Brawler (Unfinished 2D/3D Fighting Game)
I debated even posting all this work but I guess it wouldn't hurt.
Back in 2016 I had an idea of making a Sonic Battle clone with new mechanics and online multiplayer. For those unware of what Sonic Battle is/was, it is a 3D fighting game on the GameBoy Advance that used 2D sprites to present their characters in a three dimensional battling arena. It still is one of it's kind, and a game I thoroughly enjoyed in my childhood, so naturally I thought bringing back this sort of style of fighter would be cool to see in an updated form, featuring characters from B,C+S as fighters instead of the Sonic The Hedgehog cast. (Check "Sancragow Character Design" on my portfolio for more information on B,C+S.)
The problem was that I couldn't seem to fully replicate the exact presentation and engine as the original, while the camera work proved to be yet a whole set of challenge in itself. I'm not a programmer and I couldn't seem to be able to properly convey to my hired help how this should look and play like.
Another aspect that took up my time was working with the sprite animator (if I recall correctly, he went by 'Magickbird' I believe - very talented and was quick in his delivery, I hope he continues to do what he does!) I drew some sketches of how I imagined the character's mannerisms and movements to be presented in sprite form and he did a very good job translating this.
I took charge of art direction and I made sure that my hired freelancers were paid on time and in full.
Eventually I decided to pull the plug as funding was starting to become costly and I miscalculated just how tedious and complex such a project would be. Sonic Battle had at least 10 playable fighters with their own unique movesets and sprite sheets, plenty of arenas and music to go along with it, several story modes, etc. I planned on having only a small fraction of this but even then it seemed like such a task would take quite some time, longer than the few months we had a small amount of progress to show for.
Nevertheless, this was my first venture in indie game development and I learned from my mistakes since then. (I hope.)
This was meant to be placeholder name and logo for the game project but it kinda stuck at the time. I doubt I'd go with it now though. Style was inspired by Persona 5, a graphic designer's wet dream.
An edited screengrab of what one of the builds for the game looked like.
I think all things considered, we were getting close to the original game's aesthetics. Of course, our UI needed a bit more flair and tweaking, but I did like where it was going.
An early version of Sancragow's idle sprite. Eventually we narrowed down the sprite palette, but this is the first sprite art I had my hand on so I was bound to make some rookie mistakes.
Vectorized character artwork the sprite was based off of. I don't think it's terrible but there's a lot of stretching and proportionally incorrect anatomy going on here, but it got the point across at least.
This is Cragow, the tritagonist of B,C+S, in vector form. Much like Sancragow's vector form, it's not perfect.
Being a turtle-like ankylosaurs, Cragow can recede into his shell and is meant to be the character with the highest defense.
A page of sketches detailing Sancragow's movements. I should have brushed up on some animation principles...
A graphic intended to visualize how I wanted to implement destructible environments to the programmer.
A graphic intended to communicate to the sprite artist how to tweak some of the sprite animations.
* In-between sprites not done by me.
A graphic intended to communicate with the programmer on how I expected the movement of the characters to be portrayed in the game engine, trying to be as faithful to the original game as possible.
* In-between sprites not done by me.
One of the sprite textures for a wooded wall. It was... serviceable.