Artwork Progress - Part II - Start to Finish Asset Generation

(Part I here)

Below are the rough steps I followed for making assets in Wasco. There's a always a back and forth between these steps because ideas and designs influence each other but even if we're occasionally taking a single step back, at the end of the day the progress needs to finish with us two steps ahead.

I already have all the zones, characters etc. laid out at this stage so I have a list of everything I need to do. That being said here's how I approach aforementioned items in the list.

1. Create a design compass.
2. Collect research and inspiration material.
3. Make traditional rough sketches. (Pen/Pencil)
4. Make more detailed traditional sketches. (Pen/Pencil)
5. Convert traditional media to digital. (Photoshop)
6. Chop up the digital media into separate bits.
7. Import separate bits of artwork into the engine framework. (Unity3D)
8. Start setting up the scene within the engine framework. (Unity3D)

Here are some images to help you visualizing this progress:

Scanning through the Ghost in the Shell's manga for future architecture influences. I picked designs and images I like from various resources and used them as inspiration material.

I created a design compas for this area called Recharge Bay. The compass helps make cohesive assets. Cohesive assets mean the wall, the floor, the props and all things match a unified style and feeling. This way when  you think about layout, architecture, colors etc. you will keep the art tight and monodirectional. You will also notice a mini sketch on the top right corner.

Before starting my computer and putting things together I sketch and sketch. This takes some time but once you're happy with where the sketch is going you are actually done. You almost don't need to think anymore and you can simply look at your sketch and produce the artwork.

I didn't like the walls I used in my sketch so I looked at some more comic books and decided on another wall pattern.

Voila! Here's the artwork before we chop it up and turn it into assets. Apologies for the potato quality.

Obviously there are quite a bit of steps in between but I'm short on time and I believe this post already addresses the main steps.

Until next post!