Official Concept art

Let's use this thread as a central location to talk about and share concept art. About the town, the cooking utensils and ingredients, and different items. How do you imagine these?

Linking outside images as reference is also fine, just don't repost them here without credit if you decide to do so. Linking is better.

Also, any drawing skill is fine. Don't need to create a masterpiece to show others what you have in mind!

Note: This is a visual thread. Please don't describe things in words, visualise them with images!

 

Utensil suggestion : This game needs a SPORK!

 

And if you ever need to open a wine bottle - you can use a Porkscrew.

 

Funny you mention spork, in the cooking gameplay thread I suggested that the prize for winning the cooking festival is a golden spork!

EDIT: Looks like Call of Duty already beat us to it.

EDIT 2: And this person loves them some sporks, check out these ideas!

EDIT 3: Here’s an actual picture I just made on my tablet with my fingers!!!

 

I would like to do some concept art for the town and festival. But what is the location of the island? to decide the type of architecture, and is the Isometric idea still standing?

 

Check out the card about the island and the town. The original concept art has elevation, which jives with the ideas that have been floating around in the original level design and current whiteboxing threads. Since this is a fictional location, you should be able to choose whatever you want for the architecture. I imagine the structures are made of wood since all we know so far is lots of trees, but since this is supposed to be a picture thread and not a words thread, I’ll stop right there.

 

Thank you Shuttle127, I have accounted for all those things. I guess is a mix between some underdefined isle in the pacific and somewhere in the north sea. There are three exits, each of them can be blocked with a guard or obstacle, a central bonfire for the cooking festival with a stage for big announcements, and plenty of light sources I think.

 

Wow, @laczkyl, those are some great concepts!!

In my mind I always imagined the houses in stone (this is because of an early concept art we got from the artist we were working with, when he thought the game had an isometric view)

We don't necessarily need to go that way though, and I like your designs too. If anything, I would personally just dial up a bit the "modernity" of it all, but it's a personal preference. I think it would allow us to play more with whatever device/tool/situation we want, without it feeling out of place. Although I mean, it's not like we're depicting any kind of existing historical era or culture anyway.

 

Ah! sure, good to know. That's why I wanted to know if there was anything specific before jumping head in. I looked at the Townsfolk native-like outfits and the location and went for the common. I will check how the discussion on the level design develops before adding anything else-

I don't think it would hurt to set some in-world rules about what is contemporary or antique for the characters though, there could be plenty of anachronisms for fun but I will be nicer if we have some boundaries for the concepts.

Thanks!

 

You mean this image, right? In the end we scrapped that idea, sorry :/ We should "hide" it somehow, or clearly marked as "we're not going to use it", so it's not confusing.

 

Yeah! that image primarily, plus the other townsfolk and Fry king with their necklaces. Added the voyage and exploration of new lands and my mind got a very fixed idea. Sorry, there is no need to hide anything. I will read more thoroughly.

 

I like the wooden houses with their bend timbers, we might put some of them on stone foundations perhaps and/or have a stone chimney wall with the rest of the house being timberframe or woodplank. Or the ground floor in stone with a timberframe floor above.

I would imagine the town center more densely packed with buildings around the market place where the cooking festival happens. Right around the market place I would imagine some wider, two-storey buildings belonging to the richer townsfolk. They might be sporting oriels and have the upper storey bigger than the ground floor supported by some bend timbers to make the most of the expensive building ground mid-town. Maybe the legendary chief lives in one of them. There might be a townhall to host a possible interior scene. Here are my suggestions for additional houses:
View attachment upload_2020-11-3_14-32-45.jpeg
From a corner of the market square cobbled streets with densely packed buildings wind up the montain behind, like this:

I imagine the one storey, more loosely packed buildings with their vegetable gardens - of course a must and possibly one of the townsfolks main sources of ingredients - on the outskirts, especially on the road from the beach to the town center, gradually more dense buildings showing the player the way to the center.

