Humanoid idea sketching

Here the start of the humanoid designs of the level, these are not only ideas for the main character concept but also the enemy soldiers and how there both structured, I've stuck to a human looking being but with warped features, the reason for this is to show an evolutionary growth with the character and his background, the main character comes from a jungle like environment which means he would of adapted to it with limbs that can get around it quickly and patterns upon himself to blend in to better hunt and stay away from danger, the enemy character are from a darker region of the world and are a bit more insect like which brings into the scene a number of different features, more will be done on this while concertizing the final designs.

Theme of environments and characters

Themeboards

I have decided early on to produce a forest based environment, above is a theme board of the wanted out come, a very dense forest that has overgrown and produced some weirdly wonderful areas and as my level will be on another world then a heavy alien influence will be present, the design of the forests will be however relevant to our own so players will recognize and know what must be done in certain areas of the environment, The level will let me look deeply into interesting lighting.

The alien presents of the world will all come down to its inhabitants, in this theme board i show what i wish to create, a strange and odd eco system of creatures for the environment as forests and jungles have extraordinary amounts of difference within them, i will have to be creative with there design, this wildlife should really bring out the feel of a truly alien world around the players, also along with this, the sentient beings among them as well as the players character will also relate to the forest and around the same theme to represent a natural evolution together with his/her surroundings.

For the level structure itself i have looked into many games and how they plot the paths and areas of a level, so i have chosen to show some that best show what i am after, altho i am not doing huge expansions and keeping the player to a "tutorial" style area i will still like to create a big enough environment for exploration and optional direction paths to be present, the top left image of the badlands from a game known as borderlands best suits my kind of level.