One of the major components we had to have in our games Vertical Slice, was a 2D intro cut scene using 2D assets in-engine. As the concept artist for our game, I took the lead role in this task and planned to create stills that we could then animate.
Above is the first still for our intro cut scene. The text instantly informs the players the setting and year. All of these shots have been digitally painted in Photoshop; most of them taking from around three to six hours each.
The image above is an ariel shot overlooking the city of Naples during the Second World War. I really enjoyed forming the angles and composition for the stills and also trying to closely match the sketches from my initial storyboard.
I used several reference images to create the best pre-visualisation before digitally painting over them using several brushes to suit the right textures and lighting. The Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft in our story, is transporting the protagonist William to an airfield near Naples, Italy.
This interior shot was a tough challenge with all the sharp angles leading to the centre.
Above is another still I made, this time of the cockpit of the B-24 Liberator looking out of the left window. I wanted to get a variation of both interior and exterior shots in the cut scene to get a sense of perspective of the aeroplane in the sky.
Here is an extended shot I made that is held for about eight seconds before changing. I made sure to add detail but not spend too much time on things like the rivets which is actually just the same rivet, duplicated several times and then copy and pasted vertically and horizontally.
I thoroughly enjoyed and looked forward to making the action stills which start at this shot above of the Liberator getting hit by a sudden shock wave.
One of the trickier shots to paint was this one of a massive smoke plume. I had to use several photographs to understand the rolls of smoke, as this is something I have never done before. To make a dramatic impact of the eruption column, I placed the Liberator over the harsh shadow from the plume; isolating the size comparison.
I found the still above challenging, although I knew what I was doing. Several layers had to be blended in the options panel and I had to filter through them quite frequently to match up with other contrasts in the image. Most of the flames were from my own photographs I took and then simply painted over the top and adjusted with light levels etc.
As the project drew closer to the last deadlines, I realised I was not going to finish all of the stills in time. Above is the last shot which took some time to plan. I had to sum up three components of the intro story into just one image; Mount Vesuvius erupting, William getting captured (by Nazi Germans) and his body language conveying his emotions, all at the same time!
After the previous still, an impactful title of our games name (as well as William's status report) appears reading 'Missing In Action'. Our vertical slice is at the beginning of the story and follows straight after the intro. I would have liked to have edited sound to our cut scene but as all the deadlines came closer I had to prioritize essential jobs. However, I was able to find a fantastic royalty free horror score pack that we then used as our main theme and another track for our main menu scene.
This is our games box art for PC release (as if it was an actual studio product). I absolutely enjoyed every bit of making this, as I have created several DVD covers for college and personal projects before; and love presenting the content in this form. I made sure to include fine details from the age rating, right down to the small print for an authentic outcome!
One of the more important things I made halfway through our project, was a gameplay storyboard. I neatened my original rough Biro version into a digital one above which is almost like a step by step of the stages of gameplay. Furthermore, I included small tone values to push the viewer's eyes to what the scene looks like, rather than just black outlines. Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit. Although there were many stressful times and lots of organizing, leading up to the final hand in, I found that creating art material as visual problem solving for our team exhilarating.
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