Sprint 6
Kill Everything As Fast As Possible (K.E.F.P)
Gameplay Summary: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, rogue-lite boomer shooter game where you have to kill as many enemies as possible in an arena with limited time. If you die, or run out of time, you upgrade your arsenal, and then start a new run and attempt to kill more enemies than last time. .
Vision Statement: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, face-paced, rogue-lite boomer shooter where you have to kill as many things as possible to refill your timer. Use the blood of your enemies to upgrade your arsenal to kill enemies in faster and more brutal ways
This sprint was one of my most productive sprints yet. I got around 12 cards done this sprint ranging from concept art, icons and glyphs.
Firstly, I will go over the glyphs which will be used to decorate the players loadout. I was provided with a few references by my designer for how he wanted them. Based on the reference he wanted a basic line with a elevated and lower part with parallelogram cubes.
I referenced previously used shades of reds that I used for previous icons and started trying to recreate the reference with its own twist. I first started with the elevated/lowered long line and experimented with different brush sizes and widths. It felt plain so I added a darker and thinner line on top as a highlight. The reference also had circles at the ends, but our other frames were sharp with harsher lines so I replaced the circles with thicket lines.
Next I added the parallelograms. I tried to hand draw each one, but each one was slightly off when put next to each other so I polished a singular one and duplicated it. I grouped up 6 of the cubes which you can see at the upper part of the glyph and duplicated that 3 times to fill the bottom portion. I also adjusted the vibrance of the overall red and finished it off. My designer also requested that I chop up this glyph into 3-4 parts so they can manually recreate the glyph so I wouldn't have to re draw the glyph for any adjustments
Part 2 of this card was making a corner glyph which also had a reference within the original glyph card as can be seen in the image above. I noticed that this reference also has parallelograms which I want to incorporate and stay on theme.
I took 2 groups of the cubes and arranged them into an L, from there I made a longer but slightly thinner version of one of the parallelograms and put them where the 2 groups met in the corner. From there I experimented with shapes and ended up with a long rectangle and was originally going to fill it but decided to make one of the ends full and erased bits of it to leave a line. I wanted to keep the trapezoids within the height of the rectangle and put it next to each other. To finish up I added a darker shadow on the lighter reds.
Prior to this, I had no experience in making glyphs, but I am happy with how they came out. Something to note out of this is that clean and straight lines are important.
The next group of work was finishing off weapon Icons which were for the Railgun and Minigun. I used the same process and cleaned up the background from the screenshot of the weapon within Maya. From there I played around with the layer modes and variants of red. The only issue I had this time around was with the railgun, because I had to do a lot of micro eraser work around the crevasse. I also made 2 variants of the railgun in different views; a side view and overhead view.
The next card I worked on was the Chain hook icon. Although I was given a reference for both the chain and the hook, I ended up free handing it and leaving it up to my imagination. You could say I mentally referenced the hook icon from Dead by Daylight. For the chains, I found a chain brush that I liked and played around with the size, scattering and direction. It was hard getting the direction-ing to work so I single clicked each chain. I also learned that for some reason, this chain brush has odd opacity built into it.
To save myself time I wanted to stamp the chain but since that did not work I traced the chains and manually drew and filled in the chains to my liking. I tried experimenting with shading but I'm not sure how to feel about it with or without it.
Next I worked on the hook itself. This was the original sketch before I polished it. I wanted it to be similar to a circle in the middle, with a fish hook/harpoon tip at the end. Some major points that I fixed compared to my original sketch was making the long part that attaches to the chain, a bit thinner and polished similar to a railing design. Another note was keeping the inside of the hook more of a circular shape rather than oval. The last major point was making the outer likes sharper and chiseled rather than smooth.
With the silhouette, I added a similar shade of red as to the other weapon icons, and did shading and highlights. I added harsh lines for the shadows rather than smoothy wrapping it which I think really helped. From the shadows I added highlights in a crosshatching design to indicate a metal/steel texture.
