28 Jun The creative process behind ‘Momo’

Hi! It has been a while since our last post, but that is mainly because we just came out of our first development cycle. It’s been a hectic period of 2 weeks, trying to implement all our ideas, designs and concepts into this first prototype. I think Derk will tell you more about this in the next couple of posts.

In this post I want to talk about ‘Momo’ (still a workname), our main character of the game and eloborate a bit further on his design process. As I mentioned in my first post we started with a furry ball with eyes, when the project was still called ‘Pinball Forever’. Now, just a few weeks later that little ball has transformed into a Momonga, a Japenese flying dwarf squirrel. After our epic brainstorm Derk suggested this critter which he had seen on a website called cuteoverload.com. We quickly realized this was the perfect choice for our game.

Why a Momonga? Basically these little critters have everything; They’re cute, little balls of fur, with big Manga like eyes. They are quick and agile. Plus, they have the ability to fly! Well, technically they float between trees, up until distances of 150 meters(!). Taken into account they are barely 20 cm (8 inches) tall and you realize that is quite an impressive feat.

So after we found this awesome animal, one of the things we we wanted to achieve with the design was something iconic. We wanted something with a strong shape and silhouette. Simple yet very appealing. Because of this goal, I started off working with pixels. Totally against my nature (I draw pretty little lines) I had to work with nothing more than tiny blocks. After  some initial struggling, I got into a flow and started making these awesome little blocky drawings. When I was finished with these, I immediately thought of Tangram, a game I used to play as a kid. It’s basically some  triangles and squares where you could make these figures with. So I experimented with that and some cool stuff came from that.

After this first conceptual stage, it was time to really sit down and draw this character out. I used markers for this, mainly because I work quicker by hand than I do on the computer and I thought it would be nice to work analogue again. I worked on the many different aspects of this character. Momo comes in three forms; ball, fly modus and standing upright. All of these forms have to make sense and relate to each other. Also, he has a mark across his back, which glows with a mysterious blue light which also had to be designed.

Currently I’m working on the 3d model of Momo, which will be finished at the end of this week. So stay tuned!

Cheers,

Tom