Old vs New

(click for bigger image)

So. The final scene is finally painted, nearly all the animations are done and in the game, almost all of the bugs and suggestions my testers have made have been fixed/changed/added and I'm nearly ready to write the last scene into the game. We're definitely close to the first part being released now!

As I finished the final scene, something I'd been putting off until I was sure I really wanted it in the game and had the time to do it, I saved it to the backgrounds folder and had a look through all the backgrounds of the game. It's not a huge game - and it's only the first part - but there's an interesting range of backgrounds. I designed some nice locations in the town of Wave, where this first part is set, and enjoyed painting them all. However, sometimes the initial concept sketches for the backgrounds - which I did nearly a year ago - are totally different to how they ended up.

The image above shows how I envisioned two scenes for the game initially, and then underneath how each scene turned out in the end. In some cases, where I had drawn 2 adjoined rooms in concept sketches I ended up combining both parts into a single background, indeed, I'm starting to use depth a bit more, particularly in my indoors scenes.

In other cases, I totally changed the shape, layout and colour palette of a location, to make for what I feel is a more visually immersive location. It's interesting to see how much has changed from when I drew the concept sketches to how the scenes ended up, and how much my style changed in that time.

I haven't posted all my concept sketches here, of course, because I want to save some surprise for when you actually play the game, but I felt it would be interesting to share these otherwise never to be used concepts, and the contrast with the final piece.