As well as doing 3D assets I also wanted to help out the designers with the more integrate 2D assets. Rafe, one of the artists created the stunning title screen in preparation for the demo release but towards the start of the project I created some room concepts for the team to get a good feel of the general atmosphere change from dark to light, or in the games case, past to present. This was the first concept I used photo bashing in which was an effective, quick solution. These concepts helped the designers understand the deterioration and changes in lighting between levels.
I also used photo bashing for the various pictures around the house. These were used to display key events within the couples life together but when in present the images would be faded to convey to the player the extent of Karen's memory loss. Initially the team helped me out by getting some reference images to transfer the right perspective and layout. The images turned out well in game and was a subtle nod to the story for the more observing players.
Along with the pictures I created some seamless wallpaper patterns. This was really enjoyable however, doing this in Illustrator compared to Photoshop would have meant no compression loss but with the lighting in the game it would be hard to notice anyway.
The final form of 2D work I had within the game was some animated silhouettes. I wanted to go for a little big planet style of animation with objects popping in an out of the scene. I initially considered manually animating within Photoshop but I opted instead to use Maya since it would be more time effective overall and to make changes if needed. The scenes were animated and exported as alpha images then combined within Adobe Premiere and then imported to the game. Once in game the ambient lighting would dim and a single point light would shine through the animation to project the image on the wall. Although the animations were basic we wanted to add another perspective on portraying the story to the player compared to the traditional on screen subtitles.
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