As a follow up to my previous post I thought I’d share some more stuff I’ve been working on. I wouldn’t consider any of it finished.
Dancer
I’d been meaning to do more gesture studies of figures in motion so I freeze-framed a youtube video of a ballerina and scribbled 40 frames. I also tried out some paper textures underneath to see if I could make it feel more authentic.
Fennec Fox: Gunslinger
This was a flash game I was working on for Stencyl Jam #14. The project grew too big and I didn’t finish it in time. I learned plenty from the experience, though.
His arm was handled separately to allow for switching out weapons
I liked the idea of a punching mechanic but getting it to work proved problematic
The main game was built around a run and gun template for Stencyl. I also put together a rudimentary target practice stage where you’d have alternating good/bad guys.
Good guys
Bad guys
Backgrounds
I experimented with different rendering styles for the backgrounds. First I tried drawing them in the same program as the characters but that looked too flat. Then I tried painting them with a soft airbrush. Eventually I settled on something somewhere between the two – solid shapes molded with shadow, texture, and gradients. This is also where trouble started as you can see I made the backgrounds many screens wide. I’d sketched them that big originally figuring I could just crop where needed. I think I was just afraid a smaller level would make it look like a spammy flash ad instead of a game. Click for full images.
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- Range painted flat
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- Range painted with airbrush
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- Intro Stage
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- Town
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- Saloon
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- Graveyard
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- Desert
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- Plains
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- Railroad
Baddies and Other Character Animations
The funny thing is I’d originally decided to make the game a wild west shoot ’em up to scale back from my bigger idea where that was just a sub-section of the game. Anyway, Stencyl handles animations by designating milliseconds for each frame. I figured the sprites should use as few frames as possible to keep the motions snappy.
I liked the walk cycle I came up with for the monkey. I also had him holding guns with his feet
One of various characters that could shoot
A punching enemy for variety. As with the player character, getting the attack to connect proved tricky
This guy would drop TNT if you got too close. A code thing you could endlessly tweak
I wanted to populate the streets with civilians and such but I just didn’t allot myself enough time
I like the design of this little mouse Señorita
Other
Once the jam ended I’ve been focusing more on animating. I’m trying to refine a finished look I can reproduce regularly and efficiently. Here’s a couple examples of the experimenting I’ve been doing.
Some line width and coloring tests. Click for a fuller view.
Ink and color test