Title-screen Background

This week I have worked primarily on the Title Screen background for our thus-far nameless game based on the “Echo” Concept Document.

It is a relatively detailed picture, so it took quite a lot of time to make. I wanted it to invoke a sense of mystery, darkness and untouched nature.

I tried to create multiple layers of foreground and background so as to make the image seem as three-dimensional as possible, by, for example, having branches cross each other and drawing a set of trees behind the primary ones.

I wanted to make the image have as much detail as time would allow, so I added a couple of small things, like the frog enemy that I have previously drawn. I drew quite a few mushrooms growing on the trees, partly for looks, but also because mushrooms do not utilize photosynthesis as a means to gather nourishment, and the forest in our game is portrayed as extremely dark, so it would make sense for mushrooms to be a common occurrence. Although I also added green leaves because I wanted it to pop against the brown and black primary colors, even though that goes against my previous reasoning. But hey, artistic license and stuff, am I right?

I used a lot more different brushes while drawing this picture than I usually do. The lichen on the branches, the leaves along the middle treetrunk, the fireflies as well as the layer of darkness over the background are done with different brushes. It was quite fun to experiment with. The leaf brush in particular, was very helpful.

I showed the image to my group, and I got the suggestion from our Scrum Master that one could remove the fireflies, and then add them in Unity later, as a game object. This would allow them to move, and would make the image seen much more alive.

This made me wonder if it would be possible to add the upcoming animation to the frog on the left tree as well, since I believe I would have to remove it otherwise, since it would look very stale compared to the then mobile fireflies.

I would also like to add some of my group’s other artist’s moth assets, so that the main character of our game is shown on the title screen.