We posted some pictures before of Llaknels evolvement in concept art.

So I thought we post some pictures now of Llaknels evolvement now in 3d.

Before you start to make a 3d model out of a concept art you should have made some different versions so you can chose the best one. Here are 5 versions of the troll that Nixi made before we chose to go with troll number 5 (bottom right). We might include some of the other versions later in the game, but that’s mostly up to if we get the time to do it : )

Here’s some of Nixis concept art of the main characters for Penalty of Heroes. This and some other collages were Nixis contributions for “Best effort in art” at the Gotland Game Awards, last week. The larger versions of the characters on the sides are the newest versions of the main characters. There’s also some smaller sketches at the bottom of different moves of the characters

We had some requests about two week ago that people wanted to have a look at us working at our office. So here’s a video, though from our old office (we just moved), of us at work. This is how it looks like when things are running smoothly and everyone is in.

At first you’ll see Nixi working on some concept art, then a quick look at Jona texturing, over to Jakob coding, to Dwarf making level art, to Andreas play testing, back to Jakob, and then to Jona and Nixi again. The man with the camera is King Klepot aka Håkan.

Yes, that’s right, we have put up a new web page on the official “Penalty of Heroes” web page at www.penaltyofheroes.com : ) It’s not the final one and it’s better than the last one. Also there are some content such as concept art, teaser trailer and SCREENSHOTS! This is our first officially released screenshots of Penalty of Heroes, so we hope you like them : )

The screenshots are work in progress and will be adding more features before the release this fall. So the final game will look better than the screenshots that we just released, though we hope you digg them : ) We’re grateful for feedback on them, if we don’t’ get any feedback (good or bad) we don’t know what we should focus on : )

Every Monday now for the past four weeks we have presented each of the heroes in the game. So I thought it was appropriate to post a picture of all of the characters together.

Here’s a round-up of all the facts about the heroes:

Llaknel
Llaknel is a young and skillful fighter and fight with two Katars. He was born and raised in the city of Era in the land of Nimo. He’s the current general of King Salo’s army and the princess’ personal bodyguard. Llaknel’s father was the late general who died protecting the king years ago and therefore Llaknel does not feel comfortable following his father’s footsteps. Llaknel also finds Kimo to be naive, but stays loyal to her and the King as he hopes for a change in Nimo. He is the leader of the party and reconsiders every action very thoroughly.

Zedwig
Zedwig is a short but heavily built man who wears thick armor and fights with raw strength. He doesn’t use weapons, but wields his shields which he smashes his enemies with. Zedwig is a cocky man, but trusted amongst his friends. He was born and raised in the city of Jedna, but fled to Era when Maag enslaved his people. He seeks revenge and wants to set his people free and get rid of Maag once and for all.

Kimo
Kimo is the youngest one of the four heroes and is trained in politics, combat and healing magics. She is the heiress of King Salo’s empire and loves the people of Era. She is in love with Llaknel, but is aware of the complications with him being responsible for her as he also figures as her general. However she finds it amusing to tease him, making his position awkward. Zedwig and her share friendship and the same sense of humor.

Darwin
Darwin is a skinny old man, who always carries his crossbow with him. He fled his hometown of Giza as it was enslaved and corrupted by people that gave false promises about a better future. Darwin has lived in Era for just as long as Zedwig and knows all of them very well. Though he is old fashioned and somewhat an outsider in the party, he is still a good friend and a skilled armsman.

This week, stating today, we’ll publish a little series of connection posts that will show you how we make a character/enemy from start to finish.

Finally, I’m back at the island after a couple of smooth days back home. It was nice to eat three meals a day and do nothing at all, just dragging the feet behind me and enjoying friends, family and the wonderful weather. Thank you easter bunny and Jesus Christ.

The video below shows how I work when making a concept: in this case an enemy rat mixed with a kangaroo and a velociraptor. I knew that it had to be small sized, come in hordes and perform some sort of jumping attack, making it more vulnerable and easier to hit if you get the timing right.

I started off making a couple of quick sketches to find something that could work. As reference I found some hideous pictures of the African nude mole rat. It’s probably the ugliest animal on the planet and when you see it, you instantly want to kill it. This creature looks like as if someone copy pasted a human penis, gave it eyes, legs and a nose. It didn’t quite feel right to keep that body type so instead I decided to move towards, as mentioned, the kangaroo/raptor direction.

It took about 2-3 hours to complete but luckily the video is like 8x speed. I hope you enjoy watching it.

Hi people of the web : )
Tekei (Tobias) here and I will tell you about the process of making a game model from someone else concept art. I just finished modeling a crossbow (approx 1 hour work) and I guess this would be a good opportunity to start off.

I guess the biggest difference from working on an idea of your own is that the concept art has to be a lot clearer and thought out, so working side by side with the concept artist (Nixi) as I do helps as well. If the concept art isn’t covering all the necessary angles and is clear enough on what parts that go inwards and which ones that go outwards it can be a real challenge to get things right. Usually, however, it can be solved with some improvisation and common knowledge without ruining the concept all together.

I know some people who prefer to keep turn-arounds of their model as background sheets in their 3d software and just follow them for their modeling. Personally I only do this for very complex models or if it’s extremely important that there are no differences between the concept art and the 3d model. Usually I just keep a picture open in another window or on my desk and model by eye.  From my experience this gives the models more a bit more life, if that makes sense.

The next step will be UV-unwrapping and texturing.

Here’s two of the first concept art images that was made for Penalty of Heroes:

It’s not what the finished game will look like, but it’s a vision : )

It’s time for our second “game panel presentation” next Monday (20th of October). Håkan, Stoff, Nixi and I (Jens) have been struggling to get it together these last days. We thought that is would take about 3 days to make, but right now it seems like it will take about the double, so no partying this weekend : (

Anyway, … This time the presentation will focus on “Concept” and getting “core things” down on paper. We will be presenting things like: Core Values, USP (Unique Selling Points), target group, risks, quality assurance and so on. We will also present basic stuff in the game such as gameplay, game characters, basic visuals, concept art, narrative and things like that.