'Shibuya Machine' - Oni
The enemy may have been my favourite asset to design in our Shibuya Machine project - I'm not sure why! I suppose he was just a lot of fun to experiment with; I've always had a fondness for 'bad guys'.
Being a side-scrolling platformer-style game, Shibuya Machine characters needed to have striking recognisable silhouettes that could be seen anywhere on a fairly zoomed-out panning screen. In that regard, I feel that this design was a success.
Animating this big boy was a whole different beast, though; his rig was all over the place! It was certainly a learning experience, though.
Various experimental sketches exploring various types of generic 'evil' villain. I wanted it to be something both practical and reasonable, AND inherently sinister. An entertaining process for sure!
Development of two of my more preferred designs. I was already becoming attached to the trash-compactor/incinerator-robot, and so began focusing more on him than I did on my more boring bipedal 'obvious-bad-guy' design.
I decided to focus solely on the incinerator-robot for a final design, messing around with some 'busted-up' and nasty-looking designs to imply some sort of corruption.
The finalised design! I opted for an Oni-styled visual design for the character, which I felt was a decent decision in terms of both fitting the robot into its setting (futuristic Japan) and signifying its status as a dangerous enemy.