Another weird month! They’re all weird months, now. I suppose that makes them normal, in a way. In an actual for real way, though, they remain weird.
Last month I mentioned that I was going to be working less on the game and more on building a portfolio – and so I am, but it turns out these goals aren’t quite as much in conflict as I was thinking they would be last month. EverEnding still requires a ton of design work, concept work for enemies and areas that have yet to be added to the game. Now, if I was solely focused on the game I’d probably just design all of these as I built the actual assets for the game, and I’ll probably still be doing that a fair bit, but this will allow me to iron out some of the trickier areas in my head while also making art that will be useful both for promoting myself and the game.
So let’s start with the EverEnding stuff and then I’ll move on to some of the other stuff I’ve been working on. The big thing I’ve been trying to do is develop a concept painting of one of the late game areas, but I’ve hit a snag – or maybe a lot of snags. I’m not used to environmental art so I’m having to figure out a lot of things as I go along, and I’m not really sure what the scope or precision of one of these paintings should be. As things stand, I’ve started a HUGE painting which is taking me a long time to finish, and which I’m unsure of the quality of since I’m having to learn so much as I go. The good news is that if I can execute I think this could be really something, and perhaps even be a cover painting or other very front-facing promotional material. It’s a bit discouraging having to spend this much time on something, but I hope to have this painting done for the next monthly update.
In terms of stuff that’s actually finished, I did a concept drawing of one of the early game enemies, the Feral:
I’ve started in on the sprite work as well, but haven’t gotten very far yet (this is something else that will probably be ready for next month’s update). I was going for something a bit in between a rat and a chimpanzee with some human-like aspects, and I think I hit that mark pretty well.
I came up with another enemy design for the game, but it turned out to be rather boring so I’m not going to bother to include it – it’s just a gray silhouette of a man, which isn’t interesting to look at but drawing out the design helped me figure out some specifics of pose and outline which will probably make the character a lot more interesting when i add it to the game. Additionally, there’s a character design for an important character in the second chapter, but I think that design as well is a couple of revisions away from being ready to show. I’ve also finished some minor sprite work for the project, making all of the mask enemies in the first two parts of chapter 1 pretty much animation-complete.
Aside from EverEnding stuff I’m working on learning Unity and building a prototype in there. I won’t go too much into that until I have something I have confidence in, but I came up with this ‘character’ design today for use in the project:
So I guess if the prototype turns out well I’ll have to actually model that, which will be an interesting challenge as well.
I’ve also been practicing 3d sculpting a bit, and… I don’t know, miscellaneous other things. My main goal is to try to take this wide reach of things that I’m trying to do all at once and try to bake some discipline into my approach, because I’m getting a bit overwhelmed just trying now to remember all the things I’m working on. I’ll probably try to work out a somewhat more regimented schedule than I’m generally used to tonight so that I can more effectively avoid driving myself insane over the coming weeks.