Ancillary Task - Creating the Icon

To the drawing board. This post shouldn't be too long, I didn't want to just have the finished icon though, that being all the post was, so I decided to include a little bit of development work into it, and show that I'd put a bit of work in.

You might remember the four conventions I found with the icons:

- Related to the title in some form
- Has images that represent elements, characters, or mechanics of the game
- Use of graphical styles, like outlines, to emphasize key parts of the icon
- Possibly include a frame of some sort

These will be what I'll be bearing in mind as I do the designs. So with that, let me show you the creation process, starting with some drafts:



I started off pretty basic, just using Mobo's head from a front view as the picture. I chose his grinning face because it the first facial expression I made for him, and in my mind it seemed to represent his character the best, therefore making it the most suitable to use for the icon.

Because of its simplicity, I chose to add a frame to the picture, and strengthened the outlines on Mobo's features. It's a decent design in itself, but it seems a bit generic. In truth this design was more to provide a kind of starting point for the designs that followed, although it could be used itself.

And here we expand a bit. I'll say this straight out, when I look at it on here this one looks horrible. I got the positioning of the facial features completely wrong and its come out just looking odd.

I decided to change the design up to directly replicate the artwork of the original artwork I did for Mobo, with the picture at an angle to him, and the picture is meant to have him looking out of the screen.

I also scrapped the frame, in place of something more creative, as I didn't just want the icon to represent the character, but also the game's other key element, the hexagons.

And here we have something perfect. If there is one thing I noticed with each icon I analysed, it's that they didn't just use one image, but several. This is my take on that.

As I said before, just having Mobo's face as the icon is generic and unoriginal, plus I also wanted to represent the hexagons in some form, an this works perfectly.

There's also some connotation that can be taken from this picture; the game is about trying to repair broken circuit boards made of hexes, with Mobo as the one repairing them. The icon has him looking through a gap in a grid of hexagons, indicating that it's broken, and he's looking through to both repair it and also possibly invite you into the mainframe, which is further enforced when you consider the effect of opening an app on your smartphone has it expanding out to fill the screen, as if you're going into the gap in the icon.

Needless to say I was certain that this was the design I wanted. I'd already got the drawn image to work from. Now all was needed was to work some magic on it in Illustrator and Photoshop, and I've have my icon.

So here, after a good amount of time here it is; my completed game icon, and the first of my ancillary tasks finished:

I would definitely say that I'm pleased with this icon. Took me several hours into the night, but it was well worth it. This is the first ancillary task done. I hope you like this end product and the works devoted to it. I really enjoyed doing this, but the work's not done yet. There's still the second ancillary task to do, and also the two trailers.

They'll be done in due time, and until then thanks for viewing and stay updated!