I am pretty happy with how it came out, something I would change in the future would be adjusting the chains, I think with how I wanted the perspective to be and have it bend so early, made it hard to see. Another thing is the color compared to the hook, the chain is very dull, looking back I wish I made it brighter.
The next card I worked on was making frames/outlines for the abilities, attachments and dash. Originally this was going to be a 1 frame fits all, but as I talked more with my designer when showing my progress, we ended up slightly altering each one and assigning them to different parts. Although I don't know where this reference is from, my designer wanted a hexagon shape along with both left and right frames. The only difference between the two is that one has a straight line of a gap going through it.
In the previous sprint I discovered the symmetry tool which I took full advantage of for this. I also played around with the brush and putting a darker outline around the brush when I drew. I sent a few variants to designer for their input on how thick they wanted the outline to be and they ended up picking the middle one from the 3 shown below.
I made around 5-10 variants to choose from all slightly different from each other. From these, my designer picked out; one for the dash, attachments, and abilities.
Next, I redid the timer outline frame because the one I did in the first sprint was uneven a bit, and my designer wanted the size adjusted. I am definitely happier with this redesign of the timer because it looks much more polished.
The next card I worked on was the buttons for the loadout system. I was not given concept art for this but for a general button I knew it was a rectangle. I ended up making two variants of the button; one selected and deselected along with a selection pointer. I am pretty happy with how it came out, the only thing I would some how fix would be how bulky the selected version looks.
The next card was Ammo pickup Icon indicator. For this I wasn't sure if they wanted a casing icon like when the buttons are in a container or if they wanted a symbolizing type of thing so I made both. I used an image of bullets incased, cropped it, and drew over it to fit the overall vibe similar to the weapons. And to indicate a pickup, I did 3 arrows going up to indicate a 'pickup'.
The last card I worked on was the concept art for our games game icon which will also be used for our poster. My designer gave me a really rough sketch of how he envisioned it. He wanted a split of black and red, similar to a yin yang symbol of a robot killing a human as you can see in the top left with stick figures. I really wanted this to be good so I wanted to go for a perspective view, but I was definitely in over my head.
With this being near the end, I am satisfied with the progress I made this sprint as a final push to the end. I cannot wait to see the final product of the game with all my UI and Icons added into the game.
The next card I worked on was the Chain hook icon. Although I was given a reference for both the chain and the hook, I ended up free handing it and leaving it up to my imagination. You could say I mentally referenced the hook icon from Dead by Daylight. For the chains, I found a chain brush that I liked and played around with the size, scattering and direction. It was hard getting the direction-ing to work so I single clicked each chain. I also learned that for some reason, this chain brush has odd opacity built into it.
To save myself time I wanted to stamp the chain but since that did not work I traced the chains and manually drew and filled in the chains to my liking. I tried experimenting with shading but I'm not sure how to feel about it with or without it.
Next I worked on the hook itself. This was the original sketch before I polished it. I wanted it to be similar to a circle in the middle, with a fish hook/harpoon tip at the end. Some major points that I fixed compared to my original sketch was making the long part that attaches to the chain, a bit thinner and polished similar to a railing design. Another note was keeping the inside of the hook more of a circular shape rather than oval. The last major point was making the outer likes sharper and chiseled rather than smooth.
The next card I worked on was making frames/outlines for the abilities, attachments and dash. Originally this was going to be a 1 frame fits all, but as I talked more with my designer when showing my progress, we ended up slightly altering each one and assigning them to different parts. Although I don't know where this reference is from, my designer wanted a hexagon shape along with both left and right frames. The only difference between the two is that one has a straight line of a gap going through it.
In the previous sprint I discovered the symmetry tool which I took full advantage of for this. I also played around with the brush and putting a darker outline around the brush when I drew. I sent a few variants to designer for their input on how thick they wanted the outline to be and they ended up picking the middle one from the 3 shown below.
