Considering that the bee is the main protagonist of our game it’s no more than right that it gets its own post. We technically have two versions of the bee in the game, as the main bee that the player controls is slightly bigger and has a different hue of orange than the swarm bees that essentially serve as the player’s health bar. But since they both share the same core design I’ll discuss them both as one here.
Much like in my previous post with the dragonfly, the bee went trough a number of iterations before we settled on the current design. Even more so since its, like I just said, the main character of the game.
These are the three main versions I made while designing the bee. They’re also representative of the current goals I had while drawing them.
The first concept (which I have to admit is my personal favorite even if it didn’t make it into the game!) was made before we decided on the art style. I visualized a more cute visual aesthetic, devoid of the rather humorous style we settled on and currently have. The problem with the first design, more than not fitting the art style, is that there isn’t room for as expressive facial expressions. As we discussed the character design in the group we agreed on that we should have the characters being able to express emotions, much so in order to increase the sense of belonging which is our aesthetic goal. We wanted the player to be able to relate to the main character, or at least feel sympathetic with them as opposed to the enemies which have (as I discussed in my first blog post) a more mean and, simply put, evil design.
Moving on to design 2! This was made while I was trying to balance my own art style with the cute and humorous art style we agreed on in the group, while simultaneously trying to make it have an expressive face. The main caveats with this design is that I simply didn’t find it visually pleasing, and that we decided to settle on having the faces faced forward rather than just seeing the profile, so the whole face is visible in the sprites.
Design 3, our current design was made with all the previous reflections in mind. It fits the art style as it is designed to be both cute and funny, it has a face with the capacity of expressing emotions, and I’m also personally pleased with it. The reason why I decided to make happy bees was because as I previously mentioned, I wanted the player to feel sympathetic towards the bee, and to make them stand out from the enemies which all have different, to varying degrees un-happy expressions.
We tried at one point to give the bee a more determined look since the story of the game is about the bees rushing to rescue their hive from a rampaging bear. Despite this, we all agreed in the group that we liked the happy bee a lot better, mostly because of the reasons I previously mentioned.
To finish this post of, while we’re currently happy with the design of the bee it is subject to change if we would find something to improve about it. I’m currently working on an asset that will make the main bee stand out more from the swarm bees, but since I’m not finished with it yet and since the post discusses the general design of the bee rather than the specifics of how the swarm and main bees are visually separated I did not include it.
Moa Bruus 
That’s the cutest bee I’ve ever seen!
The bear approves. ฅʕ•ᴥ•ʔฅ
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aw yay thanks! 😀 🐝🐝
LikeLike
Hi Moa! I really liked your text because you created such a clear picture of what your group was aiming for with your game. When reading your text I felt like that if I hadn’t know of the games concept previously that wouldn’t have mattered, since you made it so clear.
I love how you describe in your text the progress of for example the bee character. It really goes to show that people in a group a have very different visions of how their game should look like, but that in the end it becomes a combined effort to create a game with a little bit of everyone’s input. You clearly show this with the design of the bee. Since you had something cuter in mind but the design ended up with a more humorous look and the decision to have the characters faces face forward was a good decision, since seeing the whole expression of a character does make it more sympathetic, which your group was aiming for.
LikeLiked by 1 person