Orb Turrets
Since Izabel's attacks primarily revolve around her summoning turrets, I decided to work on the concept art for those next.
There are four types of turrets, each corresponding to the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. They're basically just recolours for now, but maybe some elemental visual effects or details could be added later on to distinguish them better.
The concept is based around the drone orb expanding into the form of a turret and grounding itself on the battlefield for both stability and as a means to draw magical energies from the land to power its actions.
Some Simple VFX
This is my first time trying to make VFX using particle systems (in this case Unreal Engine's Niagara system), so I followed this tutorial from CGHOW to do this stylized lightning effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4J0fkn10B4
This simple VFX for Stoneguard Aura is basically just a textured empty hemisphere that pops in when the protected target is attacked, then fades out.
For now, these will do, but I intend to revisit and polish them further by adding more effects and finetuning the timings. I came across this VFX style guide released by Riot Games for League of Legends, which at a glance seemed like it might be useful: https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/10/dev-leagues-vfx-style-guide/. In any case, this my first foray into VFX, so it's definitely something I'm looking forward to working on more!
Next week: Stormstrike Aura currently doesn't work as I'll need to restructure some code on how the game handles actions and animations to make it possible, so I'll work on that next. I want to continue working on VFX, so I'll start working on an explosion VFX for Marika (the Cannon Witch). Speaking of which, I've never introduced her yet on this blog, but she was originally the first Gunwitch character I created for this team. I'll speak of her more when I get around to working on her new concept art.