If you were ever wondering: how do I take this fantastic idea and make it real?!?!?…here’s the process we follow at CNG Studios.
Of course, there are many other paths, but we wanted to share our experience in hopes that it may help all of you out there working on the next amazing project.
Moving from an idea to a final asset for the game is something that makes you feel great! Everything starts with the Level Design. In our case Gonzalo creates a draft of the level, objectives, and assets that will be needed for a particular level. In this case, we are showing an example from the Ice Factory Level which is part of our Alpha demo.
The Ice Factory level is dedicated to producing ice cubes in Antarctica (yes, there is a reason behind this, but you will need to discover it during the game 😉 ). In order to create ice cubes, you need some ingredients likes: water & the mega freezer. For the freezer, you need power and ventilation. Therefore, the Ice Factory level will have ice machines, water pumps (to take the water to the ice machine), a power supply (so the machine can work) and finally ventilation (to avoid machines overheating).
Once we know what we need for the basic level, we start with a simple sketch on paper or digital format and then we refine it with a basic color scheme. Later on, we provide this information to Warly (our Lead Artist) and he makes magic happen: cleaning up the lines and adding more details to the image. We use the image in the level and confirm that the color scheme and overall look and feel matches. Once we are ok, we consider it the final asset.
Hint: If you ever have doubts about the size of an image, always go big (pixel/resolution), as you can always reduce the size without losing quality. If you try the opposite way, to expand an image that is too small, you will end up with a pixelated image and no definition. Of course, there is one caveat… If your image is too big and has too many details, once you shrink it, all those details will disappear. So choose wisely!
Reach out to us if you ever want a second opinion or just to bounce around ideas.
Happy Creating!