My scribble-sketches here show some of the early beat-to-beat combat design as well as thoughts around sussing out the game camera and rough proportions. Early look/feel was starting to form but hadn’t quite been locked down. Early on I focused on the chibi style scale of the characters and offset that with some super heroic high-energy combat beats. I was a pretty big fan of Castle Crashers and looking back on early designs some hints of the influence can be seen in the roughs.
In addition, bosses usually featured a special introduction, a special action camera, unique powers as well as a big visual reward if the player’s team was tough enough to deafeat them.
Being able to visually communicate to the team through rough sketches and documentation allowed me to work closely with the amazing artists that helped bring this ‘baby-bully’ to life!
It started with the three fantasy tropes up top (goblin, knight, wizard). As we pulled more and more fantasy content into the style it just seemed to ‘work’ and was fun to develop. I always wanted to see them in very dynamic poses which drove me to look for something to offset the rigid feel of the blocky style that bothered me. Ultimately a technical animation expert, Mikkel Caiffa, would create the squash and stretch rig that brought the characters to dynamic life and would solidify the highly animated feel we were after. I was lucky to bring him on board. I had worked with him previously and had to find him and recruit him to the cause.
At this point it felt easy representing the product after building and evolving it for so long. It was fun to collaborate and explore how the world of Dungeon Boss could look outside of the in-game screens.
Dungeon Boss would continue to grow and evolve beyond the core we crafted and new people would continue to work on it and add features as it moved into its live operations life cycle.
Allan is a top tier talent, in design direction and art. His level of experience in games is a massive help in defining a project from start to finish. Allan is a natural leader, extremely talented in design and art, and picks up tools quickly so he can test assets in game independently. His actions set an example for the rest of his team. I highly recommend Allan, he is a very rare talent that will elevate any organization he joins.
Allan is in a league of his own. Arguably, the best Art Director a company can ask for - no competition. He's able to create an amazing environment around his team and he is the kind of person that you want to have involved in all your projects. Working on cloning Allan right now.
I've worked with Allan on different projects at different studios and I've always been impressed by his versatile skillsets at a project level (design, visuals, UX) as well as his ability to manage and lead creative groups with amazing culture and collaboration. Top notch pro! Highly recommend working with him if you have the chance. Your studio and products will benefit.