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During my second year at university, I was the lead artist for a game project that I worked on as part of a team with 6 other classmates. As the lead artist of the team, my main role was to design the art for the characters and 2D sprites as well as other visual assets such as in-game text and objects.

 

Most of my time working on Red Honey was spent creating sprites in Photoshop, and making sure that each sprite would flow smoothly after each frame when the programmer animated the spritesheet.

 

Red Honey is an arena combat game where the player takes control of a cybernetically modified honeybadger and must slash their way through and escape from a secret testing facility that modifies animals into dangerous weapons.

 

However during the escape of the facility, the honeybadger will encounter other modified animals that will try to block and prevent his escape as the fight for survival rages on in the fast paced action game Red Honey.

 

Red Honey

Honeybadger Idle Sprite

Honeybadger Walk Sprite

Honeybadger Attack Sprite

Honeybadger Rage Sprite

The images above show some animated sprites for the Honeybadger character including his walking and attack sprites. One of the game mechanics for Red Honey was Rage mode, where the Honeybadger would be engulfed in red energy when it reached a weak state, granting it stronger attack power to fight enemies to the death as honeybadgers are naturally aggressive and fearless of any animal that crosses its path. The team decided that the protagonist for Red Honey would be a Honeybadger because of their brave fighting spirit. 

 

In terms of the process for designing the animal sprites for Red Honey, I used Photoshop CS6 to create all visual assets as I could set the canvas size and use of multiple layers to ensure that each sprite frame had a consistent animation with the help of the opacity settings to see between previous sprite frames as well as Photoshop's FX feature to create detailed art such as glow and shading.

 

In terms of my art assets designed for the Red Honey game, I created all the concept art and sprites for 4 animals including a Honeybadger, Bear, Spider and Cobra. I did not need to animate the sprites as the programmer I worked with had managed to create some code that allowed him to select frames from my spritesheets and play them when triggered by an event or button press during game play.

The art and spritesheets for Red Honey can be found below including the bosses/enemies/HUD. Some of the spritesheets are interactive, using the mouse to place the cursor or clicking the image will show the animated sprite.

Honeybadger Art

Rage Sprite

Honeybadger Idle Sprite

Honeybadger Walk Spritesheet

Honeybadger Attack Spritesheet

Honeybadger Claw Spritesheet

Bee Sprite

Cybear Art

Laser Beam Spritesheet

Honeybadger Dash Sprite

Honeybadger Laser Eye Spritesheet

Magnet Sprite

Cybear Art/Profile and Standing Sprite

One of the bosses within Red Honey is a bear named Cybear. I designed this boss to represent a size and nature that would rival the badger in terms of strength and aggression. Bears are known to have powerful claws as well as being able to detect scents such as honey. So to turn some of the bear's features into a weapon I decided to modify the arms and equip the cybear with large gauntlet like claws with jet engines at the elbow to allow the bear to throw heavy punches as well as dash across the stage leaving a burning trail of fire.

 

Another aesthetic design I added to the bear was the armour and rage converter which is the fuel for the cybear's gauntlets as the rage and aggression within the cybear's blood flows into the arms granting him the ability to dash and destroy everything in its path. I also designed mini-cybears which are a pallete swaps of the Cybear and have the same animation sprites, however they act as the common enemies within the Cybear stage.

The sprites that I designed for the Cybear can be found below.

 

Cybear Charge Spritesheet

Cybear Walk Spritesheet

Dizzy Cybear Spritesheet

Cybear Death Sprite

Brood Mother Art

Brood Mother Idle Sprite

Flame Trail Spritesheet

Mini-Cybear Sprites

The Brood Mother is a boss inspired by a black widow spider. As well as modifying mammals, the team decided that a spider type boss would be great to work with as there were many mechanics possible that could be implented to the spider in terms of attacks and abilities including web shots and a rappel dive. 

 

Since the web and rappel mechanics were designed by the programmer, my contribution to the Brood Mother in terms of sprites can be found below including the walk spritesheet which was quite time consuming trying to arrange all 8 legs around during each frame within Photoshop. I also designed mini-spider sprites which were the common enemies, they had a yellow palette swap with the same animations as the Brood Mother

Brood Mother Walk Spritesheet

Brood Mother Attack Spritesheet

Brood Mother Rappel Sprite

Cobra Art

Brood Mother Death Sprite

Mini Spider Spritesheet

The Cobra is the final boss in Red Honey, with an intimidating glare and pattern under the neck. One of most interesting mechanics that the Cobra has is the ability to multiply itself and create hallucinations to the player if the honeybadger looks at the Cobra's eyes, causing an image of the cobra's eyes flashing and enlarging on screen before fading out to a stage with the multiple copies.

 

The player must defeat the copies and find the real Cobra if they are affected by the Cobra's gaze as well as defeating the waves of enemies that are charging towards the honeybadger. The sprites I designed for the cobra  can be found below, sprites include an idle sprite where the tongue hisses as well as a slithering sprite.The blue cobra sprite indicates when the cobra is invulnerable due to the hallucination effect.

Cobra Idle Spritesheet

Cobra Death Sprite

Cobra Gaze Sprite

Cobra Attack Spritesheet

Cobra Slither Spritesheet

HUD Elements and other art

Health Bar Spritesheet

Rage and Blood Sprites

Energy Bar Spritesheet

The HUD designs represent the Honeybadger's health, energy and rage bar within the game. I have animated them decreasing from full to empty. The Rage and blood bar electrify when the Honeybadger is in rage mode. 

The text assets above are just a sample of the visual pop up texts that can appear on screen during gameplay as I designed over 50 words that give player feedback as well as humour during combat.

The 3 screenshots above show gameplay of the Brood Mother stage, featuring my sprite assets for the Honeybadger, enemy spiders and the HUD.

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