Ants: Leaf-al Warfare
Ants: Leaf-al Warfare was the result of the Level 6 Group Project module at my university. It is 3d turn-based strategy game with local co-op. The inspiration for this was that of games like the iconic Worms by Team17.
The team was made up of:
1 Artist (Myself)
2 Programmers
1 Designer
3 2nd year contractors (Were given tasks to fill in across the project).
In the role of Artist, I was responsible for a broad range of task in the art spectrum. This includes, concepting, Modelling, Rigging, Skinning, Texturing and Terrain and Environment creation. I would also help steer the contractors assigned art based tasks in the direction we were going for.
The trailer was edited and mostly captured by the teams designer.
However, my contribution being the capture of only the first scenes of the general.
I also created the "tactics" on the board using Photoshop and "dressed" the environment.
This was the poster I created as part of the teams marketing of the game for a University event.
Specialism Concepts:
We wanted a way to represent each of the special abilities the queen ant had. We decided this to be visually in their outfits. In keeping with the cartoon theme, we also wanted a tone of humour throughout, the outfits allowed this.
Character Models:
Initially, we were also using the stance as another differentiator between queen and normal ants. To increase efficiency and reusability in the assets, we decided to have them use the same "normal" stance and mesh.
Moodboards:
The first step in the creation process for myself, was creating moodboards . Here we have the character, Specialisms and weapon moodboards.
Concepts:
It was decided by the team, that a cartoon-like art style was the aim, so I tried to ensure the concepts refelcted this.
When creating the concepts, I ran with the idea of using human objects with the ants such as the lighter for example.
Replacement Specialism Concept:
Initially a fire mage specialism was going to be added to the game, as seen previously. During balancing it was found not to work, and so an ice based ability was created in its place.
Environment:
Using Unity's terrain editor I created the terrain of the playable area and what could be seen by the player in the beyond. I used substance designer to create a tilable terrain material. I also created the environment layout.
For me, the most difficult/frustrating parts of this process, was being unable to use the baking process due to the cell shader not accepting normal maps. Meaning initial high polys were unused!
Props:
I created some of the prop models used in the level. Again due to the cell shader hower it was a basic flat material in substance, except for the cabin model which was a tilable material.