Little Red Witch, Game Design.

Hello Steemit Community!

I came up with a game idea, which I hope to continue and test out. So far I have been exploring the visual design/style for the background!

So far these two are my favourite. I can show you how I came to these decisions, and my process. However my process is a bit everywhere at the moment, as this was my first attempt at doing anything like this.

I will take you back to the verrrry beginning! These are my initial sketches, which I tried to capture the mood, style and story of the game.

It would take place in the Witch's Home, inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, the Little Witch seems inferior or small compared to the problem, but with her kitty companion and stealth, she can overcome the obstacles.

Since this is my first attempt at any game. I wanted to create a "prototype" level first. This was basically just to see if I could do it.

It would be very basic, an introduction to the problem, and her way to fix it. In this case, people came too close to her home. So she takes a relic, and places it nearby, which sets up a protective ward around her home. (Glowing yellow stuff). And this is basically the goal of every level. She must go deeper into trouble, to find relics, help animals and put up protective wards, and help regrow damaged areas of her forest.

For the Art Style, I looked at some comics, as I wanted to have an artsy/fresh feeling to the game. This helped me stay on track for my drawing and colours, as it's very easy to put too much! (Which is never good for concept phase.)

So I began with the Line Art.
Again, this was new to me. No idea what I was doing. I struggled to focus on shapes, rather than line quality. Have to keep reminding myself this was all just concept phase, not finished art.

So I filled in the colour, I knew that if I were to actually create this game, I wanted to have at least 4 different colour hues/variations, one for each of the different enemies to overcome; lumberman/robots, Cult Witches/Crows, corrupted animals/werewolves.

But first, I would need the right colours for my intro level. It's always tempting to settle for the first version. I nearly did. But after watching a basic 2D scroller tutorial, I realized I needed a foreground, middle ground, and background.

So I created this:
(Copy and Pasting the same trees and hills, just mismatching, flipping and scaling basically.)

And I thought, it was pretty good... but I better try and see if adjusting the colours at all could enhance it. So I copied this, so I would have 4 different attempts.

So I discovered a few good things doing this.

1. Adjust your resolution wayyyy down. Because having all of these (line, colour, gradients) on separate layers was killing my poor student laptop. This can be done in Image > Image Size.
   Everything I do is in Adobe photoshop

2. "Hue/Saturation" Is a tool sent from art gods. With this you can adjust the hue/temperature. You can increase and decrease the saturation of the colour. AND you can increase the level of dark to light. Which just makes this... 3000 times too overpowered.
   Image>Adustments>Hue/Saturation [Control] + [U]

Another variation of this is Colour Balance. [Control] + [b]
Which can change the temperature with very sutable adjustments, very cool, very cool!

And last but not least...

1. "Curves" [Control] + [M]
   Image>Adjustments>Curves
   This one is the trickiest to use, but in my opinion the best. I still only know how to use the most basic function of it.
   If your layer has lots of values, like in the background, (dark/middle/light/stars/moon) then using the curves you can adjust the dark, middle and brightest values of your layer very specifically!

If you're a wizard, then you can drop into the Channel modes, and adjust the red, green, and blue values individually, which is beyond my current skill level, but interesting to try!

And that's basically it.

Personally I like this dark purple one the best, there's something witchy about it! Which one is your favourite?

This was all my concept phase. I am still learning, researching. Any feedback or suggestions or resources you guys show me I will gladly take!

My next task is to design the characters. So the Little Witch, her cute little kitty. The cult Witches, the lumberjacks and their robots, the corrupted beasts and the werewolves... Every level will have their own mega boss... so excited!

I do have 1 idea, which I'm quite seriously debating, and that's having the entire screen black, except where the black kitty is. The idea is in my sketches, the player has to move the cat to see what's happening on screen.

This could make the game feel scarier, and more into the character of Little Red Riding sneaking around.

Let me know what you think!

Also, if you'd like to see me work on the main character, robots and crow witches and what not, drop a like or a comment! Or just tell me to, that's also very effective. :P

My goal is to make little tile pieces, which can be used to construct forests, much like how most mobile games are. If you think I should hand draw everything, so each tree is unique and different, let me know too, as I said, this isn't a serious game, but a learning project for me.

If you've made it this far, thank you! <3 I hope you enjoyed