Stylized Cat Concepts - Part 1
The idea of Furistas Cat Cafe began sometime towards the end of 2016. It was a quick prototype project that went for 2 weeks. In that time, we were looking more closely to the game play rather than the art style, but that’s when it triggered us to think about designing a memorable cat design.
Our first cat design was a very simple and some what slim compared to what we have now!
The fun in those quick prototype games are that you have to throw out perfectionism out the window and just make stuff! Can be a little stressful but the results are usually quite funny when a lot of things break.
After a while from the 2 weeks project, the game idea was confirmed and we started to think about the cat designs more. There were few points that we wanted to make sure we get it right.
1.Creating a design that is different from other cat games. (In 2017, it felt like cat games were popping up in the market every time we blinked)
2.We still want to be cohesive with other Runaway animals.
3.The cats will need to be more chubbier. For extra cuteness.
We couldn’t quite compare these cat designs to many of the animals Runaway has designed previously, just because most of them being butterflies, birds, fish, and nothing really fluffy, but our go to solution was to add some sparkles in their eyes.
Of course, sparkly eyes aren’t going to suddenly solve all the design problems, but considering things like character scales for mobile gaming, and expressions based on other Runaway animals have definitely shaped what the cats look like now. And let’s not forget about the extra chubbiness.
So this was the starting point for cat design in Furistas. From here involves some research into cat behaviours, individual personalities and etc etc... which is a topic we’d like to share with you next time. :)
Until then, hope you guys are all enjoying the new mini games! There’s more things coming soon! ~(=^・ω・^)ノ☆