I was a bit stumped on the cloud train design, therefore I pushed it until later. Also, as an escape, I meant, change of pace, I made our train conductor, the hamster, running on its giant wheel to power the train. We were planning to put the hamster by the engine train at the front.
Now, back to our Cloud train design. Originally I picture some train flying over the cloud. For reference, I picture train car that kids can ride in and some fluffy cloud with god rays shining through the window.
So as before, I came up with 4 different designs, with something more sophisticated that kids’ train, and asked my teammates to vote. They like design B where it has pillars and more open walls.
During later brainstorm session, we wanted to turn this train car into more like an observation deck, with roman pillars. Also, since Jake, one of the Audio Designers, mentioned that for wind sound, he had some rustling leaves sound, maybe we should put a tree in this train. So I came up with this initial layout for the cloud train.
I picked Ionic column design since it has the rounded shape. To match with the Greek theme, I use a classical design for the railings. Then since we’re going to add a tree for the level, I added some vines to the columns. Instead of vine leaves, I pick rounded cloud shapes to tie in to the cloud theme. Also to open up the view, I put a broken column in the middle of the train.
For the tree, I tried to find interesting shape, and came upon bonsai trees. They tend to have weird shape trunks that made it look like ancient tree. Then to match the vines, I use cloud shapes as the leaves portion. For other props, I put the other broken piece of the pillar on the ground, with additional bench that mimic Ionic column, so we can place some items there. I was thinking to add animated swaying grass on the ground, but changed my mind since I don’t want to clutter the scene too much. Instead, I animated the cloud leaves on the trees. I also add the same clouds as background and foreground of this train.
I needed a break after this. Thankfully since I pushed to make the art early on for this jam, we still had about 3-4 more days before submission, and I got most of the environment assets done by now.
Next week, we will talk about finishing, integration, and finally picking colors for the game. Thank you for reading!
