“Bye-Bye Balloon” is an endless runner mobile game that incorporates traditional art into a story of a little boy who loses his balloon and imagines where the balloon goes as it rises into the atmosphere. The concept was written and produced by Paolo Trelles for his start-up game studio, Hit Reset Games and is currently in production.
As an artist I was responsible for the backgrounds, assets, and animations. The look and feel of the game art derives from the child’s subconscious being crayon drawings and main environments as watercolor. The main art in this game was designed in Photoshop.
Sketches and Concept
In the beginning, the art was designed with real crayon. What gives crayon its iconic texture, and how do you make the colors cohesive and render on a watercolor background? In this process we struggled with the textures of the paper when scanned, and the consistency and accuracy of the colors. When scanned, the white would show through the back of the assets making the art look odd on a watercolor background. In Photoshop, when the white was removed, there would still be flecks of white that were missed, and the color and consistency of the wax didn’t look good and often blended in with the background with too many holes. In addition, the assets needed to be consistent in line width and quality in-game. Using real materials, it was difficult to scale and translate the assets without making the lines look thinner and assets looking different from each other.
Balloon
Final Animation
Assets
Process
Final Assets
Although the authentic crayon was what we really wanted, with the materials at hand, the concept just wasn’t working, and we resulted in generating the assets in Photoshop, which added an easier level of consistency in line thickness, thorough alleviation of white paper texture, more efficient workflow, and in the end, more appealing assets.