MatchYS drafts: Horatio

This is Horatio (some drafts), Pauly's best friend! 
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He's the "oh-play-with-me-all-day-long" kind, so it is difficult sometimes obey to Loretta and make tidy the room while this huge fur ball is around! I named Him after my favourite character of the Crime Drama CSI: Horatio Caine... this is a play on word only for italians, 'cause in italian language the word "Caine" sounds very similarly to the word "Cane" = "Dog" 

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MatchYS: Starting a new project!

A little preview of CRYsoftDev's new project... I'm the solo artist once again!Emoticon heart Emoticon upset

Enjoy!

Diventa maestro del drifting nel nuovo gioco Skiddy - iPhone Italia Blog

Diventa maestro del drifting nel nuovo gioco Skiddy - iPhone Italia Blog

DevDiary – July 2015 Skiddy teaser

“Skiddy is a product designed to simulate driving on ice or the drifting style of driving that is now becoming popular in racing. It utilizes the same Neveplast Np30 product currently used for Alpine skiing and Tubby tubing slopes. This surface is designed to have a low level of friction contact area and a slippery surface.” - Neveplast - 

Now you can challenge your drifting abilities on your smartphone! 

Hi all! This is FranzinaV, CRYsoft Development Graphic Artist and I’m here to introduce you Skiddy, our latest fatigue!

It’s been a while since we posted something about CRYsoft’s activities. The thing is we were so busy during the realization of our brand new game, that we forgot to spread the news about it properly. We are still here, working for the first time, on commission! Now we’re ready to dance with Skiddy on the new path we’ve chosen to step on.

Neveplast s.r.l. the italian creator of artificial sky slopes, entrusted us the realization of its first entry in the App’s world and as game artist and art director of myself, I am quite satisfied about it. This is an important statement since we all are hypercritical about our own work!
I have to spend a word to thank Rolling Legend first, for the way this job teached me how to free my imagination and grow in self-confidence, besides the fact to having made known our work to Neveplast’s guys of course. They agreed on the fact that my style was suitable for their project, so they decided to see what we could have churn out with a mock up. And so our adventure began with few simple slides of presentation.

Mockup for the presentation: Just a few sketches to show the potential without going into details: only colors, simple shapes and a hideous prototype kart that makes me shudder watching it now (thank goodness, this slide is not in High Res)!

 

As it happened with Rolling Legend, the focus is once again on the relationship between the colours and on the way in which they influence each other. We choose a strong colour impact; mainly primary colours and their complementary pure and “flat” which, in my imagination, they return a little the idea of old arcade games (a little bite of the “Kyoto” track, my favourite here).

Skiddy is a quick and immediate game without pretension of realism, so the style of the assets had to be very simple and immediate as well, keeping in mind that it is a 2D game! As a non game designer, I usually do not participate to the “analysis phases” and I’m not even much of a help in logistics. But sometimes I’m truly happy and satisfied when my graphic solutions support some practical options of the game itself. I’m always glad to help even when I should not :P

the “Savana” asset

Very amusing was the making of the karts. For I’m not a real designer aaand… my technical design skill really sucks! So it has been a kind of a wager to give shape and character to things never seen nor piloted, which were waiting for me, challenging me (sketch me, if you can!), from the photographs I received for inspiration.

The example of customization - from the presentation

As you can see by the video, we decided to cut short the pleasantries, and draw entire blocks of mechanical parts to facilitate the vehicle settings before the race (and by the way, it is even easier for the Code Master, to manage the kart issue this way!).

A special mention to the music. On the video, you can listen the HOME track of Skiddy, part of the OST composed and mixed by our Music Baker Cristiano “Tecnyoh” Chikikatomo… it simply Rocks! \m/

Video Player

I told you that Skiddy was not intended to be a realistic game, yet we still tried to give the impression of depth despite its being a 2D game with top view. So I drew the assets with a false perspective (any architect or true designer, could mow my hands at the mere sight of it, but my motto lately is: “To hell the perspective!” in a “gracious” manner of speaking) and static translucent shadows which integrate well with the land and the assets with a decent illusion of natural light. I hate the flatness, so the dilemma was great: I tried in every way to apply shadows to all assets but some of them had been created to return a different light conditions, to give the idea of a change in position of the source (the sun), then some shadows have warmer colors, just for this reason.

