I have done a few illustrations for this game working through various game mechanics, styles, and ideas.

This is a useful creative tool for me to rapidly try out different concepts and see what they might look like before I even write a single line of code or start creating any game assets.

Creating concept art becomes a way I can immerse myself in the world and atmosphere of the game ahead of time because as I am drawing these illustrations I am imagining the various aspects of the gameplay occurring.  This can even include me making hand gestures and sound effects without me realizing it as I try out the game in my mind’s eye.  As embarrassing as that might sound for some people it has been something I’ve done unashamedly since I first started drawing as a child.  It makes the experience that much more involved and creatively useful for me.

The mechanics of the game are fluid and easy to change when I am prototyping with illustrations so I can work through many ideas quickly as I form my plan about what to implement in the first prototype. It also serves as a way to get myself psyched about the game and really feeling the emotion and experience I want to try and create for the player.

This latest game has been inspired by a specific title I came up with yesterday.  I’ve been brainstorming various game ideas for it and think I’ve finally settled on a concept I want to implement a prototype of. I’ll keep the title in reserve for now but I expect to make a few more updates along the development cycle.

If you are a game designer feel free to let me know a little about your creative process when you are beginning with a new game.  I have used many different approaches and there are obviously many ways to do it.  I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has used a concept art driven approach to good effect with their games.

Just a little drawing I did tonight while I was taking a break from a game project I’m working on.

I’ve been drawing a lot of variant image styles and slice types to use with the new puzzle game I came up with last weekend during the mini LudumDare #7 friendly competition.  I’m trying to explore the potential space of the game mechanic I created since it seems fairly original so far from what I can tell. It was also pretty well received by most people who have played it so far.

As opposed to a lot of the other image puzzles out there this one seems more rare.  I have searched around and I have found jigsaw piece image puzzles, find the difference image puzzles, and spin the 3d object till it matches a silohette type puzzles.  I have not found any slice based image puzzles yet.  I would guess they are out there but who knows?  My searching has yielded nothing so far. Perhaps one reason they are not as popular are they take a lot of work.  For the current version of the puzzle I have to first draw an overall image in Photoshop.  Then I use four more layers to break that image down into different image slices that will eventually interlock to form the original image again.

I am currently exploring all the ways I can vary the styles of the art before moving onto more slices than four.  I have been listing possible image genres as well for helping to inspire various drawings.  So far I have listed things like food, animals, people, places, scenes, machines, and architecture. It is a lot of fun to create these sliced images and then see them come together as people play the puzzle.