Last month, we shared with you the evolution of the artistic direction of Seasons (see part 1 / part 2 / part 3). And we promised to show you more animated elements as soon as possible. Well, here are some !

As you can see, our fox has been a little bit inconstant since September 2009, but it seems comfortable with his appearence today.
We hope you’ll like it too.

We are proud to announce that 2 months after it has been released, Tuper Tario Tros. has been played more than 1.000.000 times on Newgrounds. And much more if we count the other websites that featured it (and sometimes “stole” it).

Regardless of the exact number, we are happy that so many people played Tuper Tario Tros. and enjoyed it. Some was inspired by the game and created a little flash movie based on TTT and another mash-up between Tetris and Snake.

Maybe Tuper Tario Tros. will come back at the end of 2010. Who knows ?

Previously on “The art direction of Seasons” :
- William is probably not an artist
- We have no money and no 2D animator

> NOVEMBER 2009

We aren’t totally dumbs so we already found another solution.
Our bigger constraint in the development of Seasons is linked to the animation cause the game is based on the changes of seasons and we really want to create living environments. Since few weeks, we was thinking that maybe 2D traditional animation was not a wise choice. We looked for other animation techniques : the one that attracted our attention is similar to vectorial animation and shares some things with the animation technique used in one of our favorite game : Muramasa, the demon blade.

In Muramasa, the characters are composed of many parts (head, upper body, arm,…) linked by pivots (swivels), like 2D puppets.

To make it simple, it’s a great technique cause it allows us to animate characters without being veteran drawers or animators. But there’s still a problem with textures : with our poor skills, it could be really hard to create a whole set of beautiful and consistent textures. So, what can we do ? Use tint areas, that’s it.

> DECEMBER 2009

In order to be sure tint areas could be a good choice, we still have to make backgrounds and animated objects using this art style.

> JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2010

There’s no way we make random choices : we could have continue to chase our 2D traditional animation dream without even being sure of the final result. But it’s important to remember that a game project always have constraints : you need to be flexible and ready to change your plan so you’ll be able to find ingenious solutions to your problems, being consistent with your first intentions. One of us is to make a poetic game, quite like a tale. This intention, you can see it in our first drafts, in the researches Gaël and Samuel made, and we’ll make everything possible to stick to it until the end of the project.

In few weeks, we will show you more animated stuff, but here are 4 mock-ups that illustrate the changes of seasons so you can imagine what Seasons will look like (well, the forest part at least). Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us about the art style !

> SEPTEMBER 2009

At the beginning of September, Swing Swing Submarine starts to work in the dining room of an appartment in Montpellier : this is also the beginning of the development of Seasons. Guillaume will program the game and manage technical parts of the project, I will take care of the game and level design, and concerning the graphics… Well, concerning the graphics we thought we could find another captain, a graphist captain, to join the team. Or maybe we could collaborate with another tiny studio ?

We didn’t have the answer at this moment, but Gaël, a friend of a friend, proposed his help and sent us the result of his first researches, including this artwork you may know already :

A fox in the middle of a living nature : this artwork perfectly illustrates our first intention of the project.
Gaël continued his researches, working on the character design of the fox and testing different art styles : realistic, magical, cute, cartoon…

The magical style didn’t match our intentions. But we really liked the cute little fox you can see in the first picture and we wanted to know how it could be if it was more adult.

Thanks to Gaël, we found the character we were looking for : fox 8/9 seemed to be a good compromise between cartoon and realism. Gaël was not really confortable with 2D animation and was already involved in other projects, so he didn’t join us. We still needed to find someone to work with at long term.

> OCTOBER 2009

It could have been Samuel : this 2D artist we met in June in Paris helped us too, making researches around seasons’ colors and a potential comics look.

Or it could have been Caroline, a more experienced 2D animator who already worked on animation movies.

Yes, it could have been Gaël, Samuel, Caroline, or somebody else, but we couldn’t afford their services cause we didn’t (and still don’t) have any money. One month after the project began, we had the confirmation that we will have to manage the project with a team of 2 : Guillaume and I. And the cat.

Next time, the conclusion : you’ll discover the solutions we found to solve this graphical issue, and you’ll also see the (almost) final graphical style of Seasons!

The development of Seasons began six months ago. And even six months is a long journey for a tiny studio like Swing Swing Submarine.
This week, we want to share the evolution of Seasons’ art direction with you, since the first drafts on paper until now.

Let’s start with the very early drafts William made before we started working on the game full time. But be careful : the following pictures could make your eyes bleed.

> JULY 2009

This drawing is the very first draft I made when we decided that our principal character would be a red fox. I was really excited and ran outside to bought paper and soft pastels (which I never used before). I wanted to create “a red lightning running through the forest”. When I totally screwed the ground colors, and realised that I had a lot of pastels on my face, I decided to stop drawing and closed the pastels box forever.

Still working at Ubisoft, but sometimes my mind flies away. I wonder how I could learn how to draw a fox with my really bad drawing skills…

> AUGUST 2009

If I want to know how to draw a fox with few colors and lines, maybe the best thing to do is just to try. As I was making this picture, I thought this style could totally be a potential illustration for a child book, or a tale. But even if I liked the style, it was really too flat : that’s why I added this paper texture on it.

Next time, more interesting illustrations to see : you’ll discover how Gaël and Samuel helped us find our graphical style and how we failed to find an artist to work with.