Character Ideas
Once we solidified the main game mechanic as the character using the grappling hook to move, I started drawing out various character ideas with this idea in mind.
Grapple Bear is a game created for the Game Maker's Toolkit 2021 game jam.
The game was created under 48 hours for the theme "joined together." As the lead artist, I created a majority of the assets and created the character designs. The game can be played here.
The "Little Guy"
The team liked the idea of having a "chibi" stylized character, so I developed the bottom right character some more. As a joke, I drew a bear headed man in the corner.
Bear-Robot
The team thought the bear man was very funny and we combined it with the idea of a robot.
Enemy Design
The bottom right drawing from the previous image was selected as the rough character design. We then based the enemy from the character, developing the story that the character is a robot wearing a bear mask.
Refining
Once the team decided we liked the idea of the robot wearing a bear mask, I sketched out various designs with this idea. I showed the team the page on the left and they liked the box-y shaped character from the middle bottom. I then developed this design further and figured out the details on the characters, such as the various robot elements.
Final Sketches
We picked one of the designs from the previous image and I made little drawings of him to get a feel of his personality.
Colors
I then tried different color schemes for the character. We wanted him to be gold and yellow to stand out from the gray robot enemies.
Final
Once the character was finished, I went on to making the assets for the game. The final game can be played here.