This is free art – it is under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Type: iPhone retina (for regular iPhone just save each image at half-size)
Download the art here, or read on for an explanation.
Squirrel Attack – Catapult Game Art for iPhone
Squirrels in winter are vicious.
It’s winter, and the squirrels are freezing. They see the pampered cats and dogs with their heated houses and plush beds, and are jealous.
Naturally, the squirrels pelt them with acorns!
Poor little kitties and puppies...
This art is for a forthcoming tutorial on RayWenderlich.com about how to make a catapult game.
Just don’t call it Angry Squirrels :]
Suggested Game Play
An acorn is placed in the catapult cup. The player drags the catapult arm down and releases it, which throws the acorn.
The goal is to knock over the blocks so that the cats and dogs are uncovered or roll off their platform.
As always, feel free to change anything about the game, use it for a different gameplay, or just lift the characters or art for use in a different project! If you use the art in a cool way, I’d love to see it :]
Notes
To go with the look of this game, I recommend using white letters/numbers with a navy blue stroke.
Game Pack Contents:
- Main Level Background: Sized to be the width of two landscape-mode iPhone retina screens. 1920×640 pixels.
- Main Level Foreground: The foreground is given separately so that you can layer the objects and characters between them so it looks more natural. 1920×153 pixels.
Layer the objects under the foreground so it looks like they are in the snow.
- Play and Pause Buttons
- Two Squirrel Characters. Place as you wish.
Detail of cat, dog, and bricks
- Three bricks: one square, one short rectangle, and one long skinny rectangle.
- Cat and Dog heads, ready to roll.
- One trapezoidal platform – so you can add variety to your levels by stacking the bricks on the platform.
- Acorn: 67×65 pixels. This is for the squirrels to throw!
- An alternate version is provided with a glow around it for use as a menu button, as seen below and in mockup_title.png. You should be able to center the glowy acorn over the regular acorn to have them show up properly as a selected and unselected button.
The acorn used as a button or selection indicator
- An alternate version is provided with a glow around it for use as a menu button, as seen below and in mockup_title.png. You should be able to center the glowy acorn over the regular acorn to have them show up properly as a selected and unselected button.
- Catapult:
The catapult cup is in two parts so an acorn can rest in between.
- Catapult base in two parts: the two sprites are the same size, so that when you stack them on top of each other they are properly placed.
- Catapult arm: The catapult arm goes between the two base parts.
- Catapult cup in two parts: again, layer the two same-size sprites on top of each other. This is so you can nestle an acorn in the cup for a more realistic effect (see right).
- Title Screen with room for options at the bottom (see mockup_title.png)
- Generic Background Screen for high scores, options, credits, or a starting point for your own title screen.
War in the wintertime
Enjoy – and if you make this into an actual game, send me some screenshots!
Vicki,
These are so awesome, I can’t believe they are free! We loved the monkey set also.
these are absolutely adorable! Thank you!
This artwork is beautiful!
Wonderful! I wish I could draw like this. Artwork is at least half the work. I have a completely different plan for the artwork. I’ll post once I’m done!
Thanks so much.
Vicki,
I’m very interested in your husband’s tutorial on how to make the catapult game. I’m working on a game right now with similar functionality and I’ve sort of run into a brick wall. Can you tell me when your husband might have this tutorial ready?
Thanks,
Bob
Bob – I’m told the tutorial will be out in a week or so, around 9/8.
That’s great Vicki, thanks much.
Hi Vicky
Which font did you use to create the title “Squirrel Attack” in the main menu?
Thanks !
Fernando
Fernando, I used Gill Sans Ultra Bold, with a white fill that has a blue inner glow, a 5 pt black stroke, and then I applied a Zig Zag effect to the whole thing (Effects>Distort & Transform>Zig Zag).
I’m not able to duplicate the style
do you use photoshop or ilustrator?
I use Illustrator. Let me know if you still have trouble!
I’m very bad designer…
I’m trying to create some text as title for the screens (“Options”, “Credits” and “High Scores”) but I don’t know how to use Illustrator.
The book I used to learn Illustrator is Real World: Adobe Illustrator CS4. There are other good tutorial books out there too – it’s worth picking one up and going through a few chapters to get the basics down, rather than trying to figure it out on your own. You can also find some tutorials for free online if you search for them.
Thank you for sharing with book you learnt with. Learning Cocos2D and now learning to draw..issshhh.
I’ve released my educational game, Tap Times Tables for iPhone and iPad. I used the artwork here as inspiration and in a way that I hope makes learning your times tables a bit more fun.
You can see screenshots at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tap-times-tables/id457383394?ls=1&mt=8