The Bat People

After a while the team focused mainly on the war between the Bats and the Birds, which was originally meant as a side story. It became the main plot point and the work I done on the Protagonist was abandoned and we focus our efforts on the two species.

I chose to design the bats; I originally saw them as rather humanoid bats resembling the Legacy of Kain series. I gave them bat like features including large ears and a split lip.

Body wise they followed suit with double-jointed legs. I tried to steer away from putting the wings on the back as I found this a bit obvious and also seemed more like the bird race.

Later on however Luke and Tim had designed Bats that used wings on the forearms and lower back, since it seemed like we were all creating subspecies of the bat race, I designed the ‘brute’ bat with the wings on the back to show power leaving the arms and legs free for combat. 

Early Protagonist Concepts

The protagonist I imagined would be a sort of cliché of a peasant like character with greatness thrust upon him. The idea was that he came from a swamp like area of Planet Alpha and is part of a frog-like race of people.

Since he was inspired by frogs, I imagined that he’d use a fighting style that used a lot of jumping thus I based his poses on the fighting style Muay Thai, which focused upon knee strikes and a lot of kicks. His attire is minimal somewhat like MMA fighters and he has Wrist and Ankle guards for combat.

In terms of anatomy, I imagined that the tendril on his head acted as his ear, the tendril itself is filled with liquid and giant ear drum that when sound reaches the liquid it vibrates and hits the drum. I don’t know how or if this work correctly but it was a concept that I liked and gave reason for his alien like anatomy.

The mask was inspired by the Kaleesh race of star wars who use the skulls of there ancestors as armour, I didn’t want my character to be so grim so I assume he’d carve it from some local flora or fauna. It sort of a tribal custom and aesthetically pleasing, giving the character a sense of mystery.

Later down the line I toyed with the idea of him being dressed in monk attire, it’s a concept that I always come back to with all my work, as I am fond of the morals and beliefs of the various types of Monks throughout the world, especially the Shaolin. 

The idea

For the Personal Development Project I teamed with Tim Walmsley, Joshua Jackaman and Luke Hayes.

We came up with an early concept that focused on 2 planets at war. The synopsis goes somewhat like this:

Long ago, 2 planets named (alpha) and (omega) were on the brink of destruction, their lands slowly becoming baron.

The life essence at the core of the planets took action, a giant tree began sprouting from the core and eventually grew to such a size that the two trees entwined and joined the planets into one. The trees acted as a catalyst to create more energy and veins to distribute the energy where it was needed thus making the planets live as a symbiotic life form. Millions of years later and the balance between the two planets has been disrupted as one tree is draining the life force out of Planet Alpha, making it slowly become baron and uninhabitable. As a residence of Planet Alpha it is your responsibility to travel to the great trees, cross the planetary divide and stop your planet from becoming a wasteland.

This was the early concept, we agreed that the Planet Omega would be more technologically advanced and that they somehow had found a way to block one of the trees but we also later fleshed out two races that made up the brunt of our work.

In the middle of the two planets where the trees entwine, two races are at constant war, 2 Nomad like species, the bat people and the bird people. Both living on floating islands and circle with the light and the darkness that the suns orbit creates. At this point the earlier idea for the game was near enough abandoned and this became the focus, although we kept the premise of the two planets as it seemed like concept that could be fleshed out if the need arose.