011: Mood Boards - 5 Reasons why creating mood boards are an essential starting point for game development.

Creating a Mood Board is an essential starting point when you're starting out on any new game / project.

Simply put, a Mood Board is a collection of images that you find inspirational, aspirational and aesthetically pleasing all collated into 1 central document that you can refer back to throughout your game development.

Using keywords or phrases into google images, other search engines are available, start to cherry pick images that you like the look of, like the colour of, like the shape or form of or give you some kind of enhanced emotion.

It could be the way the mist sits eerily over the grass tops, the shadows that a candle makes when it flickers, anything that you'd love to encapsulate in whatever type of game you're building.

Of course, that all sounds super fancy, but what about my "Snackable" / "Hyper Casual" mobile game I'm building?  

Your Mood Boards can take any form you like. It could be inspiration for level design, UI / UX concepts, the colours of platforms. The important part is to start collecting reference points so you can always revert back to and not to lose ideas and feelings.

You shouldn't overthink this and gather everything and anything at this first stage, you can always discard some of the images later. It's all about creating that melting pot of inspiration.

1. Helps you to set the right tone to reflect the mood of your game.

2. All your ideas into a visual form & gives you something tangible to look at.

3. Helps to visualise and potentially determine your games colour palette.

4. It helps you not lose interesting images your find.

5. Central point of reference for your games inspiration.

You can see an Example of One of Our Mood Boards over at:

http://www.RisingHighAcademy.com