The board:

Because my intent with Lactose Wars is to evoke and tug at the strings of childlike imagination, I need a very clear art direction as this is what will be doing most of the heavy lifting in that department. My intention is to give the game’s environment a sort of “reality filter” as I am dubbing it. I want the environment to feel as though it is real, but like it is simultaneously being perceived through a lens of imagination and play. I want the atmosphere of the game to feel lifelike and bubbly.

My primary reference for this comes from Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm, specifically the “Tickle Mephisto” Christmas event that introduces a toy themed quest line providing customization options like toy version of heroes, mounts, player icons and so on. This quest line is delivered in the form of a board game as shown below. The aspects here important to Lactose Wars’s atmosphere are the softness of the models contrast with the realistic diffuse lighting, giving the impression that the game objects move and exist within the real world.

The Pieces:

My aim is for the players units in Lactose Wars to elicit feelings of playing with toys. While still following my guidelines for the games environments, the pieces will employ a few more tactics to achieve this result. I will be focusing most of my attention to the unit’s primary forms, modeling minimal details more for the sake of clarity than for realism. I terms of texturing I plan to keep within the smooth, matte realm to give the units a plastic look and feel. My inspiration for these two elements comes once again from Heroes of the Storm’s “Tickle Mephisto” event, specifically from the green plastic hero and mount skins demonstrated below. In addition to this, because Lactose Wars was heavily inspired by the Battleship board game, I want elements of the units to feel akin to the iconic pieces also shown below. I want to utilize both of these references to derive a modeling, texturing, and animation style that feels like a mix between the two; hinting at the low detailed plastic game piece feel but maintaining enough detail to simulate a nugget of realism.

User Interface:

Coming soon…