The next card was Ammo pickup Icon indicator. For this I wasn't sure if they wanted a casing icon like when the buttons are in a container or if they wanted a symbolizing type of thing so I made both. I used an image of bullets incased, cropped it, and drew over it to fit the overall vibe similar to the weapons. And to indicate a pickup, I did 3 arrows going up to indicate a 'pickup'.
The last card I worked on was the concept art for our games game icon which will also be used for our poster. My designer gave me a really rough sketch of how he envisioned it. He wanted a split of black and red, similar to a yin yang symbol of a robot killing a human as you can see in the top left with stick figures. I really wanted this to be good so I wanted to go for a perspective view, but I was definitely in over my head.
With this being near the end, I am satisfied with the progress I made this sprint as a final push to the end. I cannot wait to see the final product of the game with all my UI and Icons added into the game.
Sprint 5
Kill Everything As Fast As Possible (K.E.F.P)
Gameplay Summary: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, rogue-lite boomer shooter game where you have to kill as many enemies as possible in an arena with limited time. If you die, or run out of time, you upgrade your arsenal, and then start a new run and attempt to kill more enemies than last time. .
Vision Statement: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, face-paced, rogue-lite boomer shooter where you have to kill as many things as possible to refill your timer. Use the blood of your enemies to upgrade your arsenal to kill enemies in faster and more brutal ways
This sprint, I worked on UI and Icons which will provide the player with more information on guns and abilities they use. This included the Rocket Launcher and its rocket ammunition, the players crosshair, the gas can ammunition for the chainsaw, and lastly two grenade icons, one for the fire and the other for the ice.
The first card I worked on this sprint was the ice grenade. The original idea we had for the ice grenade ended up being revamped which meant we would go with a similar design with changes. This time I would reuse the outline from the original
Some improvements was firstly make the overall grenade more blue and more vibrant. I tried probably around 5-6 different blues and with and without the emitted glow. I also learned about the symmetry tool in photoshop. I experimented with the radial and mandala patterns with different segment counts for snowflakes to give the impression of ice/cold. I freehanded whatever looked nice and got feedback from my designer. I was asked to try and make a black outline or with different shades of blue. Lastly, I rotated and scaled 3 different snowflakes. Personally I didn't like the option of snowflake my designer picked but I still like the final product.
Next was the fire grenade. Similar to how I made the ice grenade, I would add a fire element icon somewhere around this grenade. I had a few variants of how I wanted the fire to be but I started to lean into the middle variant seen in the image below.
For the process, I did an outline of how I wanted the fire to 'flicker' around the grenade, from there I finalized the shame of each flame and adjusted which part would be in the front verses the back.
Then I made a few masking layers to test out the shades of the flames I wanted and first tried to just paint on each color but it didn't like how I hoped. So after putting the yellow, orange, and reds in where I wanted, I masked the mask and tried smudging and blurring the colors together.
The image above is the final product after polishing the tips of the flame and adjusting the glow around the grenade a bit. I am really happy with how this came out and cannot wait to see this implemented into the game.
Next I worked on the UI Icons for the Rocket Launcher and its ammunition, the rocket. I used the same process I have been using for all the other weapons where I cropped out the background from the image of the modeled version. From there I masked layered reds and adjusted opacity.
An issue you could say I had was that I had to do a lot more manual cropping than usual compared to other weapon icons because the auto remove background feature photoshop uses would cut out the small details like the spikes and trigger. This meant I took a small brush and did lots of small erasing to get into the corners to remove bits of grey/white left behind without clipping and removing small details.
A similar issue occurred on the rocket ammunition but had only minor parts that had did not crop properly.
