July 31st weekly update!

Hey everyone!

So this week I focused mainly on programming stuff and some pixel art when I had time. Specifically I wanted to start working on prototypes for some of the games I'm thinking of.

I have a very basic demo running for Usagi Star that not worth presenting yet, but has some features that are necessary for the game. I have a scrolling background that I can build the level on and have the player fly through, and I can change the speed of things as well as get rid of objects and enemy's when they leave the screen. The next things I want to get done is making a class that will hold the generic information for game entities so I can have the player and all the enemies be child classes of it, and get a basic enemy template finished.

I also did a small demo that allows me to have parallax scrolling for platforming games. I based it on a video tutorial I saw gave functionality for basic parallaxing for numerous layers based on the camera, but I also want to see if I can add layers that move slightly automatically for things like clouds and whatnot.

As far as pixel art goes, I've been looking at other people's art and seeing what I like about them and how I can improve my own stuff. I've only really been spriting for a short while, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can while I still have some free time.  I was trying to find answers the the questions: What shapes are appealing for pixel art, when should I use lines to frame the image, and how should I be using color for these sprites? I'll probably make a blog post about my finding later, since I'm still trying to figure a few things out. But I was mostly looking at Kyrieru's work, as well as Heiyuu's sprites since I think they both utilize chibi-esque character design really well.

But for the meantime, I have some sprites I did for practice as I tested what different sprites I could make with the same size using different styles in about 10 minutes. I also worked on some of the slimer sprites as well:

 (RBWY sprites in different styles)

(Some 10 minute pixel sketches) 

 (More Style practice featuring Jolyne Cujoh)

(A pixel cloud for background practice)

(Slimer +Squire anim 2 WIP and Squire Idle anim)

I feel like some of my sprites are way too messy and I think the lack of lines is causing it. The slimer animation especially is kinda of hard to tell what's happening, doubly so when there's no background to frame it. I'll be experimenting with this for the next couple of days and see what changes I might be able to make to improve it. 

I also ordered a cheap smart watch for development purposes. I might make some super simple games to be played on them which I think will be cool haha

That's all for this week. Didn't get much artwork done, but this week it'll be my focus (I switch off from art and programming weeks).Let me know what you guys think about the sprites I made and feel free to leave any tips or suggestions!

July 24h weekly update!

Hey everyone!

This will be the first post of my "weekly update" series where I post all the stuff I got done / learned about in the previous week!

So first off, I did a bunch of sprite practice in order to figure out good ways to color and shade things for game assets. I made a few bunnies based on SoperAmiUniverses' design and tried a few different techniques to see what works best.

Seeing what I can do with just white as the main color.

Here the shades are more saturated than the main color.

Added lines to the previous image. 

Here the shades have lower saturation.

Lower saturation shadows and lines. Plus wanted to try a darker skin tone.

I think I'd use black outlines when I want to use the sprite for an icon or something similar. Also, I think shades having lower saturation work better as opposed to higher saturation like I've done so in the past.

I also have a few ideas on been working on trying to d more interactive game projects. I'll go into more detail about them later, but for now here some sprites from them:

The first would be fore a side-scrolling arcade shooter called "Usagi Star" where power ups causes the character to be sexed by various things while also changing your shot types. For the story, you have to save the Cat-droid queen who's been kidnapped by another alien race before they make her their plaything. On the way to their main fleet, you'll also see members of the cat-droid army being sexed that you can save as well, just to add a bit more h-scenes and some flair to the levels. the project's still in it's infancy, but I'm going to try and get a demo out when I can so that y'all can get a handle of the game. I'm trying to keep it pretty simple so hopefully it won't take too long.

Usagi Star idle animation

Spread shot level 1 power up

Spread shot level 2 power up

Cat-droid idle animation

Cat-droid getting banged

The other set of sprites is for a game that a bit more experimental. I want something that kind of builds upon the relationship between player and enemy through game play mechanics and makes both the game play and h-scenes more memorable because of it, rather than just every enemy activating an h-scene the same way. I got the idea from Forest of the Blue Skin by Zell23 and how every monster in that game is almost a small puzzle themselves in order to capture them. You'd play as a sentient slime who is in a society where they've all been killed off. Your tasked with finding enemies to feed off their sex juices, find any other slimes that might be in the city and combine with them, and overthrow the city and get revenge on their Queen. It'd most likely be a platformer, but I might also add some stealth elements.
It's really just a way for me to practice spriting atm. I asked Kyrieru to give me some pointers on both my sprite animation and construction. He not only gave me some pointers on  sprite construction and color, but he also took the time to edit one of my sprites so I'm very grateful that he helped me out. You can tell how much I learned just by looking at the sprite I made before his help and after haha
He said I needed to have more contrast in my color and focus more on the secondary motion in my animation. So for the color, I tried to implement more hue shading and also had my shades be less saturated so the main color pops more. I'm still trying to get a grasp on secondary animation (looking at the squire and slime scene 1, you can see the hair and legs seem "off"), but I'll keep working at it and doing studies to see how things look and move.

My original image on the left, Kyrieru's edit on the right

Slimer idle animation

Squire idle animation v1
(OLD, before Kyrieru advice)

Squire idle v2 WIP
(After Kyrieru' advice)

Slime and Squire scene 1 (OLD)

Slime and Squire scene 2

Squire prep birth 

Squire birth anim

Homeless girl WIP

I'll be updating and adding more to these games as the weeks go by. Usagi Star is currently the main focus, but I might work on the slime game here and there.

I also have a few art pieces to show as well! Aside from my daily gesture drawing, I have 2 painting I finished from sketches/inks from Edge Argento. The one with the bunny (Adele) was a coloring of his inked image. I didn't know what color she actually was before I started painting (she's originally white) but Edge and I settled on calling this the shiny version haha. Then I also have an inking and coloring of a sketch he did of his OC Sophie. I think it came out pretty well, though I think I do need to work on my line weight a bit. I also liked how it looked without lines so I included that as well haha

"Shiny Adele" painting

Sophie painting process from Edge Argento's Sketch.

So that's it for this update. This update is a bit big since it also covers stuff I did before last week, so the next updates probably won't be as big, but I'll try to keep working hard to get things out! As always hope you enjoy and feel free to leave comments!

See you next week!