POKEMON NEW KANTO MAP

POKEMON NEW KANTO MAP is a level design wholesale that aims to revisit the entire Pokémon universe: Kanto, Johto and Holon; in the graphic style of the 5th Generation (Pokémon Black & White) and many original locations (ex: Magenta City or Cliff Road).

The goal of this whole project was to work on environmental narration, in order to make the iconic maps of the Pokémon universe more realistic, as well as the interconnection between the levels which will allow to form a gigantic map, all on a limited Mapping software.

This was one of my big projects in level design before I even thought of enrolling in a video game school, and allowed me to be spotted by the development team of one of the biggest French Pokemon fangame: Pokemon Renaissance.

Wanting to invest myself more as a Level designer in a real game, I decided to stop this project (which was realistically far too ambitious) for this fangame project.

 WORKFLOW

Intentions :

I start each level with an image at the top of a theme or landmark or key location that will drive the rest of the level design and meet the intent of the project: Storytelling.

Example : The walls that surround Viridian city that creates both a disparity between a rich and poor class but originally served the city to protect itself from wild Pokemon attacks. And this contrasts the city with the others, by the fact that it is the only city to have this wall.

References : 

Normally I then start on the design of the map on paper to create a layout, after a brief search for references. But since it already excites an official version of the levels I'm revisiting, I use it as a layout for the design of my levels.

For the references themselves, the Poképedia and Bulbapedia wiki-websites are more than enough to gather all the information about the maps I revisit in the different media where they were present (video games, anime, manga, card games) and allowed me to add places or buildings with a strong storytelling not present in the official levels.