Edo Edo Teishōku! (Ten. 2024) - Bitter, Enemy concepts
Edo Edo Teishōku, a rogue-like strategy-card game based on five flavors - Savory, Spicy, Salty, Sweet, and Bitter!
Game is currently in progress right now, so no build is available. But I'll keep you guys updated! Stay tuned!
https://funbam.itch.io/edo-edo-teishoku
Each flavor will have its own world - flavor specific enemies, elite monsters, and bosses reign in their respective regions.
We're a group of 30+ people...
I'm tasked to do Bitter's conceptualization: development was over the course of Summer 2023 (the entire game is speculated to be finished by the end of Winter 2024.)
Bitter Boss, enemies and slimes' concepts were decided were by majority vote: After I completed a variation sheet, I asked the crew which variation(s) they liked. I also notified them that parts of a variation can be switched around with others (and I would proceed to expand upon their requests in the next iteration). Though this doesn't happen often - usually, there would be ties between multiple designs. From there, I had to make the decision myself... which was really difficult if I'm honest. I didn't want to accidentally step on other designers' toes, choosing ideas that were close to what they wanted to do for their characters.
As of now, I'm unsure if I have: Most of the other designs are still currently being developed. But I will say... I know I can't share biases, but the characters and concepts that I created in the span of Edo's development... I'm quite happy and proud of them! Each illustration was inspired by something that was important to me, even scrapped drafts.
I hope you enjoy looking through these images as much as I enjoyed making them!
Bitter Boss 1st Iteration
I was not given much detail about how to approach the design: "Just make anything you think encompasses Bitter" was basically what I was told.
I added textures to illustrate different ingredients for each silhouette.
Bitter Boss 2nd Iteration
These designs coincided with the first illustration sheet (because I worked on both at the same time). I wanted to see what kind of "vibe" the crew wanted for Bitter, since there's so many interpretations of it...
Bitter Boss 3rd iteration
I was told after the first two sheets that there would not be any horror in this game (to my horror). Aside from that, there was an agreement on 4, 6, and 8 from the first sheet! I expanded upon those ideas the most.
Bitter: Elite Monster concepts
I was told a loose definition of what Elite Monsters were (either minions or previous evolutions like pokemon). These designs were based off on the top four most popular boss designs in Iteration 3
Bitter Elite: Cherleck
There was a clear vote for Cherlecks (runner ups were Mellaspus and Fry.) The design team liked them so much that they made a skillset for them on the spot, featuring "fallen cherlecks." Cherlecks were inspired by my crocheted doll
Cherleck Halos concept
Even if this was optional, since cherlecks (which were cherubs) did not have halos, the crew wanted to see what cherlecks would look like if they had some, so I tried to come up with a variety of halo shapes. Which would you prefer?
Bitter Boss Variation sheet
From the 3rd iteration, art production team liked the ginger horns on 23. 4, 7, 20 and 21 were the general vibe of what Art production and design leads wanted. Bitter should feel ethereal yet... bitter. A scary perfectionist...
Riel - Dress concepts
I wanted to see how far our designs could go for bosses. I know I wanted to instill this "Holy crap" feeling upon seeing the boss, but I wasn't sure if we were going for simple or complex designs - so I tried to draw all in between.
Riel - Dress concepts 2
I also wanted to include some weapon concepts with Bitter since his original silhouette had a weapon. It was ultimately decided that he'd attack by beams and magic. Not complaining however! Magic is very versatile.
Ring Placement sheet
Art production team really liked the ring from 4 on the first concept sheet, so I wanted to integrate that with Riel somehow.
Riel - Color Scheme #1
This was my original idea of what Riel's colors would be - I thought it would be nice if he had an earthy, golden glow to him, though he didn't look very evil this way.
Riel - Color Scheme #2
Riel - Color Scheme #3
Riel - Color Scheme #4
Riel - Color Scheme #5
Riel - Color Scheme #6
Riel - Color Scheme #7
This specific scheme had the most votes because of its balance of dark and light colors! Though I was not completely satisfied with it somehow, so I played around with the colors in the next iterations.
Riel - Color Scheme 7.1
Riel - Color Scheme 7.2
Riel - Color Scheme 7.3
I really liked this one because of the more muted colors that other Edo designs didn't seem to have. I think it suits Riel's mature vibe than the rest of the color schemes. I still liked the violet hair from #7's initial colors.
Riel - Color Scheme 7.4
Riel - Color Scheme 7.5
Splash concept art of Riel
This was actually made after Riel's first variation sheet was made. I did it in a few days because I was pretty excited about the direction that Riel was going in
Riel - Bitter Boss final
I ended up balancing earth-tones with Riel's predominantly purple appearance. I hoped the green could help make him look affiliated with leafy, bitter ingredients. We plan for the rings to orbit him as he flies in place!
Cherleck - final (?)
Riel's minion/elite monster! I wanted to make Cherleck's colors similar to Riel's, but in a lighter, more vibrant color. They are babies after all, but they still have a basket full of veggie weapons that you'd have to be careful of.
Riel - extra details
Smaller components in Riel's design (and the obligatory vibe illustration)
Slimes - concept sheet
When I finished Riel's concepts, Edo's artists were slightly behind in their work. I had the honor of taking on some more tasks to alleviate some of the pressure and come up with some slime designs, based on various foods and shapes
Slimes - Second iteration
There was a heavy majority vote on the bento series, so I tailored more designs that could potentially fit the same "world" of monsters, as if you were picking them out from the same lunchbox.
Slimes - draft
It turns out that the first bento enemies were like love at first sight for the crew, so we decided to go with these four! They're not really 100% slimes, but they're close!
Ringo Splitter - Final Sprite
We will animate these if time allows!
Jello Soseji - Final Sprite
Tamagoyaki charger - Final Sprite
Weak Onigiri - Final Sprite
Promotional art of Riel head-patting Tamagoyaki slime ♡
Beyond this image there will be scrapped drafts, process pics and other random works that surfaced during Riel's conceptualization. Thank you so much for looking through my weird portfolio!
Scrapped color sheet 1
This was back during Riel's variations when his line art was established. I wasn't sure what kind of colors Riel could fit, so I went ahead and made a few sheets for the crew to make some critiques/judgement. (I got ghosted instead)
Scrapped color sheet 2
Scrapped color sheet 3
Bitter Boss' original turnaround sheet before I had to compress the file for the sake of putting it on Artstation.
did you know: riel is inspired by gabriel from mandela catalogue...
UI/UX department was in an artist's block, so I made a sheet of weird shaped food resembling the flavors. They were pretty complex to be UI/UX icons but they did help the department brainstorm different shapes!
One of the ideas that came up during a meeting for Bitter's elite monsters was "wine grass." I just had to illustrate it and show them what I thought of upon hearing that
no idea
This was a sheet of inspirations I made for Iteration 1 and 2: as you can see besides my terrible handwriting and bias, I tried to base each design on different types of bitter ingredients. There are a lot more leaf-y vegetables than bitter produce...
Team leads were asking for Edo's formal icon and the request was up in the air. I sent them this which was so gracefully drawn over on my phone with my thumb. My thought process: Edo = Edo art = Great Wave of soup in a frying pan with food morsels in it
The original weak slime Onigiri had a seaweed topping like this. The reason it was changed to a seaweed beret was that, in comparison to the other slimes, it seemed too sharp and off-putting, so we decided to switch it out!
Um
A background idea for Bitter! General environment art is currently in process, though management declared it as a non-priority for now.