The alligator model and rigged character animations were not made by me
These VFX were for a 8 player deathmatch brawl game, where you play as space alligators. With the fast paced and chaotic gameplay that we wanted, it was very important that, at a glance, the effect of the ability was clear. Another design pillar that I wanted to follow was the more cartoony style that we established. Taking all of this in mind, some of the games that I researched as style examples were Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and Smite.
Pre-production
The first step that I like to take is sketching storyboards of the effects I want to make. This give me a rough sense of what textures I need and the general sequence that happens. In the future I think doing this digitally would work better because this didn’t give me the chance to play with colors before jumping into making sprites.
Sprites
The sprites that I use for this project were for the most part hand drawn because we wanted a bold, cartoony style overall. Another big consideration was the shape language of each sprite. For the snappier movements (which was a considerable amount due to the game genre) I used a lot of hard and jagged edges to emphasize the punch. The softer elements such as the wind and poison effects were created with a softer brush, however I still kept the overall shape of the sprites very exaggerated.
