We are so back!

Guess what! WE are back to working on game stuff.

What Happened?

The short answer is: Life. The long answer is me, the artist decided to do a bunch of commissions for other people over the course of 2024 and had no time to dedicate to geme assets. It was somewhat popular, and made me some money. It helped me increase my art skills as well.

What's going on now?

Turns out my brother (the lead programmer and co-game designer and story writer) is back in action, and is motivated. However, we have decided to work on a completely different game. I will explain that game more once I have the time to explain it. This motivated me, and now I am back to doing art. We also had the chance to sit down and work on story stuff. This was good and helpful in ways outside of just writing for this game. But heck, are the early parts of story writing so embarrassing. Nothing like seeing your ideas you thought were pretty decent get shot down for good logical reasons. Makes you feel dumb. But it truely is: Part of the procees.

Lets see the new art work...

This is extremely rough but shoes off some flat art elements without shaders, or lighting/shadows.

You have your boxes...

...and your barrels.

Shelves full of items...

...And shelves full of books.

What has changed art-wise?

For starters. I have basically made each "tile" 512×512px. If we think of this like Minecraft blocks. 1m becomes roughly 512×512. Humanoid characters will be "two tiles tall" fitting between 512×512px and 512×1024px. Realistically hitting the 640px-804px range. I will ultimately play around with heights. In the case of similar styled games like Paper Mario, everyone was designed very short,  mere 2-3 heads tall. I typically plumpen and squish my characters a bit myself.

An example of some artwork I did for my sister. While difficult to determine since not human, she roughly sits 5ish heads tall. I typically do 5-6 heads tall for height myself. As an illustrator, I can bend reality 😉.

Some Notes:

Crocotile is an easy program to use; however, it sucks and rendering and dealing with transparency. So you are seeing A LOT of artifacting (the weird white pixels next to object borders )

The floor was done wrong. And a friend pointed it out. So that will get redrawn. The book shelf isn't thick enough. I can go thicker.

Time it Took:

What you see took approximately 80 hours (Spread out over 10-15 days) to create and model. This time calculation does not count eating, breaks, or days where I did research or developed other parts of the project, only drawing and modeling. I am keeping these things in mind as I go. I love the sheer amount of detail I am able to add, but it does eat into the time.

With so many possible objects to put on the book shelf as well.

What's the fun? What's the not so fun?

So I want to include a "fun/unfun section" to remind myself of the positive aspects of the development side.

The fun: Making vases and other stonework objects was really cool. I felt proud of myself on how they turned out. I also love that my brother was motivated, and triggered my mania, which allowed me to keep developing the game.

The not-fun: Drawing so many wood planks triggered my tendonitis a little bit. Also, the embarassing act of story writing, where all ideas are embarassing until they aren't embarrassing is rough.

What I learned:

• How to make stonework beyond just stone bricks.

• Good story writing can exist regardless of the theme. A great videogame story doesn't need a grand, heavy, or meta theme.

• Pack plenty of snacks that aren't just cheese sticks and chips. The body doesn't like those after a 3 day art bender.