Trees

The first creation I am making for this game is the big tree character which is the first character to appear in the game. This will also act as the first “level” or stage of the game. I’ve been looking at banzai trees because the weird shapes created by the poor confined little things would make for really great level design, with interesting ups and downs which other trees lack. The image above is of just one of the many banzai inhabiting my student house. This one decided to spiral outwards rather than growing up like a normal tree. I created this artist’s impression to tidy up some of the wild areas and simplify the image:

Because my game world is round, I want all the imagery to seem very rounded, and use as few straight lines as possible. I want circles in general to be a strong theme throughout the game for continuity. This tree forms a spiral shape, other banzais form a very snake-like weaving effect. Taking this into consideration, I felt very inspired by the tree paintings of Katie Sevigny and the way she uses circles, spirals and curves in a lot of her art.

The colour schemes in these images are also very unnatural in places, giving an impression of an abstract place somewhere between reality and fantasy. After reading the Matsuda & Takai interview in Game Worlds, it seems important to create a world which seems real yet unlike anything that currently exists.