
In the filename, LV stands for level, and you add “1” to indicate the first level, followed by a description of what is in that level. Name it LV1_Spaceport, and make it 20 inches wide by 5 inches high at 300 dpi. Once you have your image ready to go, create a new file in Photoshop.The first step is creating the ground that your characters will walk upon. The map could change quite a bit before you are done. Keep in mind that this is just the rough sketch, not the final. You can then bring that right into Photoshop and draw on top of it, after some careful cropping and stretching. By conceiving the level in this way, you can make changes before time is spent in 3D modeling.Ī good way to start is to take a picture of the whiteboard and the work you did with the designer. When you are done, you will have a pretty good idea of what the level will look like from a top-down view. The sections are the ground plane, the road, the buildings, and all the movable objects such as crates and trees. The level map is created in multiple sections that can be recolored and moved around as the level is dialed in. It has a beginning, an end, and a variety of stuff in the middle.

A height elevation drawing showing how tall the robots can beĪt this point, you should be able to draw a rough layout.Keep in mind these might change, but you need to start somewhere. Here are the mission-critical items that the designer wanted addressed. The look of the level you need to create is shown in FIGURE 4.21.

In your sample game world, the designer and the art director hired a concept company to flesh out some images to be used as examples or inspiration for levels. What is this stuff, you ask? Well, it all starts with-guess what-an idea that is usually handed down from the designer, or in a larger studio, a writer who hands it off to the designer. If not, you will be redoing a lot of stuff in your future. Many things have to come together to make a level work correctly, and if you plan on churning out hundreds of levels that only last a minute or two each, you’d better make sure that everyone knows what they are doing from the start. In the beginning, there were robots, and the designer saw these robots and said, “Now where can they fight swarms of aliens for somewhere between one to two minutes?”Ĭreating levels is a job that takes a village. Photoshop for Games: Creating Art for Console, Mobile, and Social Games
