Will'o-wisp (2020)
Genre: platformer, adventure
Development time: 9 months
Platform: PC, Consoles
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Team size: 2
Description
You are a small forest will'-o-wisp, trapped in a cage. In an instant, your chains fail:
scatter like sparks, grains of metal, and freedom bursts into a dark, rusty world!
Explore an environment full of danger, avoid the robots, free the trapped will'-o-wisp
that humans have used as an energy source, gather life one drop at a time and grow a forest on the remains of an abandoned world. Now everything will change.
I was responsible for
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art-direction,
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concept art,
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2d art (props and environment),
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3d character model,
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animation integration,
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weight painting,
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game design
my contributions
visual style
When creating the visual style, I decided to focus on the visual style of Tom Moore's cartoons, in particular the cartoon Song of the Sea (2014).
Key features of the game's visual style:
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Light outlining,
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details and lots of patterns,
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animated objects in the background and foreground
Screenshot from the game: saving will'o-wisps
Cel-shading
Since we originally decided that the character would be 3D and everything else would be in 2D graphics, the question arose of how to combine these elements into one visual style. I decided to use cel-shading on the character, while all the props would be drawn with a white outline.
Details vs restraint
To make the character stand out (which is important in games like this), I decided to juxtapose a very detailed, background dark background with a simple glowing character.
Screenshot from the game: growing forest
Animation
What gives life to the game is, of course, the animation. The gears are constantly turning. Elevators, stairs, traps, levers, and other mechanisms are triggered by the main character. This is the life of a mechanized city. On the other hand, I also paid attention to the growth of plants and forests, the greening of space, as well as such important resources as water and seeds.
Some animations are made frame by frame via Flipbook in Unreal engine 4 (the sprouts from seeds), others are triggered by blueprints (the movement of clouds, gears, the growth of vines, made with the Spline)
character design
Will'o-wisp
The little forest spirit is a fragile and very weak creature, capable of changing the whole world. It was important to me that players feel sympathy for him, so I created a cute design of the forest spirit: with thin legs, arms, and little horns from which leaves grow. His clothes are translucent and glow in the dark.
Concept art
The will'o-wisps that the player rescues are also small, evoking a desire to protect.
They accompany the player on his difficult path until, finally, they turn into a tree.
