Shovel Knight: Kingdom of Calamity
This project is a character design and analysis task based on Yacht Club Game's Shovel Knight.
Part of this project was research into Yacht Club Games and their work ethos:
A lot of analysis went into breaking down and analysing the Shovel Knight art style:
I also did a "sprite swap" were I converted a Shovel Knight character into a different art style and broke down how that changed the way they were perceived:
I also did a sprite demake of the Star Wars character Boba Fett, further allowing me to analyse and practice with the Shovel Knight art style:
There was also the task of looking into environmental issues and making a unique Shovel Knight character off an issue.
The environmental theme I ended up choosing was famine and drought.
With this information in hand, I then created character sketches and some rough storyboards or animation (ordered from oldest to newest):
I then refined upon the sketches further. The design I chose drew heavily from the connotations of ravens being related to death.
This led me to the key art stage, in which I used Adobe Illustrator, a relatively new tool for me.
First Iteration:
Second Iteration:
Idle Pose:
Idle Pose:
Attack Pose:
Third Iteration:
Idle Pose:
Idle Pose:
Attack Pose:
After this I moved onto creating sprites based off of the key art (ordered from oldest to newest):
Initial Version:
Initial Version:
Initial Version Sprite Lineup:
Body Swap:
Body Swap Sprite Lineup:
I then created idle and attack animations based off of these sprites (ordered from oldest to newest):
Idle Animation:
Idle Animation:
Initial Version:
Body Swap:
Attack Animation:
Initial Version:
Initial Version:
Body Swap:
After this I developed a stage based off of my Shovel Knight character. I first placed them in pre-existing Shovel Knight locations to see which colours they blended well with:
After this I sketched some designs for my level. Taking inspiration from my moodboards (in order from oldest to newest):
Sketches:
I then took this design and started making a level around it (ordered from oldest to newest):
With this the project was done. I feel that my pixel art, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator skills have greatly improved with this project, and I look forward to progressing them in the future.
Final Sprite Sheet:
Final Sprite Sheet: