Brawl is Life

Out on the blacktop, we don't call fouls.

For character design class, we were tasked with concepting an original fighting game. I know next to nothing about fighting games but through some initial research, I very quickly found my starting point.

Movement.

Fighting game characters appeared to be designed in tandem with their fighting style's unique movement, and subsequently the resulting move-sets and skills felt so complimentary to each character's individual design.

With this in mind I started attempting to simplify the movement and gestures of athletes. It was from there that an idea sprang to life.

It's NBA Jam meets Street Fighter.

I'm a huge fan of basketball, so why not design characters for a basketball fighting game? Basketball is a sport with so many different playstyles and physical builds. You can have big-men that dominate in the post like Shaq, freak athletes flying high above the rim like Lebron James, and sharpshooters like Steph Curry that can hit it from anywhere. Even the shorter guys can take advantage of their agility and misdirection to leave defenders in the dust. 

If that's not a fighting game waiting to happen, I don't know what is.

A streetball setting just felt perfect. Grungy and full of competitive attitudes.
We've all heard of the phrase 'Ball is Life', but what about:

Brawl is Life

We'll start with the Logo.

Heavy on the street and graffiti influences here, and specifically handstyle. Had no idea there was so much nuance to this genre of graffiti. Glad I had a teacher at our school who was able to share that knowledge with me. (Cheers Ethan)

When comparing the early logo iterations with the final designs, I think it's extremely clear how helpful that was.

The Characters

Being a streetball fighting game concept, I set a rule that each character should have some reason for being in the street. Like a businessman on lunch break, a pizza delivery guy, or a dog walker. 

The other rule was that every character needed a dope streetball name. Obviously.

Even though this wasn't a game design class, I thought a lot about potential moves-sets and gameplay mechanics. First of all it was fun, and the more I thought about it, the more I wished this were a real game. Also, it really helped me visualise these characters early on, and from that I was able to develop an initial lineup.

Before we get to the lineup, let me spew out a few of those ideas so we're on the same page about what this game is.

- There's only one ball, score or beat up your opponent for the point.
- Different variations of moves for offense and defense.
- Timing moves correctly with dribbles, fakes, etc. could result in more fluid gameplay.
- Successful move timings could reduce your opponents defense / stamina bar -> leads to special moves like ankle breakers.
- So many potential playstyles. You could even ignore fighting all together and just focus on scoring, but someone else playing the same character might do the complete opposite of that.

Really fun to think about.

Initial lineup sketches.

The First Character: Mixtape

Every fighting game needs it's iconic main guy. The Ryu, the Terry Bogard, the Scorpion and Sub-Zero. I wanted to design a character that embodied the setting of streetball. Hip-hop culture became an obvious influence to the design, and break-dancing felt like the perfect tie-in for a fighting style.

In terms of basketball playstyle, a huge part of streetball is embarrassing your opponent with flashy crossovers. I looked to some of the most iconic ball-handlers of all time, individuals who were so skillfully in control of the basketball; streetball legends like The Professor or Bone Collector, and NBA pros like Allen Iverson and Kyrie Irving.

All of these people ended up influencing the design, from the overall build and silhouette, down to details - like the armband or sneakers.

The Second Character: Wolfgang

The concept of a dog-walker hooper is what sold me on the basketball fighting game concept in the first place. I have so many ideas about potential skills and how this character would play. Imagine the pack of canines at your feet always pulling towards the ball regardless of who has possession. What if every shot was well defended - not by the opponent but by your own beloved pets? 

Surefire way to develop a lethal fadeaway jumpshot. So of course he's wearing Kobes... or are those Jordans?

I also didn't originally plan to continue a musical motif throughout the characters. Wolfgang was just such a perfect name. I'm really proud of the chihuahua jabot. How the hell did I think of that?

Thankyou brain.

The Third Character: Post-Mortem

Postman. Plays in the post (it's a basketball thing). Rock and metal allusions with a name like Post-Mortem?? You get the point. Just like my limited knowledge on fighting games, I know equally as little about hard rock and metal.

More research was needed. The result? I now know that battle-vests are damn cool.

Had a lot of fun with the parody patches, and finished up the design with some heavy, utilitarian boot-like basketball sneakers. 

Game Screen Mockups

The final task was to bring it all together with a character select screen. Highly recommend full-screening these. Almost felt like a real video game to me.

In a streetball setting, everyone waits by the sideline, itching to face the winner of the current matchup. Perfect for an in-context, lineup character select screen.
What if this limits the maximum number of characters we can have in the game??? 
Good thing this isn't a real game (yet).

In all seriousness, I just had to make it because I knew it would look really cool.

I also love the idea of having the chosen map influence the character select screen, so I created two different map mockups to help visualise this. For an actual game, this concept could lead to so many fun details and contextual character interactions.

And finally, there's one last mockup of a transition screen after the characters are locked in. The camera zooms out and a graphic hides the two selected characters disappearing from the lineup. The text up top changes from 'WHO GOT NEXT' to 'CHECK BRAWL'  as the selected pair reappear at the sides of the screen on the court. 

It's game time. 

A few closing thoughts.

Seeing those final mockup screens really brought the entire concept to life for me. I hope I can experience this feeling many more times moving forward. What made it even more rewarding was knowing that in spite of the fact that it wasn't always smooth sailing, I still managed to learn a lot; not only in art and character design, but in my own process as well. 

I hope that this was an enjoyable read for you and that my passion for this concept came through in the artworks and the writing. I tried to keep this relatively concise, but there's just so much I could share about every aspect of this project. Maybe this is an idea that I'll have to revisit again in the future. 

I truly appreciate you taking the time to look through my work. If any part of this made you go 'that's cool as hell', then I did what I set out to do. If not, then hopefully my next project will, whatever that may be.