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Game Art & Logos

For the art style of my game, ideally, I plan to create a round, chibi style of my game - mostly in the main character Cooper. Other assets, including the three other characters will be not chibi but will remain in a round, friendly and simple design, with bright colours to stabilise my target audience (masculine ages 7-11). 

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So I researched into three art styles - chibi, Animal Crossing New Leaf (Nintendo, 2012) and Juicy Realm (SpaceCan, 2018).

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This type of art style is manga but simplified. It was first created as a manga series called “Chibi Maruko-chan” by Momoko Sakura. The series proved to be extremely popular and in 1990 was made into an anime series, which also became a big success and still continues to this day. 

 

Chibi style is also extra-friendly than the original manga. The style consists of small sizes, quite large heads and smaller bodies. These designs are simplified, but their designs make the viewers feel the art’s cuteness, sweetness, and positive connotation because of the style of mini. In addition to mini, most people, including me, find the idea of miniscule cute and tickled pink. Simply because it’s cute and dinky. This art style would be appropriate for masculine 7-11, but even though my audience is masculine and chibi is quite a feminine style, I will design my character in a chibi outline and then apply features with colours and assets of clothing to suit my audience. The pros of this style is that with its simplicity, this will be appropriate for my audience and it degrades the age range because the visuals are friendly. However, the cons are that this style might not suit the masculine background, but this will be tweaked. 

Chibi:

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Animal Crossing New Leaf (Nintendo, 2012) is a third-person game about a cute town simulator and friendship. It consists of a human main character who becomes mayor of the town that holds animal citizens. This game is mostly known as a cute game. It’s a sweet and innocent game about a life of simplicity. However, even though the art style is feminine and can appeal to young boys too, the style is similar to chibi, and, yet again, simple, with design and colours. This is suitable for players ages 7+. To describe the art style, it’s round, sweet and bright with colours, including some natural colours to an extent, such as brown, green and grey but all lighter in colour to define the natural world around the characters. I can also use the character’s art style as a reference to help me spark up some ideas for my main character. In addition to that, I can also reference the environment for my game’s environment. My game will be western but the west is not a desert but a magical meadow and forest. So I can redesign Animal Crossing’s design of rocks, cliffs, trees, grass and plants for my game. 

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Animal Crossing New Leaf (Nintendo, 2012): 

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Juicy Realm (SpaceCan, 2018) is a top-down shooter game, or specifically, twin-stick and roguelike shooter. The forest has some dark shades around the perimeter of the screen, and there's not much bright colours. As I searched on the web for the game’s age rating, none seemed to be showing the age rates. But from what I analysed from Google Images, I noticed blood from enemy fruits, the gameplay consists of constant violence until the area is clear, and exploding vehicles by slashing at them. But apart from that, the character designs are also cute. They move in a chibi manner - bouncy and exaggerated limb swings. Overall this game may not be suitable for my audience, I’d estimate the age rating would be 10+ or 11+. But other than that, I can use the environment and character design as a reference, as I find them both inspiring for my game. Since my game is western-fantasy, I can apply some of the features from the characters of Juicy Realm, redesign them and apply them to my main character, and even on my enemy creatures. Furthermore, because my ideal environment for my game is a fantasy area, Juicy Realm has my ideal environment design, except I will design mine with more lighting, and a warm hue to represent the western atmosphere. 

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Juicy Realm (SpaceCan, 2018):

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5 logos:

When it comes to logos, they always represent something. Whenever we see a logo, we know what it represents because it’s iconic. For example, we see the play button in a red square - YouTube. Or the letter G in four colours of green, red, yellow and blue - Google. But with game logos, each have their own font style, colours and details to represent their games. Or even symbols, with their colour and shade.

The iconic logo of Mortal Kombat is a dragon in a circle. Firstly, circles represent wholeness, infinity and original perfection. In this case, Mortal Kombat circular logo would represent the last two meanings. Therefore, the circle would consist the spectrum of heroes players can play as. Realistically, dragons represent evil in both chivalric and Christian traditions, but in orient traditions, they represent wisdom, power, strength, and hidden knowledge. But in the game, they have elder gods that are said to appear as dragons in their true forms, hence the dragon in the logo. 

Mortal Kombat (Avalanche Software, Eurocom, Just Games Interactive, Midway Games, Midway Studios Los Angeles, Other Ocean Interactive, Point of View, Inc., NetherRealm Studios, 1992 - present)

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Apex Legends is quite a red game, literally, in terms of colour. The map of the game is literally canyons on top of canyons and sand. This logo is a combination of its two logos. Firstly, the symbol has sharp corners, yet, despite that, the whole symbol is bold in size. This, therefore, represents the games’ consistence of Legends and their brave battles. The sharp corners consist of the game’s environment of guns and violence, especially by how there are scratch marks against the logo too to convey the conflict between players as Legends. In terms of colour, It’s either a red background, or the logo is red. Either way, red normally represents bravery, rage, danger and passion. In this case - the first three. 

