27 Aug Momonga Monday: Guaka The Mole

This week I want to show you the process for Guaka, a molerat who lives in the dungeons of Xio. He is a cheerful fellow who maintains the sewage system of Xio. Little does he know that his old masters – the rats – are long gone. He just does his duty, day after day, without asking questions.

We started the design of Guaka with a Giant Molerat. It is an amazing creature, native to Russia. I would hire him as a janitor for the dungeons of my ancient Meso-American city any time. Behold the Giant Molerat:

Okay, that last one is a lama, but isn’t the molerat an awesome creature?

Here are some of the sketches we made based on this little bugger:

We liked the hombre with the Mexican hat – after all, we are in a Maya-ish city.

He also needed a drill to dig holes. This is what we came up with:

Not bad, but not entirely there yet. The thing is, Guaka is part of a complex level: the Dungeons of Xio. You fall through a trap in the ground and have to escape from this underground complex. Guaka finds you and helps you to get out. But how does he do this?

We tried lots of things – throwing you around, digging holes, racing in minekarts. In the end we figured that the best way to let him help you out, is to roll with you. Multi-ball. That is where we started to design the level with multi-ball in mind – and Guaka had to change to a ball form.

Okay. Ball-form. No mexican hat. Perhaps a peruvian hat? Let’s mix it up with this guy:

(Isn’t he amazingly friendly?)
The next iteration looked like this:

That is getting pretty close. It needed a bit more ballform perhaps. Here is the final concept art:

That wraps it up for this week! Next week we will dive into the 3D model.

And because you came this far, and because I can’t resist the temptation, here is a sneak preview of Guaka’s natural habitat 🙂

See you next week!

Cheers,
Derk