Next, I worked on the crosshair since that and the rocket launcher were my highest priority cards this sprint. Similar to the ice grenade, I messed around with the symmetry tool to get accurate lines for a plus sign crosshair. I was told the crosshair should also be red but with a darker outline and maybe a brighter red inside it.I referenced both what my designer game me but also based its design on common crosshairs you would see in Valorant. This crosshair actually has 3 layers for each outline within it which to me looks easy on the eyes. I think if my designer asks about it again, I might adjust the opacity on the inner colors.
The last thing I finished this sprint were the oil can icons which will represent the fuel of the chainsaw weapon. My reference for this was one of those red, square, plastic motor oil bottles. The reference image I was give was a slanted overhead view which would have made it not as recognizable compared to a side view.
Similar to the weapons, I cropped my reference image and manually adjusted some of the problematic cropping. My designer wanted a a light red to show full and a darker red to show emptiness. I also based the lighting off the reference but made it not as noticeable. I have noticed I have been doing a lot of minor adjusted or detail touch ups which the player probably will not even see.
Right before I put my card into verified, my producer asked for 3 variants of this oil can, 1 full, 1 half full, and 1 empty. Just in case it couldn't be programmed in, they wanted the half full, which may or may not get used which is ok and just nice to have now just in case.
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of all my cards and UI icons made this sprint. I need to keep in mind that at this point, some features could be scrapped which also related to some of my work and that right now, quantity is more important than quality, so I should push out UI cards as fast as possible.
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of all my cards and UI icons made this sprint. I need to keep in mind that at this point, some features could be scrapped which also related to some of my work and that right now, quantity is more important than quality, so I should push out UI cards as fast as possible.
Sprint 4
Kill Everything As Fast As Possible (K.E.F.P)
Gameplay Summary: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, rogue-lite boomer shooter game where you have to kill as many enemies as possible in an arena with limited time. If you die, or run out of time, you upgrade your arsenal, and then start a new run and attempt to kill more enemies than last time. .
Vision Statement: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, face-paced, rogue-lite boomer shooter where you have to kill as many things as possible to refill your timer. Use the blood of your enemies to upgrade your arsenal to kill enemies in faster and more brutal ways
This sprint, same as usual, I worked on 2D art for UI and icons. These icons revolved around abilities and weapons. The first card I worked on this sprint was finishing the ammo regarding the mini-gun. Something I have picked up on from drawing previous icons, is that when making things more simplistic as icons, all lines matter. I probably redrew the mini gun ammo more than a dozen times but only showed my designer half of them.
After many minor tweaks, we settled on this;
The next cards I worked on was turning our guns into Icons. I started with the Chainsaw Icon, which involved taking a front view of the original chainsaw model and bringing it into photoshop to remove the background.
From there, I did some touch ups on areas there were missed when cropping the background. From here I polished some areas that were off and smooth the surround. From here I adjusted the colors and shadows to make it similar to the pistol I made last sprint.
Same steps were taken when doing the Shotgun Icon. I got a front view screenshot of the shotgun, put it through photoshop and adjusted the values from there.
Next, I worked on the UI base template for the weapons to show the area their weapon and weapon info will be kept. I referenced a sketch my designer made and drew it in photoshop. The ideal shape was something similar to a rectangle with its edges trimmed.
When I trimmed the corners, I felt like that space could be used to show something. I experimented with bullet amounts, names, and bullet icons within that space.
After the template was completed, I adjusted the type of red and made some variants of how the ammo would show along with how many bullets and bullets in the gun.
For the last of the sprint, I worked on the dash Icons. This involved the triple, double, and single dash. I found a dash icon that I wanted to base my icon on and did many sketches with it. I had lots of small tweaks with it, mainly revolving around the leading leg
The outlines and straight lines to imply movements I experimented multiple times with. I thought the glow would be nice, even if it wasn't yellow but my designer wanted to keep it simple. This base single dash would be duplicated for the double and triple dash, so it was important that I was satisfied with this dash since the others would be based on it.
After many minor tweaks, I adjusted the red value and got approval with my designer.
