The World is a Deep Dish Pizza
The World is a Deep Dish Pizza is a game created during Ludum Dare 2021 in 48 hours. A free-running action Beat-'em-Up, the player navigates a pizza-themed world and defeat pizza-themed monsters as Mari Nara, magical girl chef.
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I liked the design of Mari Nara so much that I decided to make prints of her that can be found in this shop here.
I wanted this character to be inspired by Magical Girls from anime. I also wanted to give her a cartoonish, cute aesthetic in order to comedically contrast with the high-octane action energy of gameplay.
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The round, cartoonish shape and design was inspired by games like Animal Crossing, which is a cutesy slice-of-life style game with a slower, easy pace. This resemblance was meant to call back to Animal Crossing and further emphasize the contrast between Mari's initial appearance and the hardcore action of The World is a Deep Dish Pizza.
Prop Art
Mari Nara Pizza Cutter Wand Final Design
Leaning into that Magical Girl inspiration, Mari Nara needs a magic wand that she can use to defeat the horde.
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Because the game is pizza themed and Mari is designed to be a chef, it only made sense for her weapon of choice to be a giant pizza cutter. I went through several designs ranging from more complex to simpler in order to make the best tool for her. Ultimately, a simpler design was settled upon so that animating Mari would be easier.
Animation
Thrust Attack
Running Animation
Upswing Attack
As the character designer, I also had to animate Mari. Mari has a variety of attacks ranging from uppercuts, axe slices, and jabbing. She also has to run around with her giant pizza cutter.
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Swipe frames were used to communicate speed. Each frame was drawn by me and had to be inserted into the Unity Engine to be animated in there.
These animations do not have as much frames as a more robust video game due to time constraint as well as knowledge that these animations will be seen from far away and at an angle, so some detail of motion could be sacrificed.