Joshua Gardener's Art Blog

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...

Continuing from my last post, i'm applying my rudimentary knowledge of tower defence map design, to concept some stages for our game to use (most likely in the future). (Tip) the blue spots (yellow in the last two) are all possible build spots. The top left is the revised design that James made following the feedback, with three lanes into the forest for the enemies to come down, and a wide open field to place lots of places to put defences. additionally instead of being placed at the top and bottom of the board respectively, the castle and forest are placed on the corners, putting more space on the screen and providing a more interesting board dynamic. Second on the left, we discussed the idea of further levels progressing into the forest, with the idea that the humans were pushing into the monsters territory. For this i established the castle as the main goal to protect, with a stark contrast between the human areas and the forest. Additionally inside the forest is a v...

Late start to the second academic term, the year started in January yet I've been delayed due to crunch time on my dissertation and the aftermath of it's hand in, but as of now i am of Hiatus and working towards my group project again. Following up on the project presentation at the end of last term i realised i need to do some research into level design for tower defence levels, not only to further my understanding for the genre, but also James tasked me with concepting additional level design, potentially for other stages that we could add to the game. Particularly because the intent is to apply for the incubator project (a internal prospect for uni students to offer them facilities to work on a project for a year) so we also need to be thinking of the long term prospects of the project should it keep going. So first things first I've decided to deconstruct some map design in other tower defence games a bit, just to get a feel for how they work the environment...

Not alot to say here, (other than i totally changed some the design again, but im totally stable on it now) Im actually really pleased how this whole design came out, even after a ton of alterations i think i finally came to a design i was content with showing. Also since this is usually one of the later things i manage to come up with, i've decided to name her Claire. Nothing too ostentatious but a nice name. If i could change anything it would probably have been to experiment less earlier on when it didnt really add to my design, in the sense that it left me a bit high and dry in terms of time to allocate everything, also i wish i could have put more time into everything as i had an absolute blast doing everything.

Okay so in the end of one of these posts i said that i took away the pauldron because i couldnt make it work, well i put in the time TO make it work, because i really want it in. And thus this is born;  So originally i was going to can the pauldron, until i was staring at some league of legends poster work (some real good stuff there) and was looking at the face of a rocket launcher called 'fishbone' that Jinx uses, and i couldnt help thinking "wow, thats kinda what i want the pauldron to be" and so began my development journey. Using the head as a template i started painting over it to get a feel for the way it worked, and then started going off in my own direction with it, less shark head and more demon mouth. doing so gave me quite a few good ideas, but its only when i dug up some of my older designs from earlier on that i got my final piece.  Originally i created this alien looking thing, using segmented plates, i liked the idea of the demons lo...

When thinking about a promo image (like a wallpaper) I figured the best thing to do was to test the waters with some thumbnails for the composition and posing of the piece, and thus i came up with these. The idea was that i was trying to get in a bunch of different idea's quickly and without worrying too much about anatomy for the moment so that i could focus best on what design captured my characters...character. so to start that off i listed some of the keywords to associate my character with to help me figure out while i was drawing these, and to on reflection look at these designs and pick one out as a winner. Since the character is a paladin of sorts, the stoic attribute means i want something strong and impressive as far as posing goes in order to capture her strength, while wrathful is meant to indicate her somewhat violent nature when angered, so in this case i also wanted her to appear imposing or like she would end you if you crossed her. Lastly she is both holy ...

Somewhat shorter post this time round, as of this point im like most of the way there with the design, some final mashing and sculpting and i should be there. so here i actually just tried mashing two of my favourite designs together and then drawing over the result, it seems to have worked well because i was able to bring out the best of both designs, the bulkiness of the armour, layering on the legs and breastplate etc. additionally i also did a sketch of what the back of the chest piece would look like, since the armour has a big piece of symbolism for the demons they worship, i wanted a relic of the past and have a angel monument on the back with the wings splayed over the arches of the back, so both a bit of sculpting to the user and some lore.  Refining this further by painting more to refine areas of the drawing i've come to what i believe (at the moment) is my final design. I got very inspired by the league of legend poppy redesign and her armour so i wanted...