 

Here is an idea how the chief can make a grand entrance. It' called a critter bike, moved by the critters running inside the frontwheel - the wildest critters make the fastest bikes. There is just a tiny difficulty with stopping such a bike - that's what the anchor is for.

 

give it a goofy bike horn

 

Definitely! The horn is essential if you have difficulties stopping.

 

That looks cool but I fear we might struggle with making such a packed town believable. I feel like the sparse houses that @laczkyl drew in his concept are more achievable for the purpose of this demo. It's more of a village than a town, I know.

The bike idea is so funny. I feel like it looks a bit too much like a modern bike that way tho.

 

I guess we would have to come up with a bike construction made of wood, ropes and bamboo....e.g. a forked branch for steering. This by the way how the Wikings build their ships - if they needed a bend piece of would they set out into the forest to find a tree grown in the right shape. Maybe we use the shell from the beach for the horn.

But I defintely want the critter bike to remind of a real cool bike in its - stylized - shape, if that would be ok. I want our players to be reminded of something like this (By Brian Snelson - originally posted to Flickr as Peter Fonda riding Captain America, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7238598):


As far of giving the impression of densely packed town, I think 5 to 7 houses each street side will do before the street bends or the montain becomes too steep. The player doesn't need to go into this area, so we can also have less perfect houses there. The player comes from the beach side where the houses thin out, here we can do what @laczkyl proposed. I provide a foto of a cobbled street winding up a montain with densely packed hourses, but not actually that many houses being seen (taken by myself in Bad Wimpfen, Germany):

 

I think the idea of @Smurjo is feasible too, with 3 or 4 buildings that can be repurposed, you can have an old-stone looking town with the same number of "functional" locations, and easy to navigate. Something that looks big, but it's not really. The only issue I think that needs to be considered with tall buildings and narrow paths is how the camera is going to work.

I will try to make some concept art over the weekend.

 

Anyway I think 2 storeys should be the maximum height, in that sense the photo is too much. We might cheat bit with the impression of narrow as well with having the streets narrowing towards the end.

This being an open project there might be some hope we get more than 3 or 4 distinct buildings as well.

 

This is going to be difficult to answer as everything is on the table regarding what kind of life and island the Townsfolks live.
I think a good starting point would be to imagine what could set every island apart in the full game, to discuss what makes our particular island special. A tropical image easily comes to mind with the word “island”, but what would the next island look like? You can’t get tropical every time. Even if you take other real-world references I think the islands would still lack some character… Since we are going cartoony and the theme is cooking, I imagined some basic rough examples of different islands+cooking adventure indications that could possibly make our universe. (Names and depictions are random and not decided, I just did a collage.)

The only reason I came up with the fire and frying pans was because of “Fry King”. In the last livestream we were informed that this was just a name example but I think it helped set a tone. I mean the word “fry” itself, I can hear it, I can smell it, I can see the smoke. It makes me feel alert and think of a more “explosive” kind of setting.. (Sounds like I am a horrible cook). Cannot say the same about “bake”. Just a thought.

Agree.

Our camera’s default angle is looking down, so we will not be able to see much of the buildings height, regarding that the player is not going to be able to orbit the camera (which I like it that way, because it leaves room for surprise-views as pig walks.) I think we should allow for more verticality in the town layout as suggested in the inital concept art. For example, it might probably be more interesting visually if the town was ie. on a cliff edge (as already mentioned in the previous Level Design thread) than on a flat plane.

Actually I think it’s a good time to revive the Level Design talks and give these sketches a basis through discussions, as this seems to be the most important design topic and this isn’t really the thread we should talk about them, as this is a visual thread!
So I have started a new “Level Design – Updated” thread (since the previous thread got outdated and it might confuse newcomers), so as soon as it is approved, please continue the discussions there, I already made a briefing from what you started here referencing your posts

 

Yes, but who makes these houses? House models are community sourced, and I would be surprised if we get 2 at best. So I want to prepare for the worst

Also the kind of vegetation we have speaks of a tropical island, those houses are really more like a mid/North-European town, with roofs made for fighting snow.

