DragonVale Elementals concepts
This project was the last thing I worked on at Backflip Studios. I worked with the original producer of DragonVale, who between him and me had written most of the lore, descriptions, and ruled on what fit in the game for years. The idea was that the same elemental magic that created dragons could create monsters, creature s of myth, and raw elementals (if George R.R. Martin's dragons are "fire made flesh", ours were a biological manifestation of their various elemental magics) . This was a project that did not move forward. I had a lot of fun thinking about it and exploring a style that would carry the DV brand into new territory.
A key idea was to address the issue of "disposable" duplicates (you sell a lot of baby dragons in DragonVale once you have a pretty full collection, trying to get the rare ones. It's a bit emotionally unsatisfying. Where do they go? With elementals, the idea that they might merge to form more powerful incarnations seemed more natural than dragons doing that
Just playing with shapes and thoughts and technique. Warming up. And following Iain McCaig's process of "saying yes to everything" for a while, then going back to edit. You never know what might spark something that sticks (those eyebrows, lol).
More blue sky, straight ahead playing with different tones rapidly. Silly? Elegant? Stylized? Naturalistic?
Playing with rending a bit. The effects pipeline for creating good looking elementals on the phone would have to be developed for things like water and fire, but for the pitch I decided to just paint without worrying about it. I like the badger a lot.
Thoughts on progression from Plant elemental seed to titan. We decided that although the variety of form was nice, it was a little disturbing that a bird turned into a Green Man and then into a giant woman. Plus, there would be lots of variety already.
So, here's a take on Earth elemental progress through either the biggest elemental or a titan that have a form that grows instead of changing completely.
A feminine Earth progression. Pushing the human elements a bit more than the more golem like male from the previous page.
A demonstration of how a player would have good use for all the extra base level elementals they would collect to form larger, rarer elementals.
One with plant, using the complete shape shift forms 1. because they were done and time was short, and 2. to document that possibility in this chart form, so it might get more eyes on it later.
Playing with Forest titans. Earth and Plant. What if you could create other mythological creatures very rarely? Giants? Unicorns? Pegasus'? Fairies? Raw elementals are chaotic, but maybe when more stable, they are more biological or complex?
A quick mock up of a tree for how someone might get from a bunch of level 1 Plant and Earth elementals to a Forest Titan. Mostly for a pitch to the executives.
Sketches for fire. Sometimes it's embarrassing to show rough sketches, but these told me and the producer what we needed, so we didn't do more.
Fire was going to be tricky to do in game. Here's an exploration with no linework, to see if softer edges looked good. PS, painting things like fire or mother of pearl with gradient maps over b/w is the way to go.
More fire. Linework added, and playing with how abstract to go.