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I make games.
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
The last page of a sketchbook
Thursday, May 4, 2023
Fashion
Today I completed the design for Fia's seventh outfit in Old Skies. Having this many variations for a fully animated game character has been quite a bit of extra work, but it's quite satisfying to see them all lined up together. In a month's time, I will have been working quite steadily on this project for a couple of years, and it's hit that point where the work is quite routine now. Much of the thrill and excitement of the project has worn off, as is usual for big projects, but also so has much of the intimidation and fear. This will be a nice looking game, and I am confident in my ability to make it happen now.
I can see many of the issues with the visual style much more clearly now, I know what I'd do differently, and I know exactly what I'd change if I had the energy and time budget to do so - but I'm also pretty satisfied that it's a pretty nice leap forward from what Unavowed looked like to what I want the next Wadjet Eye adventure game to look like. Some folks like the new look, others prefer the old look. I totally understand in both cases.
I do miss working on the short terms projects a little - both Technobabylon and Shardlight were under a year's work for me - and I also would like to do more projects in the 640x360 resolution of Unavowed. I think anybody looking at my re-imagined projects can see that I still have ideas for refining that look (and I do hope to get around to doing some more of those at some point!)
But for now, it's a very fine thing to say that I'm content with our project, and proud of how it's shaping up, and it's nice to mark down yet another milestone in the process of making a game for you all.
Friday, January 20, 2023
Exuberance!
One of my side projects in 2022 was experimenting with Camille C on various game ideas, more as experiments in visuals and feel than anything. I like the idea of trying to capture a mood, and her bright, vibrant style is much more exuberant and hopeful than a lot of the games I tend to work on. Quite an interesting experience trying to shift my familiar style into that kind of atmosphere.
This overhead map piece was probably the most enjoyable thing for me to paint in those tests - I was trying to create that essence of a downtown shopping district in the kind of game that might have been marketed at high school students in the 00s. The sort of affair where your activities might be shopping, hanging out with friends, doing homework, etc. I always thought that games like The Sims present an interesting and worthy alternative to the very dramatic and violent standard that we expect now, without shifting into the sort of look that might be used for a game aimed at children under 10 like Mario or Sonic.
For me, starting with a base of green, orange and purple made a lot of sense here. When doing Unavowed I started my tests with the “classic primary” colour palette of red, blue and yellow, and in my hands those colours tend to be very dramatic and sombre. Shifting into the “classic secondary” palette like this allowed me to get as far away from that as possible to help me kick things off in the right direction. I also like how this allowed me to bring in the teal and gold as really lively feature colours to help highlight things that I wanted people to look at, and working with clean, white outlines felt very vibrant and crisp to me, an attempt to match Camille’s very clean and punchy character style.
One element I did keep around was leaning into showing some brush strokes and not cleaning up too much. I do think that this kind of look gives so much texture and a sense of detail which bring a liveliness to a scene that very clean paint work cannot supply. This also highlights the sort of scene that I am very fortunate to be able to mockup in 3D and then paint over - I absolutely would not want to attempt this with a grid if on a time limit.
This is just a start, but I think it’s great to try and expand our styles. Every slightly new direction helps me flesh out my skill set! We plan to keep working on things in 2023, so expect to see more of this exuberant look!
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
2023
Just a quick note to thank you all for reading along in 2022 and to welcome you all to check back in on this place in 2023 to see what I’m up to. I’ve got a few different artistic & creative goals lined up for the year - the smallest (but tastiest) of these being to learn how to bake bread. Here’s my second ever loaf, as it looked in the oven today. I’ve already eaten far too much of it. Let’s hope the rest of my attempts at learning things will be as successful and as delicious!
Friday, December 16, 2022
A Decade of This
I’m currently in New York City, and naturally met up with Mr Dave Gilbert for lunch, just to catch up and chat after over three years of not seeing each other in person. While we were chatting it occurred to me that it had been just over 10 years since Dave needed a new background artist for The Blackwell Epiphany, and asked if I’d be interested in the role. I’d done some animation work for Dave in the past, and some conceptual stuff, and I had reached a point doing low resolution adventure game graphics where I felt I could do a solid job of it.
A little over a year later we had completed the game, finishing up the series, and I think we knew then that we shared a vision. While our tastes and our skills are quite different, they complement each other well, and we feed off each other’s creative energy well. Along the way Dave had promised that he’d have enough work to pay me a regular wage, and so I handed in my notice at my old job and have been drawing for him ever since.
A decade after that email asking whether I’d like to take a stab at the backgrounds, I’m still doing this, and it’s been a decade with many ups and downs, but it’s been a rich experience overall. Epiphany was an interesting game for both Dave and I, and I think that sense of a shared vision we established in making it is something that has endured.
For me the most intimidating aspect of the project at the very start was the question of whether I had an endurance to do all the backgrounds and animations for a game of such a size by myself. Looking back now, it’s funny that this was my main concern - that decade has, if nothing else, proved my endurance through a project to myself. As with all work I can’t help but feel that I’d change so many things were I do do this game over. I doubt that feeling will ever truly go away.
Regardless, there was a special moment when I had this first scene painted up, and characters in and animations playing - the falling snow, a taxi driving past in the background, and just the colours and lights all working together in the composition and I sat back and thought “Yes, this is going to be good.” It’s that sort of feeling that drives me, more than anything else, and after a decade of this, I’m still doing my best to bring that feeling to life with each scene, in each project, and that’s still the best part for me. I hope to keep doing it for a while still.
Monday, December 12, 2022
Starflight
Friday, December 9, 2022
Back to the Drawing Board
The tough part about this sort of revision is that usually with a few months of space between the creation of a piece of work I can see the flaws that I was happy to ignore at the time, and while this can be a little frustrating and also generates a need to quickly touch up endless amounts of work, it's also satisfying because it feels like this is the right mindset for growing & learning. I've got a couple of months of pretty hefty study planned to fill in some of my massive weak areas, especially after a year of pretty solid production work, and my brain has never felt more ready to tackle some specific elements of technique & knowledge that have intimidated me in the past. By the end of a study block like that I'm always absolutely ready to take a break from learning things and just get down to production, too, which is also a great thing.
For now, here's an old study piece I did a couple of years ago that I liked well enough to touch up just a tiny bit tonight. Been too long since I did this sort of thing. Thanks for all the support this year, and here's to a wonderful 2023 for us all.