Not sure, I keep thinking that a more sparse village would suit us better, and allow us to dress it up without too much noticeable repetition.

 

OK, I made this on Sunday for fun and had it in store for later, but since you're throwing the gauntlet on the moka pots...



This (B) is taken straight from the Neapolitan tradition, until around 1930 when Bialetti invented the modern pressure-based moka (A) which I think is a bit too modern for our game.
I imagine the game version (C) to be a simple metal + handles of wood, easy to model and to texture!

 

*quickly picks gauntlet back up*

 

@cirocontinisio I didn't mean 5-7 unique houses. I have just done some nice whiteboxing with 4 unique houses, which I of course reused over and over - getting to that. And in the worst case I would volunteer to build those 4 plus some accessoires to make them look more unique, albeit I have no experience with this toon style. Maybe you underestimate the community. It might be more a question how perfect the houses have to be whether or not you get enough houses from the community. It might be that further away from the center a less perfect house still looks good enough and is unique.

Given @itsLevi0sa concerns regarding the camera, I felt I should try it out before I start a discussion how much "looking down" an angle of 22 degrees from the horizontal really is. So I ended up doing some whiteboxing, with the town on the montainside, which I guess I should put in the whiteboxing thread. Short conclusion: The height is definitely visible, also through the shadow of the buildings, but @itsLevi0sa is right about the "pigs perspektive", especially if the player is heading upwards.

 

Here are some ideas to make the buildings exotic:
- wood carvings to ward off evil ghosts (of course one-eyed)
- sunshades from palmleaves and colorful textiles
- stone sockets with polygonal masonry
- exotic climbers

 

The precious artefact is well guarded, but our piggy adventurer might figure out how to grab it!

 

Well that shows I am behind in my reading, I didn't even know there were several split islands. But you can make/keep the islands different in plenty of ways, changing the ground, the weather, the type of buildings, adding ice, lava, carnivorous plants, a graveyard of ships... All of them in a tropical environment. It's a exploration game with a cooking mechanic right? I swear I will get on with the reading, there are just so many threads.

As for the camera, that's what I meant with the tall buildings and the narrow paths, if the buildings are too tall, or the paths too narrow the character will be occluded all the time, so the buildings need to be separated, or you have to fix the camera with a dolly.

And for the houses, modular is the way to go, instead of 2 houses, you should have two ceilings, two first floors and two ground floors, then you can mix, rotate and stack for the illusion of a big town.

 

Okay. Not much Concept Art but proof of Concept.


I imagine something like this, a square for the festival and a main street, filled with fruit stands or other goods, but since everything is still being decided, it could be a row of houses on the side of the road. just a Main street.
But the purpose of this post is to show how the assets can be created if the goal is a stone/old town style.

 

That's the general concept of the full game IF we were to work on that. Since we are only working on a vertical slice though it doesn't really make any difference, but thinking of the whole universe might give some insights to our particular island! But just to be clear: We are only working on one island.

Yes, an adventure game with a cooking theme, so exploration and cooking mechanics should make the gameplay..along with puzzle-solving, if we were to look at the "adventure game" definition.

I know, and I feel a bit bad I created yet another one for the Level Design, but I personally felt it was needed since the "Town" discussions have started and tried to make a summary of what happened/where we are. No reason to be overwhelmed though, it's impossible to go through it all anyways so keep the ideas coming and others might fill in any missed information!

 

I especially liked your flags. Actually one of them must have secretly wispered "cloth renderer" to me. And so I did a proof of concept:


Of course the cloth-rendering is kind of challenging for the hardware, so I don't know whether we want to go that road. Also right now the toon shader is one sided, but it would have to be double sided for the cloth (a double sided mesh on the cloth would behave differently and double the calculation effort). The cloth-rendering certainly can be used in cutscenes.

