Today’s doodle took a little figuring out. The scene was basically the same, just the framing and positioning went through a few passes. I also needed to decide exactly what was going on outside the window. This is another story I’m probably going to rewrite. I like the idea but the execution can benefit from a second attempt.
I’m feeling pretty good about this one. The idea’s solid and it’s coming along alright. My biggest issue here is I kept moving between the rough sketch color and the refined sketch color. It’s better to do scrawling on one layer and cleanup on another. But sometimes you’re fixing something and know exactly where you want to place something. There’s two modes my brain goes into: One where it’s scribbling to fill space and place objects, the other tightening up what’s established. I also realize how much I rely on the shift key in Photoshop where I lock brush orientation for straight lines. Manga Studio has rulers and the like but for rough sketches I just wing it to correct later. But that’s the nice thing about working digitally – you can add layers and correct as many times as it takes to get what you want.
This chapter right here represents a change from where the stories go from being largely visual to more dialogue-heavy. The more I think about it the more I want to re-write it. When I’m feeling better I’m going to take some time and retool some of the chapters I’m having issue with. I really like the concept, I just don’t like the angle I’ve taken with it.
Today’s doodle is for the chapter on greed. I look forward to contrasting this with the fleshed out version I’ll make when I’m not sick.
Today’s doodle is literally a doodle. I want to do more but I’ve come down with something and can’t stop hacking right now. I’ll probably stretch this series of doodle out another week so I can tighten up, ink, and actually finish them for the book.
This week’s new mini project ties back to the 7 Deadly Sins book I’m working on. I figured I’d do a cover for each chapter. Today’s doodle is unfinished for now. I tend to sketch a lot before I ink but here I was really having fun building stuff up with the brush. I think that’s good as the entire point is to be enjoying the drawing. I’m trying to play with the perspective which looks a little wonky here right now. I’ll play with it more when I have time but for now I think I should move on to the next chapter.
*UPDATE: Future Ben here. I’m taking this project offline so it’s not a security concern for the site. I’ve got more interactivity planned in the future but with more secure, up to date tech*
You know how they say the last 10% is the hardest to complete? That’s pretty true, though sometimes it feels like a whole lot more than 10%. Budgeting 3 days of coding was good though I probably should have focused on the different play modes first and left the menu screens for the last bit. The play modes had a habit of breaking whenever I added something new, which meant tracking down bugs. There’s a few I wasn’t able to get that are either Stencyl specific or Flash debugger specific. (Specifically one with the custom bullseye mouse cursor where the score and other text jumped around it instead of where they were supposed to be) There’s also something up with my high score code that causes a second game to not start properly. I figure I’ll go over it again sometime when I’ve got fresher eyes to look at it. As it stands it’s playable and a satisfactory coding exercise.
This title screen might look familiar. I resized it and adjusted the title for this game.
I’ve tinkered with different styles for the menu screens and I like this one so far. Some of this stuff might change depending on what I can accomplish in code.
This is the overlay that will pop up over the screen when paused.
Here’s that same overlay with a background behind it for some context.
I probably don’t need to add an options page but I figured I’d at least put in some volume sliders. Still need to figure out how they’re going to work in code but I’ll cross that bridge soon enough.
I had the idea of doing a wanted poster for the menus for the last game and I think it works decently for the credits screen. Thinking I might add some nails or something to have the paper pinned up instead of just laying there.
I like working on this mini project but as it’s not exactly drawing (rather graphic design and coding) and that was kind of the point of starting the exercise, I’ve moved things around in the day so I’m drawing first.
I spent today sorting all the graphics I’ve made so far and dropping them into a new project in Stencyl. I’ve got the basics working of an infinite line of targets that switch expressions when you click on them. Next I need to add the score system, music and sound, and menu screens. I’m glad I didn’t leave all the coding until the very end. That very easily could have clogged up a step in prototyping this. Biggest pain in the butt was getting all the sprites sized properly. I’d settled on a standard size and halfway through realized I needed to go bigger. Then I needed to center them all and line up the changing expressions so there wouldn’t be any jitter when they swap. A handful required coding to put them all even on the ground. I’m satisfied I’ve gotten this much sorted out now but grumpy I’ve been dealing with tech instead of art. :/ I like making the Daily Doodles a mini project though I think the next one I’m going to make more related to my main project I’ve been working on so they don’t compete with each other.
Today’s Doodle consists of various backdrops for the shooting gallery game. The first one’s a fake meant to resemble a crappy fair game while the others are shots from around the area. We’ll see how well they drop into the game later. You’ll notice I left a box up top labeled “game size” because that’s how big the game screen came in when I scaled and multiplied it a couple times. (I work at a higher resolution and scale down) It’s a good thing to have open as you work to get an idea of what it’s going to be shrunken down to.