Character Design & Animation
For the game's visual style, I worked towards a bold and colourful cartoony aesthetic - with thick outlines surrounding each of Kingdom Climb's playable and non-playable characters, level art, mechanics and collectables.
Designs for the game's antagonists were primarily sly, cunning pigs, pelicans, echidnas and moles, with the player's ally being a glowing guardian angel.
I wanted each character to have personality, but primarily I wanted each design to have purpose - levels are designed, shaped and built to be enemy and hazard-inclusive, and my focus was to have fun designs that offered a fair challenge for the player.
All of the game's design and animation was digitally hand-drawn in a traditional frame-by-frame approach, for a 90's retro-styled saturday morning cartoon look and feel.
Concepts & development
All characters were designed rough, frame-by-frame, with the goal to create a traditional animation style similar to that of 90s cartoon and video game styles.
For each animation - character poses and key frames were digitally sketched, I then designed frames to transition between key frames for a rough animation showcase.
The protagonist’s run cycle, for example, initially consisted of 4-frames, then in-between frames were created to smooth out the animation at 12-frames - I used the same method for all characters, collectables, interactive level props and UI.
Character Designs
Game & Level Art
Level Design & Mechanics
UI & Game Menus