As for the logistics, and as some of you already know, we always do our best to create games and Apps with the maximum attention for details, therefore everything you see was created by us, each element has been hand drawn, from the panels to icons to the buttons.

No pre packaged assets: all made in CRYsoft!

The false perspective and the shadows :D

One more word about the special track we have dedicated to our beloved small town San Benedetto del Tronto.

A tribute that we hope will lead one day the true Skiddy, the one of the real world created by Neveplast, also here and maybe see our karts (with the special design made by us), whizzing by the sea!

Skiddy may be the nth Racing Kart Game, but don’t be hasty in judgments and classifications, I love it also for its being a borderline! The fun is guaranteed, and the challenge will satisfy even the veterans of Racing Games.

So stay tuned, the release day is approaching!

FranzinaV out ;)

CRYsoftdev's brand new Logotype & about Skiddy

It's been a while since the last time I posted in my own blog!
The thing is that we were so busy during the realization of our brand new game Skiddy, that we forgot to spread the news about it...
With Skiddy we embarked on a new path, since our projects on Rolling Legend as a console game are still fresh on our minds and we're waiting to start, we worked hard on a new game on commission: Skiddy for Neveplast® to be precise!
So we thought to give a radical change to our previous life as group and teamwork.
First step was the restyling of CRYsoftdev's logo, reviewed in its colours and shapes, but with the same soul of the old one.

 

CRYsoft Development Logotype 2011

CRYsoft Development Logotype 2015

The second step was not a change of style neither a change of direction or purposes.
We will always devote our brains and our efforts to create smart games with clean and simple graphics and music but in more lighthearted mood, thus we decided to accept every challenge and also work for others!
So we started to design Skiddy about six months ago, with Neveplast®'s advices and worked on it for two and half months. A very smooth, clear, and fast job... the best clients! They knew what they wanted, always confronting with us with sense and intelligence! I accepted the challenge and I really had fun in drawing it, even if I'm not good with technological or mechanic things :P
So what comes next is the release of the game on the App Store first. It'll be available for Android and WP afterwards.
More details to come in the next blog entry!

For now, enjoy the prototype of the Home screen!

Stay tuned and do not forget to keep Rollin' ;)

CRYsoftdev's brand new Logotype & about Skiddy

Rolling Legend - episode1 Behind the scenes - Part I (backgrounds)

For me, Rolling Legend was, and still is, a huge job, my first real job as Game Artist and it took me a long time to figure out what to do and where to go... From the animations of the monsters in cartoon style, to the backgrounds literally built by pieces to be entrusted to the level designer to give them sense and logic!
Now I'd like to talk about the backgrounds. At the beginning it was difficult to understand the needs of a game, I was only taking care of aesthetics issues instead of technical matters... I was a disaster! But slowly I started to follow the right path!
At first it was a triumph of objects, monsters, props as you can see below

It is a mess isn't it? So much stuff here!
The Level Designer was shocked thinking about the amount of memory needed to handle all this lol!
Definitely not good...


I drew hundreds of objects, assets and props, at first separate to give freedom to my friends, but freedom often means waste of time.
So I started to search for the balance between practicality and big special effects (joking) and my motto has become: "a few items, and great effect"

Since I love to madness architecture and the great depth, I am convinced that the central perspective and symmetry were the best solution, to create decent effects of fake 3D, though with very basic shapes. 

The result is "easy and quick"

Someone told us that Rolling Legend is more like a console game (and we are planning to prepare some surprises on this topic) and that we aimed too far up, but whatever you think I really hope you'll enjoy its graphics!
It is more than an experiment, and we're improving controls and the performance to grant a more enjoyable game experience.

So stay tuned and follow us to have news about Johnny Marble and his friends!

Rolling Legend - episode1 Behind the scenes - Part I (backgrounds)

ROLLING LEGEND ON SLIDE DB

We're on SlideDB  YAY!

Please help us rise popularity, by visiting our profile or rating ROLLING LEGEND if you already got it! We have indeed a very ambitious project that goes beyond mobile devices, I dare say that phones and tablets are just the beginning... Rolling Legend will become a console game sooner or later hell yeah!
It would be great if anyone in my circles could HELP by rating this game I'm working on as Art Director and solo Artist.

Your help by sharing and passing the word, will make the difference in the messy and cahotic promotional phase of young indie companies which are trying to touch the sky :D

Click on the image below and visit our SlideDB profile! 

 

thanks for watching! <3

ROLLING LEGEND ON SLIDE DB