Joshua Gardener's Art Blog

Since our game makes heavy use of currency, both as a resource but also as a visual item on the game board i thought i'd concept a more interesting looking coin, or at the very least a more aesthetic one for the setting of the game. I started by doodling some assorted odds and ends that could be interesting as currency or attainable for a kid, things like buttons and stickers are extremely common to get a hold of at most ages after all. the first major concept was a coin shaped like a knights helmet, since the player is playing as the humans it would make sense to have a human looking coin right? on the other hand its kind of boring looking. A better stroke of genius on my next concepts, given that one of the monsters "the sneak" is a sucker for treasure, i made a coin in her image, additionally the colour scheme is meant to evoke the similarities to a chocolate coin, something i thought would be doubly interesting and valuable for a kid due to ...

Quick and simple post - while we may already have cannon models for levels 1 and 2, James was having a hard time coming up with a level 3 design. Basically this is my element as a concept artist. The objective was to think about a mix of practicability and interesting, it had to look like the cannon got powerful. My ideas ranged from a spiralling cannon, a revolving turret, a giant shielded cannon and so forth. Strangely enough the one that most caught on with james with the additional barrel and scope on a turret. on reflection this was because my thought process was how do you make a gun seem more impressive, "you make it longer or give it a scope" a kind of childish notion, especially on a cannon of all things, but it appears that this line of thinking was spot on for the occassion.

As part of both feedback and the progression of the game, I've started concepting upgrades for units, way of altering units already in the game, but with distinct differences so that they can be both tougher units for the players to watch out for, but also some visual variety. These were alot of fun to do, as the specifics of what i could change were left up to me (to convince my team that it was pure genius) i started off with small and cute changes; First thought was some sort of hat or helmet and what a child could use for them, so i came up with the thimble helmet. Its helmet shaped and looks fancy enough that a child would put it on a small toy or the like. To expand on the hat idea i also took some more traditional helmet designs, with a standard soldier helmet, which is perched sideways on the grunt due to the shape of the head not matching up. The second helmet is a more vikings themed helmet, the horns giving a more intimidating feel to the silly looking grunt des...