Week 8 - Concept Art

This week, we have largely focused on creating the concept art for the game. But first, let's talk through what concept art is. Well, to put it in short, it is basically where all the visual magic starts. It’s the first step in bringing ideas to life, whether it’s for a game, movie, or any creative project. It is a rough blueprint for the look and feel of the world you’re building. It’s not about making everything perfect right away, more like about exploring different ideas, experimenting with designs, and figuring out what works (and what doesn’t). For a video game, concept art can cover everything from characters and environments to props and even the overall mood or colour palette. It’s like putting together a visual list for how you want your game to feel. The best part? There’s no pressure for it to be final. Concept art is all about creativity and brainstorming, it’s a playground for ideas before things get locked in.

So yeah, it’s not just about making pretty pictures (though that’s definitely a bonus). It’s about laying the groundwork for an entire world, setting the tone, and giving the team something solid to work from as the project moves forward. So far we are largely focusing on the character concept art, however, we plan to move onto environment concept soon enough. Here's a fun video about concept art I've found. I am not sure if I want to be a concept artist in the future, but this guy is really selling it to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQMs2-DX0Os

Character Concept Art

Since we’re leaning into a horror vibe, we decided to make the characters look like something straight out of a nightmare - creepy, unsettling, and just the right amount of eerie. Each character represents one of the stages of grief. So far, we’ve sketched out designs for Bargaining, Depression, Anger, and Denial. These designs are based on the mood boards we put together last week, which really helped us nail down the tone and feel we’re going for.

That said, these sketches are definitely not set in stone. They’re more like rough drafts to get the ideas flowing, and we’ll probably tweak them a lot as we move forward. For example, the Denial design isn’t quite working - it feels way too messy, so we’re likely going to scrap it and start over. Additionally, I am not entirely happy with the candle like concept for Depression. It seemed fun in theory, however, once again I believe it turned out a bit messy.

Even with all that, I’m really happy with how things are shaping up so far. The sketches might just be placeholders for now, but they already feel like they’re capturing the mood and themes we want to explore within our game. I can’t wait to see how they evolve!