End of February Already!?

Well, I hoped to have that recently mentioned game out by the end of February but some big bugs popped up and it's just not going to happen.

So, while I work on getting everything working smoothly so I can release, I will post for you a post about drawing. Specifically, drawing practice.

Which is what I am actually doing now, with this post right here which presumably you are reading.

Drawing adventure game mockups is something I love to do - I can create a scene and some characters without having to give them stories or puzzles or anything - I can just draw for the fun of it. Drawing backgrounds is not as fun as characters, but once I get a palette sorted it's usually a little easier. Practicing is quite useful; it allows you to experiment with your style to push yourself, it allows you to improve what you can already do and you can create a setting which may even inspire a story. Annie Android started out as a few characters I'd done just for practice :).

Lately I've been drawing a lot of quite low res stuff, mostly backgrounds of 320x144 (leaving space for a SCUMM style gui), mainly because I find backgrounds easier to do when they're wide. I usually draw a few characters and then using the palette I used for the characters I go and draw a simple background. Here's an example:


Pretty simple, detail free background, but I am in a bad habit of just drawing 'characters on blank space' and I feel that is a habit that needs breaking.

Oh, and you probably won't see these characters in a game any time, but then, the same was once true for Annie Android's characters until enough people convinced me to turn them into a game :P.