 

Since I think it’s difficult to imagine a “town” without imagining the life in it, and since we can come up with countless of culture suggestions…I think it would be much fun if we could imagine the inhabitants related… to us.
We have a bunch of Townsfolk, passionate about cooking, who are trying to make a successful dish for a Cooking Festival. And we are a community of creators, passionate about gaming, trying to make a game successfully. And what does game development and cooking have very much in common?
A clear line of production, with clear tasks assigned!
Why not depict our little online society into the very own game we are making? In this way, we could think of our town having a more collaborative structure as a community of equals, where the player could see how the Townsfolk are organizing food, distribution, management etc the way we are handling our own production pipeline as one thread “feeds” the other.

In this way we could have some situations emerge inspired by how this forum has taken form. For example as Hamlet wanders he might come across some peaceful Townsfolk holding some recipe books walking by a park discussing about the noble art of sauce making (ie. the Narrative thread), while several meters ahead a bunch of Townsfolk are going crazy running up and down a huge pot “arguing” on what’s the best dose of what to put into the pot (ie. the state machine thread!). And further down the road a mailman (inspired by @shuttle127 <3) using a critter bike (?!) delivering a post to a stacked postbox that’s about to burst outside a central house (Ciro’s house? ), while a line of some Townsfolk outside a tavern nearby are wondering what’s taking so long. You get the point No need to offend anyone, just exaggerating of course to add a sense of humor that could make the game fun both for us in the making but also the player who has no clue but can get a good sense of what was going on behind the scenes.

PS: I know it’s a lot of animation and assets, this was just brainstorming I wouldn’t expect all these to happen. But maybe with some dialogues, 1-2 “mechanisms” (@Smurjo ? ), and most NPCs standing still, we could get something like that across? I was only thinking how we could find the most “relatable” and inclusive solution for the community to work on. Apologies for all the writing.

 

I am all for having fun at the collaborative effort.

How about this harvesting technique? I named it "coconut catapult"

 

@Smurjo Ha! Those flags look great, it already looks like a festival. I do agree the cloth renderer is too much for something so superfluous, methinks a double sided shader with some vertex displacement would suffice. And I really, hope they add alpha and two sided rendering to the Toon Shader

If we have a game about cooking, on an island and you can't shake a coconut tree, what are we really doing here?

Since I don't really know what to create concept art for, I did some mood-speed drawing for the beach, mostly to see how the colors could work together.

 

@itsLevi0sa You forgot the dogs that run after the mailman.


And the kebabs he gives to keep them at bay...

 

I came up with a pheonix blaster concept.
We could have a tinkerer in town who keeps messing with 'dangerous' tech. As the story progresses we could have this character modify pig chef's lantern into a multi purpose tool for utility and combat alike.
Would you like something like this?

 

I had a pollution enemy which would rust the chef pig's tools. Word Encrypted!!

 

I figured the cooking festival needs a "chopping center" (@pravinallrounder not sure whether that factory above is your version of a chopping center), this is mine:

 

That's super nice, @laczkyl!

Chopping centre, great idea

 

Another boot on the cooking festival could be the famous "food chain".

 

I can definitely imagine a food chain like that to distribute ingredients/goods from one part of the Town to another Using block and tackle.

 

To be honest I thought about that too... Yet it would about the same as with the aqueducts... a lot of art-work, obstructing the view. Would be different if the player was to build aqueducts and food chains ... but that would be different game. Maybe some idea for the next open project?

 

It is a lot of artwork indeed. It could be something more minimal, a simple mechanism that could distribute something from a higher to a lower level at a specific part of the town then, to not obstruct any views. But again, these are just ideas. We would be lucky if we end up implementing just 1 or 2 of what we might find interesting, sure! And this would be up to Unity actually in the end to decide.

 

Working hard to find some professionals for the cooking festival - and actually managed to engage an expert "bull douser"

 

Needing a lot of finely sliced garlic? I suggest using a garlictine.

 

What about a Kilo-tine? Perfect way to get a kilo out of something.

 

Even better. Special delivery of a Kilo-tine for @itsLevi0sa.

 

Hahah, thanks