Our artist Oleksiy Beztsinnyy shares the process of creating art for Pirates VS Ninjas. Pirates VS Ninjas is a two players strategy game for iOS and Android. It took around 6 weeks to complete all the graphics. In total there are 14 unique unit types. Each has at least 3 types of animations. Oleksiy also created icon, logo and all the menu screens.
Among the first things I have created logo and main menu screen. Got some references and started picking colors and fonts. Also created some sketches of how things would look.
Picked the colors and added more details to Pirate and Ninja characters to be used on main menu screen.
After sketch is ready, repainted everything in vector for polished and scalable result.
Picked the fonts and created menu elements: logo and buttons.
Done with the style for menus. Then it was time to create first stage background. That is where the battles take place. In the game we had just 2 stages: the pirate ship deck and the yard of ninja dojo. First sketch:
Then painted every separate object in Photoshop. We don’t need stage background to have many details, so they don’t distract player from battle itself.
The largest part of the work were units and their animations. As always I started with hand-drawn sketch.
After designs were confirmed by product owner, I had created production ready versions them in Adobe Flash.
Each of the unit was made in 3 colors: red, green and blue, and had at least three animations. Here is how Komodo Dragon’s animations look like. Idle:
Walk:
Fire:
All units needed a black outline around them to fit nicely into the environment. Adding that inside the Flash seemed tricky, so I used Adobe Photoshop automation for that.
Here is how everything looks in the game:
One final touch is an application icon. Having a nice icon is super important for number of downloads in Apple App Store. I reused the same characters from the main menu and added few nice effects.
Game is free and available for iOS and Android. Have a look and let me know, what you think. By the way, you also can check a fun article on 8 Best Turn-Based Android Games
