Having finished putting the artbook together it was time to start the printing process. Initially, I wanted the artbook to have a hard cover, and to immitate the feeling of exclusivity evoked by actual game artbooks. When I consulted the people at the print, however, it turned out the cost would be quite high, as I would have to order the cover custom made for my horizontal A5 format. And that excludes potential delays in schedule.

In the end I opted for a light cover with heavy grammage, which looked sufficiently professional, while still being very cheap, meaning I could give the prints away to potential employers.

Front page

Project introduction

Image spread

Thinking about kanji characters, one immediatelly associates them with calligraphy. When learning kanji, however, stylized characters, despite their attractive look, are pracitaclly useless due to their at times extremely low legibility.

For the game we were looking for a typeface that would combine the aesthetics of traditional calligraphy with clearity and simplicity of modern digital fonts. The best example of such a typeface is Epson Kaisho. However, because of its licence it may be impossible to use in the game. Therefore we used a “free for commercial use” typeface Yasashisa Gothic.

In the game the characters are displayd as if engraved in stone tables.

Yasashisa Gothic

Epson Kaisho

After figuring out what we wanted the UI to be like, I started working on individual pieces that make up the HUD that is used during the combat phase in the game.

Health bar structure

The spell icons themselves were the result of a collaborative effort, where my friend created the outlines of the shapes, while I redrew them so they fit into the game visually.

Concepts

Finals

In the end for the main bar we decided to use one in the bottom center of the screen. This layout may seem overused, but it’s the most effective and simple one.

Final HUD

I tried putting together the layout for the artbook. Because of my tendency not to waste space, the first draft feels rather cluttered. The second draft I tried to make better contrast between pages and make spreads with images only. The third draft is basically identical to the second one, just refined with the addition of the pattern on the right side among other things.

1st Draft

2nd Draft

3rd Draft

Moving on with the physical promotion from the business cards, I came up with the idea of using a format of an Artbook instead of a traditional and general-use portfolio. It much better fits both my identity as well as the work I create.

Ideally, it would look somewhat like this example of a Mass Effect artbook.

At first, I was trying out new forms of UI, which I personally liked visually, but unfortunately their functionality suffered in multiple cases, so I decided to instead go for already established designes.

Since the UI contains so many elements it was important to figure out how the design would work accross the entire game while keeping it visually consistent. Our greates inspiration was Dofus, technically a predecessor of Wakfu, which uses stone-like blocks as the framework upon which other elements are placed.

Dofus

The process invovled a lot of sketching to make sure we get all element we want to communicate to the player in there.

Never really bother asking why, but since the first they my friend and I started working on the game, bunnies were the enemy we were going to fight.

At first the chocolate bunny was just me joking, but my friend liked it and decided to keep it as a rare type of enemy.

When I had some spare time I quickly made grass that could be put on top of tiles to make things a bit more lively.