Apex Legends (Respawn Entertainment, 2019):

Whilst looking for game logos, on Google Images, for me to research, I found this particular image that attracted me to analyse it. This image presented an image of a list of iconic gaming logos in their iconic colours. Nintendo in its iconic red, PlayStation in its blue, Xbox in its green, and then Origin in its orange. This image was perfect because how it attracted me by its list of the greatest and main gaming programs in their colours. Maybe the colours wouldn’t have a semiotic representation since all the platforms consist of the same things - games. 

Nintendo (1889), PlayStation (Sony Interactive Entertainment, 1994), Xbox (Microsoft, 2001) Origin (Electronic Arts, 2011):

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This logo portrays clear meanings of the battles between plants against zombies. But by how plants is on top of zombies with bright green and bold, round lettering, the plants appear more superior and as if they’re the protagonists than the zombies, since the zombies are at the bottom with slightly smaller boldness to their lettering and they’re glowing from red and orange from behind, which would imply that the zombies are the villains of the game, as red with orange would represent evil, especially since the lettering is grey with rocky textures, and rough outlines. 

In addition to this, the design of the entire logo is appropriate for young audiences because the design is round, bold and a palette of bright colours. If it was to be a game for PEGI 16+, the logo would be otherwise. A logo likely to have detailed textures on the lettering, and a formal, and solid font. 

Plants VS Zombies (PopCap Games, 2009):

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This logo presents the overall concept of the game. It shows the containment of all playable characters and then the boss, in the shadows,  just towering over them with glowing red eyes and its set of minions charging at the heroes with a plane in the top right. As I observed for further analysing, I noticed that there are two colours in a gradient, but not very gently like a normal gradient - as if clashing. The bottom colour is a mixture of orange, yellow and red. By how this mixture is surrounding the heroes, this makes the colour connote warmth, courage, bravery and strength. By how the characters rise in the air from below clarifies the colour’s representation. On the other hand, the upper colours clashing with below, is dark and purply blue, with specks of pinky red light, with a shadow of the boss towering over the protagonists. This conveys the heroes’ upcoming objections in their epic, brave adventures. 

In terms of the game’s title, the lettering isn’t very round, instead it’s bold and square, yet the design is slightly irregular. Despite that, the colour of ‘Juicy’ is a warm yellow and orange represents the characters’ valiant adventures of defeating enemy fruits in the realm. Even though I couldn’t find sites that would reveal the game’s age rate, personally, I think the game would be 9+, the design has a fun sense to it, but by how the concept of the game is designed, it makes the game suitable for audience within the 9+ age range. 

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Juicy Realm - (SpaceCan, 2018):

Reference

Reiji Yoshida (2018) Momoko Sakura, creator of 'Chibi Maruko-chan,' dies of breast cancer [Online]. Available from: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/27/national/momoko-sakura-creator-chibi-maruko-chan-dies-breast-cancer/#.XYtyrShKhPY [Accessed 12 September 2019].

 

Nintendo (2012) Animal Crossing New Leaf  [Computer game]. Nintendo UK.

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XD (2017) ‘Juicy Realm Gameplay Demo’  YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO4w3HP-610 [Accessed 15 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) Pocket Gamer (2018) Battle creepy fruit foes in the roguelike Juicy Realm, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2018 [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/3FAsT2kdjz3VwiAUA [Accessed 15 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) Pinterest (2010) 
animal crossing new leaf gameplay - Google Search | New animal ... [Online]. Available from:
https://images.app.goo.gl/xkRmiSSCqFXNeqyT6 [Accessed 15 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) pngimg.com (Unknown date) Download PNG image: Mortal Kombat logo PNG [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/fuMxvP6qJYwRkQPP8 [Accessed 15 September 2019].

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REDBUBBLE (2019) Apex Legends Logo | Apex Legends Watercolor Symbol Poster [Online]. Available from: https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Apex-Legends-Logo-Apex-Legends-Watercolor-Symbol-by-surik/37092381.LVTDI [Accessed 16 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) Reddit (2018) Gaming companies and their 'current' platforms [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/XqdaL2tMb4gHtc6d7 [Accessed 16 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) Wiki-Fandom (2004) Plants vs. Zombies (series) | Plants vs. Zombies Wiki | Fandom [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/EyeAB9BxihJoJkc78 [Accessed 16 September 2019].

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(From Google Images) YouTube (2017) Juicy Realm Gameplay Demo [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/H2eBVAn2mqxbZYmz6 [Accessed 16 September 2019].

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Google Images (2019) chibi png [Online]. Available from: https://images.app.goo.gl/72WYYayRySVTM96NA [Accessed 16 September 2019].

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