We were a small game dev studio. We had no one, but ourselves and we had no budget to have anyone else. Anyone who wanted to help, was free to do so at their own will. However, I knew that someone will have to take care of the graphics. Michael clarified that he is terrible at this stuff and doesn’t want to touch it, so I had to step up and figure it out.
Before, I had very little experience with creation of graphics. I knew it’s time to start if I want anything to come out of it for the game. For most of the day I’ve been playing around and trying different things, making sure everything I do, in the end I am satisfied with. I’ve started taking notes to see and remember what I was doing worse and needed polishing. I’ve started improving my old designs.
One of the things that helped me a lot was Blender. At first, I tried to make a lot of stuff with it. However, when I was working on a main menu screen I realized, that I won’t be able to achieve everything I wanted that way. The rendering was looking poorly, the elements didn’t add up – the current project wouldn’t do.
That is the first time when I’ve decided to make an actual concept. First – on paper. Then – try to make something in its fashion in reality. The concept for main menu screen was made, however I had different issue now – colours.
The issue with colours was simple – I did not know how to match colours properly to make it look decent. I’ve started playing around with various solutions. In the meantime, new, a bit edited concept was born.
Each concept, one by one, was getting more and more interesting and matching. The issue of colours was also solved another way – don’t use colours at all. Suprisingly, it worked out for our menu screen. Some more ideas came out on paper and this time around were made into actual, full graphics.
It was a very interesting concept, that overtime became the background for any marketing of ‘Market Dominion’. You’ll find it everywhere! From Steam, to website – it is anywhere that Market Dominion reached. It was a little more simple, however after looking at it for two days, I’ve seen the issues and fixed them. Some might spot a few differences from the current version, such as uncut smoke at the chimneys or different font. That’s examples of what has changed.
Apart from that though, further graphics had to be made and checked. Even more concepts were made, testing out the general look. It really helped develop the whole interface and looks behind the game. Concepts were quite useful – but we’ll discuss concepts by themselves next week.
The game was finally getting some awesome looks. It was finally getting real. We just couldn’t wait to make the game further. Developing it was fun from the start and we were excited to do what we finally could.
To be continued…
Iguana Mercenary 