Blog

29 June 2012

WEEK FIVE - Character and stage drawings done!

Tags: update

Hey peeps, it's me again coming at you with another update. I've finally got the character designs drawn up as well as the level designs so I'll be able to move forward and get some graphics done on my PC very soon so I can show you guys. Hopefully, providing that everything all goes to plan, I will be going through these design in Monday's VLOG, including the reasoning behind the designs as well as the character movesets and the level mechanics. I'll be working on these over the weekend.

Also on the agenda is to start drawing up some "proper" ideas for the GUI of the game. I've had some thoughts about what I envisage the GUI to be like over the last week or so but I haven't got anything down on paper as of yet so this needs to get started on, most likely during the latter part of this weekend - I know I said I'd make a start on it the week just gone but the character design took me a bit longer than expected.

It's surprising how long designing and making 8-bit/16-bit graphics actually takes. Most people I feel take it for granted that it just looks simple since it's a relatively small collection of pixels (to put it simply) but it's so much more than that. It takes a lot of skill to create something using 8-bit graphics - the small amount of pixels that you actually use is much more of a restriction to the designer than it is a "relief" almost. You have to try and convey a real-life or fantasy object or scene in much less pixels than you would a normal image and there are plenty of people around that do it fantastically well - kudos to them, I'm still very much an 8-bit Padawan. /rant

Anyway, I hope you are enjoying the updates here and are continuing to keep up to date with my progress - don't forget to check out my VLOG videos as well!

Jon