I have been sort of off and on with the game project recently. Between finishing up some polish work on Neon Noodles and getting a couple more stories ready to submit, I haven’t done much work on the coding and mechanics side of my 2D game.
That isn’t to say that nothing has moved forward. It most certainly has, but that movement is mostly in the process and visuals department.
I slightly revised my rendering process so that it is both faster and more customizable. I developed the technique of rendering crisp, low resolution, sprites based on 3D models in blender. It works well, but I built it to work on one particular set of animations at a particular scale. Part of my revising has been to make it a more general process. Something that can work for a bunch of different sprites at different scales.
As far as the style goes, the sprites don’t exactly look like 3D models rendered in Blender. They don’t look quite hand drawn, either. So some more work had to be done.
The process works, but to get the visuals where I want them, I’m going to have to work on my animation. For me, this is great news.
I’m an animator that rarely gets to do much animation. I spent a bunch of time training my eyes, brain, and hands to detect and recreate motion with life and feeling. I have done a lot of design, modelling, and illustration work over the last few decades, but only a tiny amount of animation. And even less character animation. Now, finding that animation is probably what I need to punch up my visuals is both exciting and terrifying.
What if I don’t remember how. What if I can’t animate something that matches my ambition. I guess I’m gonna find out.
That isn’t to say that nothing has moved forward. It most certainly has, but that movement is mostly in the process and visuals department.
I slightly revised my rendering process so that it is both faster and more customizable. I developed the technique of rendering crisp, low resolution, sprites based on 3D models in blender. It works well, but I built it to work on one particular set of animations at a particular scale. Part of my revising has been to make it a more general process. Something that can work for a bunch of different sprites at different scales.
As far as the style goes, the sprites don’t exactly look like 3D models rendered in Blender. They don’t look quite hand drawn, either. So some more work had to be done.
The process works, but to get the visuals where I want them, I’m going to have to work on my animation. For me, this is great news.
I’m an animator that rarely gets to do much animation. I spent a bunch of time training my eyes, brain, and hands to detect and recreate motion with life and feeling. I have done a lot of design, modelling, and illustration work over the last few decades, but only a tiny amount of animation. And even less character animation. Now, finding that animation is probably what I need to punch up my visuals is both exciting and terrifying.
What if I don’t remember how. What if I can’t animate something that matches my ambition. I guess I’m gonna find out.