The idea for the double and triple dash would be that they were duplicated. I tested out many versions of how I interpreted it like, the same image and color stacked, spaced out, removing the implied movement lines and adjusting the back arm.
We settled on creating a variant of bright to dark when stacked behind each other. And for the front dash icon, it would be the only one that has the implied movement lines and the back ones do not. These are the final product;
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of these Icons and can not wait to see them implemented into our next build. The plan for next sprint will be focused on crosshairs and UI elements. Many cards with a base like a grenade and adjusting colors or a different icon for each type.
Next, I worked on the UI base template for the weapons to show the area their weapon and weapon info will be kept. I referenced a sketch my designer made and drew it in photoshop. The ideal shape was something similar to a rectangle with its edges trimmed.
The outlines and straight lines to imply movements I experimented multiple times with. I thought the glow would be nice, even if it wasn't yellow but my designer wanted to keep it simple. This base single dash would be duplicated for the double and triple dash, so it was important that I was satisfied with this dash since the others would be based on it.
After many minor tweaks, I adjusted the red value and got approval with my designer.
The idea for the double and triple dash would be that they were duplicated. I tested out many versions of how I interpreted it like, the same image and color stacked, spaced out, removing the implied movement lines and adjusting the back arm.
We settled on creating a variant of bright to dark when stacked behind each other. And for the front dash icon, it would be the only one that has the implied movement lines and the back ones do not. These are the final product;
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of these Icons and can not wait to see them implemented into our next build. The plan for next sprint will be focused on crosshairs and UI elements. Many cards with a base like a grenade and adjusting colors or a different icon for each type.
Sprint 3
Kill Everything As Fast As Possible (K.E.F.P)
Gameplay Summary: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, rogue-lite boomer shooter game where you have to kill as many enemies as possible in an arena with limited time. If you die, or run out of time, you upgrade your arsenal, and then start a new run and attempt to kill more enemies than last time. .
Vision Statement: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, face-paced, rogue-lite boomer shooter where you have to kill as many things as possible to refill your timer. Use the blood of your enemies to upgrade your arsenal to kill enemies in faster and more brutal ways
This sprint, I focused mainly on UI for both guns and general stats. Firstly, this sprint I got the pistol and pistol ammo UI completed. I also got the stylized player health bar completed with some minor adjustments from a previous sprint. And lastly the Ice grenade icon. I additionally completed shotgun shells which turned out really nice, but ended up being scrapped because it didn't fit the designers vision.
This sprint started off like previously stated, with the pistol UI icon. This icon will show when the player equips their pistol. It will also show their ammo type and which bullet type is needed for that specific gun. For the Pistol art, I relied on our already 3D modeled version to base it off of. I took a side view screenshot of the pistol and cropped out the background around the gun in photoshop.
From there, I did some polishing and cleaned up tight cracks that photoshop didn't automatically remove and smooth out the pixels with the eraser. I experimented with some effects like drop shadows, glow, and blood splatter and sent them to my designer. He ended up liking the simple bottom right pistol, which had the original image of the pistol, just with a fill bucket of red.
As I write this blogpost, my designer changed their mind and ended up liking the top right version, which was also filled with the same red, but I kept the shadows to imply indents for more of a detailed silhouette rather than a flat one.
Next, I worked on the bullet which would go along with the pistol. Out of all the art I have done this sprint, I spent a lot of time and micro adjusting this card. My designers idea for the bullets would be an outline of real bullets with limited detail, just enough for the player to glance at it and know it is a bullet. Although I had reference images for the bullets, looking back, the problems likely arised from either brush type and size, micro details or brush hardness.
