Off The Map: Deciding a style

So leading off from last week we have come quite far and we are beginning to see our ideas become a reality. To start off here is Braden's finished concept for the "Eat Me" room,

This was the basis from which we worked on to design the rest of the level. I really love the sense of depth and paper feel to this but it still needs something else.

So at the beginning of the week me and Denzil decided to swap jobs and he has been working on UE4 mechanics and has managed to get a re-spawn and checkpoint system working, which I would have never have been able to do.

However whilst Denzil has been working in engine I did a block out of the level and tested it in UE4 to make sure that it plays well and that there was no issues with scale and proportion. After testing it I did some quick renders and we have started to do paint overs of them to get some finalised concepts on the go. We had some issues with deciding how much colour to use and ended up doing paint-overs of other peoples work to make it seem more cohesive. At the moment we have decided to go quite colourful but keep the bookesque feel with the paper textures and try to incorporate books themselves into the level. Here are the concepts we have so far;

Rabbit hole, "Drink Me" and "Eat Me" room

The book path

Extended book path

Extended book path repainted

Lily pad jump

The Caterpillars lair

As you can see we have changed our look quite drastically. We are aware that it might not work too well with the overall book style so we are keeping our minds open to change. At the moment I am working on doing a final model of The Caterpillars lair so that we can texture it and see the best style to go for.

Dan has also been working on Alice and I am over the moon with his concepts;

I ablsoloutely love number 11 and I feel like we are going the right way in terms of us doing an Alice based on Alice Liddell (The girl that inspired Lewis Carroll).

Alice Liddel.

Denzil has also been working on card characters if we manage to do the second level of our game these will be used for that:

I love number 7 and 8, they have a unique feel to them but still refer to Carroll's original illustrations. 

Lewis Carroll's original card character illustrations.

And finally Braden has also managed to get some UI to work in the level here is a quick work in progress shot;

obviously the graphics have not been designed or made yet but me and Freddy feel that having something like this as the background;

would work quite well with the overall style and look of the game.

That's everything so far, update you soon.
Cheerio for now.



References:
Photo of Alice Liddell: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/meet-the-girl-who-inspired-alice-in-wonderland/259474/
Lewis Carroll illustration: http://www.stylezza.com/exposition-alice-at-wonder-cards-land-at-issy-les-moulineaux-museum-551
Book with bottles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/goddess_spiral/4329276330/in/photostream/