability to articulate at times.
A fresh view of the wall…
01 year ago
by Azrael
in Emerald Kingdom
As a producer, I design visually. Because of this, I have to be surrounded by the artwork that the Art Department cranks out. It’s not enough for me to say “Beatrice does this” or “Paranoia says that”…
I have to be able to put faces to names. But more importantly…I have to be able to visualize the scenes and quests and game in my head. When Dave writes story related material, I need to be able to put the parties involved into the situation that’s been written. Believe it or not, I started with just a bunch of inspirational pieces I found here and there. I put these into our development wiki, and used them to start building my internal visual reference of how things were going work. What it would look like.
As original art was produced, I would replace the inspirational image, with our original. That’s when things really take off on some levels. It’s a form of Quality Control in some ways: If I can see the picture in my mind, and it works perfectly…I know we are on the right track. But, back to visual design…my office walls are filled artwork progressions. Awhile back, I posted about my walls.
Well, a couple weeks ago, we made a big push to finish the basic concepts of the needed artwork for the alpha/beta. Having finished that, we are painting them up. You saw an example of this yesterday, with Thrynity. What you do not typically see is the design process in motion. Last time readers here saw my wall, it was full…
The back wall holds Sprite progressions...
These days, it’s really full. And it’s getting fuller with each passing day. We are getting one to two Sprites painted a day. Once all the major NPC’s are painted, we will begin drilling these into models, and then: the final animated gamesprites.
But even in this format, they are quite useful to me, and the writing director. Even in this format, it allows us to dream up the world of Emerald Kingdom, visually…and let’s imagine scenarios and events. Without accurate and quality artwork, Emerald Kingdom cannot come alive in my mind. If I cant see it, then neither will you.
The side wall has various stuffs. Note though, our UI reference shots from other games.
Items, beasts and miscellanea, as well as player clothes, player models and hairstyles are just as important. We have not forgotten about those. Nor have we forgotten to reference the works of others. Thing is, there is no reason in the world to re-invent the wheel when it comes to things like basic UI design. At the same time, we have buildings and specialized objects in the design queue. We also have beasts, monsters…everything you could need or want in an MMO.
So, while we may be quiet here on the blog and elsewhere from time to time. Remember these walls. My walls change every day. As they change, the game gets an inch closer to reality, and all of us here at Double Cluepon feel another pinch of happy as we get closer to our goal.
CONTEST: Design a monster or beast.
02 years ago
by Azrael
in Emerald Kingdom
Design a Beast Contest.
Now that we here at Double Cluepon have our house in order, we thought it might be time to really start getting you, our faithful watchers involved. To that end, we are announcing our first contest. Let’s be blunt. We are a bunch of talented people. But we cannot come up with everything. Where we fail, you can win.
So, we want you to design a beast or a monster for Emerald Kingdom. You can do a simple sketch/drawing if you want, but that probably wont be used to be honest. Our artist will do the concept of it. What we are really looking for is the following:
- Name of the monster/beast.
- A good description of how it looks.
- A good description of how it attacks.
- Its size.
We really want to see what shakes out here. That being said, while there is no theme for this contest, one of the things that would influence us judges (aside from a crate of liquor or Guinness) would be some kind of mascot character. Ragnarok has it’s porings, Emerald Kingdom has its…?
We will select three winners, based purely on the judging by Double Cluepon Employees. Upon winning, you must be willing to assign all rights to your winning submission. Now, before you get your hair follicles in a knot…here are the prizes:
First Prize: 1 year subscription to Deviant Art, 1st round call for Alpha testing, and of course, your monster/beast will be included in the game.
Second Prize: 6 month subscription to Deviant Art, and of course, your monster/beast will be will be included in the game.
Third Prize: 3 month subscription to Deviant Art, your monster/beast will be will be included in the game.
Okay, here are the rules:
- Contest runs between today, 11/24/2009 and 12/4/2009. The deadline for submissions: 11:30 PM CST on December 4th, 2009.
- Contest is open to anyone, however you must have a DeviantArt account to claim one of the prizes.
- You may submit as many items as you like.
- You may submit drawings, descriptions, even a beast evolutionary history.
- All submissions, while they can be posted to your dA gallery, they must still be emailed to cont...@doublecluepon.com.
- Winners will be determined by the employees of Double Cluepon Software based on detail, articulation, and completeness of the description, as well as any other supporting materials. Winners will be judged at the next Double Cluepon Software employee meeting, on December 5th, 2009 Winners will be announced on December 8th, 2009.
- Any use, re-use or theft of other game property, art, or descriptions which do not belong to you will disqualify you. In other words, if it is not your own original work, you will be disqualified. You may use original work from your past, or do something new. Using someone else’s obscure drawing will be a bad idea.
- Judging of the winners is final.
- You must have a DeviantArt account to claim your prize. Prizes will be awarded once rights transfer has been successfully completed. No cash value equivalent will be issued for subscriptions.
We look forward to seeing interesting entries. We know we have a lot of talented watchers/followers. Here’s to you, and good luck!
