Although we're technically further then 1st week into production, I've decided to start blogging here since we've made the decision to move over to UE4.

Mellowmares is a cute but dark side scrolling puzzle game about the life and death of Marshmallows! You can check out more of the original concept over on our Lead artist Jaymie Sibree's Blog from a few weeks back.
Going with the teams initial concept, I wanted to focus on creating a really defined toony outline which could be customised for use both over the entire scene, or isolated to selected objects. One of the other important parts of the overall style we're aiming for is the addition of a cel shader.
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Shader Study:

Cel Shading:

For the cel shading I've created both 2 and 3 tone shaders, I'm hoping to settle on one by the end of this week. The 2 tone shader was also created following Dean Ashford's Toony outline tutorial with some minor changes, and the 3 tone is created using this tutorial as a basis. I also created a simple light to dark brown gradient material to test the shading over a simple gradient colour. I personally prefer the 3 tone as I feel it helps break the colour up nicely.

Base Materials with default UE4 Lighting: 

2 tone Cel Shader:

3 tone Cel Shader:

 

 

  

Toony Outline:

To create the outline I followed UE4's live stream cel shading tutorial on from last year as well as making some tweaks by following this toony outline tutorial by Dean Ashford to add more customisation.

Toony Outline basic Material and Lighting:

Outline plus 3 tone Cel Shader:

 

 

 

  

Thats about it for this week. I'm aiming to start blogging my progress weekly, so next week will be focusing on UI and modelling/texturing some of the level props.

- C.Zanin