Final fire location design.

When putting the example of piece for my fire location down, I took Matt's advice and decided to go more towards a section of the world that was close to the ocean, giving an actual end edge to work with.

Putting the pieces together I wanted to go with a small mining town feeling that probably be the most common placed sites seen the fire location and that large cities would either be scares or built like a tower. Keeping that in mind I scattered Crystals about the place to indicate to the player this player was rich in the resource.

Inking I found particular difficult as it was sometimes hard to control the size of the brush and the lines, even from this far away seemed a bit sickly and hard to look at. but I think I needed to add more detail to areas as some felt too empty even when I added colour.

I later decided to change the sea to be a lake of Lava to try and give a better mood for the fire location. I added a portal to the location.

I added a portal to the fire location feeling that it be much shorter in range compared to the ones in the air ones due to it being man made, these portals only transported you across lakes of lava.

I felt that the very rock they'd walk on would be far too hot, even for the metal houses, so at the base of each structure I added a faint yellow glow indicating they were slowly melting, the black pipes supply coolant to the buildings so that the occupants would not roast inside.

Texture used-

http://shadowh3.deviantart.com/art/Rock-73682101

http://wojtar-stock.deviantart.com/art/metal-texture-5-60838049

Fire location sketches

When designing the fire location I wanted to make it feel very harsh and untamed, not so stable as the rest of the map, it's chaotic and destructive, a world born out of the disaster the meteor brought about.

All over the fire location are hints and relics indicating to what was there, melted tribal polls, old bones. This wasn't always the fire location it once was, it use to be apart of the earth land, or maybe it was all fire, but the impact of the meteor doubled the harshness of the land.

When considering how the houses would look for this land, I went for a more industrial look, feeling that any humans who originally had lived here, were no longer with us, so anyone who had moved in would probably of built things with a bit of experience any knowledge of the land meaning all the building are new.

We had passed around the idea that crystals were scattered all over the world, using this I decided that the closer one got to the crater, the more crystals they'd find, so I started setting up crystal mines and crystal technology to help adapt.

Insect designs.

Building on the insect research I had done, I set about creating a series of diffrent insect designs trying to just come with all and any designs that would reflect both insects and the four elements we had come up with.

After coming up with as many designs I could, I had to choose one to work on for my final piece, to represent the insects as a whole.

For my first attempt I wanted to practice some digital painting with textured brushes. But we felt that it did not match well with the rest of my team's designs and so I built it up from scratch again.

I added more detail and altered many things for this version, feeling keeping it the other way would make it too bland, I wanted to bring out the more earth element i had based.

Title and background

After having a discussion with Matt and hearing how he wanted us to carry the more natural and organic theme we used for UI. I decided to integrate this into design document background.

I thought adding our elemental theme into the design would work well inters of our overall presentation.

 When writing out design document a long problem we kept coming across was what we should actually call the game, we spent a great deal of time just running through possible name ideas, even to the point where we were just naming jokes just to empty our minds. After a great deal we looked over all the ideas we had come up with to look for familiar themes and ideas that were present in each idea and see what we could come up with. The end result was Shaman Master: Spirit Quest.


I also took this into consideration when making our title.

After showing this to the team, they felt the "Spirit Quest" words were too hard to see, so I tried expanding the background.

While it helped, we still felt it didn't stand out so well so we then went to alter the colours.

We went for this look in the end as it allowed everything to be seen very clearly.

World Map

After doing my map for RPG project last year, I found colourful maps to be a bit too distracting and an eye sore, so I wanted to go for some very tamed colours this time, brown for land, blue for sea.

http://www.weirdomatic.com/old-world-maps.html
http://www.leveledmag.com/2012/07/100-days-of-saatchi/
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/revolutionary-war/maps/old-map-world.htm
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/free-vector-world-maps-collection/

Discussing the design with my team, it was originally very bland, but then we decided to add details such as the elemental markings and the compass. Or making the black fog less thick.

Player designs: Shaman

--Research-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When researching, I was both considering the default look of the shaman and how would they appear in the other cultures of the map example. The air shamans might have a more Asian Monk feel to them, while fire would have a more Hawaiian warrior vibe to them. Taking this into consideration when image searching I never really settled for one particular tribe, hoping to mix all of them together for the basic default look.

http://www.squidoo.com/bigislandofhawaii-part6
http://www.pbase.com/image/45234398
http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armies/IV12c/index.html
http://www.deephawaii.com/aloha_days.htm 
http://www.squidoo.com/hawaiian-tiki-masks
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/483102
http://shamanism.ws/healing.html
http://crystal-life.com/blog/grandfather-buffalo-the-shamanic-view/blackfoot-bear-shaman-522x600/
http://www.myartprints.co.uk/a/russianschool19thcentury/amongolshaman1820coloured.html



--Designs-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 When I was designing I really wanted to use a mask feeling it would create the feeling of being in touch with the spiritual elements, carving their gods and dreams into masks, what would people who live in the world of monster dream and worship?

My first batch of designs I tried to focus on Shaman's overall and for my second batch I tried to focus purely on Shamans that might come out of the fire location, so I used metal work in the design as well as looked at Hawaiian designs.

--Final--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For my final I went for the basic look of a Shaman, what most players way look like and start off as. I wanted to go with very basic designs, such as wooden armor and mask, but I didn't want to go so far as to tread the territory of leaf skirts and spears.

Reptile research

http://www.the-lizard-lounge.com/content/gallery/lizard-pictures/bearded-dragon-pictures-1.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skink
http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/crocodile.html
http://www.tnaqua.org/OurAnimals/Reptiles/AmericanAlligator.aspx
http://animal.discovery.com/reptiles/turtle/
http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Wildlife/Nongame/turtles/snapping_turtle.htm
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/komodo-dragon/
http://australian-animals.net/thorny.htm
http://reptile-zone.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/boa-constrictor.html

Insect research

Out of the three of us I was given the job of designing and making the insect creatures for our game, so I decided to gather a large group of insects. But I decided to keep the idea of 'insect' being vague, to allow things such as spiders, slugs and snails into the fold granting a larger range of designs, feeling that if I didn't we'd just end up with a lot of beetle and centipede designs.

http://www.termites.com/identification/what-look-like/what-color-are-termites/
http://www.glaucus.org.uk/Hawk-moths.htm
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safari_ants_tunnel.jpg
http://www.amentsoc.org/insects/glossary/terms/rhinoceros-beetle
 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/termites-bellies-biofuels.html


http://www.thefeaturedcreature.com/2012/07/grub-from-your-nightmares-and-beetle-of.html#axzz2BTCVqaol

http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/richmond-park/flora-and-fauna/stag-beetles
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-561848/Why-dragonflies-hovering-brink-extinction.html
http://www.horticolour.com/pestguide.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/25/predatory-hornet-sighting-paris-france
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Desert_locust
http://www.gsc.org.uk/cockroachcorner.aspx