Every time I sketched these bullets out, they looked like anything but a bullet. My first attempt on the far left was very sad, almost disappointed in myself for. The second one to the right of it was my favorite, and when I sent it to my designer, he said it looked too much like a crayon which I can totally see. My third attempt, I tried a smaller variant of pistol ammo which was more compact and rounder. From that I learned my tips of the bullet were too triangular, which gave off a crayon feel. My last two attempts were the final ones, which my producer picked the far right. I am happy how it came out but maybe because I spent so long on it, the bottom looks off and the tip looks like a Christmas light.
While I waited for my designer to find me a reference for shotgun shells, I worked on the ice grenade icon. At first I assumed I was drawing this from scratch, so I found a grenade reference and added some icicles and frost onto it. When showed my designer my concept art, I was told that I was supposed to base it off of the already modeled ice grenade.
After getting the .FBX file for the ice grenade, I took a screenshot of a front view and sent it into Photoshop to remove the background. Again I polished it up with the eraser tool and messed more so with emission glows, something like a frosty mist. I also played around with the fill tool. I wasn't sure how to keep on theme with the blood red like all the other icons, but I felt without the blue, it couldn't be seen as an ice grenade.
I think the keypoint that makes this object look like a grenade is the pulling circular part. I had some issues with adding the glow to the grenade itself, so I improvised and had it apply on my brush and outlined the grenade. My designer settled on the all blue, with blue glow.
The last thing I worked on this sprint were the shotgun shells. I felt the shotgun shell outline wasn't implied if I only outlined it, so I wanted to add a few more lines to imply depth. I tried experimenting with variation of colors of the copper like bottom of the shell or filling the whole outline. I did a variant of using the original reference and playing with opacity and blur tool to imply the already textured aspect. I really liked this version and my designer did too but it didn't fit the consistent design we wanted for the bullets.
I ended up redoing them right at the end of the sprint, and I am sad that these bullets wont be used, but as the new version doesn't ruin the visuals, I am fine with scrapping it.
Overall, I am proud of the work I did this sprint. I think I did a bit less compared to other sprints, but I think the quality of the work is better. Rather than sketching messy concept art, I really took the time to perfect the finalized product.
Sprint 2
Kill Everything As Fast As Possible (K.E.F.P)
Gameplay Summary: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, rogue-lite boomer shooter game where you have to kill as many enemies as possible in an arena with limited time. If you die, or run out of time, you upgrade your arsenal, and then start a new run and attempt to kill more enemies than last time. .
Vision Statement: Kill Everything as Fast as Possible is a first-person, face-paced, rogue-lite boomer shooter where you have to kill as many things as possible to refill your timer. Use the blood of your enemies to upgrade your arsenal to kill enemies in faster and more brutal ways.
As the 2D artist/Flex, this sprint I worked mainly on concept art and rough sketches for enemies and UI. Firstly, this sprint I worked on our enemy concept art. The enemies I would be making would represent our 3 types; light, medium, and heavy enemy's. My designer wanted to go for a vibe similar to an anime called Attack on Titan, in the sense of their distorted body structures.
My designer also gave specific descriptions or key features for some of these enemies. Mainly 2 different types of hand guns; a cannon/blaster and a handgun. This was also another challenge for me because I have never drawn any guns nor seen one built into a character.
Next, I worked on UI relating to the Pause button mid game. My designer made me a reference that he made with Canva. I tried to copy the design and do some tweaks. While I was messing with the corners of the button, I had an idea of what if I made them into bullets since this is a shooter game. Feedback from my designer said he liked the first sketch based off the reference he made, but instead have the corners straightened.
Another UI I worked on was the headshot icon. This would appear when the player landed a headshot on a enemy. I searched on Pinterest for an idea I had and wanted a reference but couldn't find one. I was thinking of doing a common hunting prey like a wolf or rabbit with a arrow or bullet through but once I sketched it, it felt too too much as an icon that would appear constantly if the player landed headshots. I ended up going with a dummy like head outline with a bullet going through it. I added a bullet behind the head with a trail of blood. I also made a second variant without the bullet just in case. I am really happy with how this UI came out.
