Day#something ~A triad of updates.~

School started and all that jazz but I’ve still been drawing stuff. I guess the main highlight are a bunch of things done for 3 separate games.

First up is this mecha skeleton which will be the base for quite a ton of robot designs to come for a certain game I’m working on with Fomar.

 

Second there’s this finalized sketch/lines of the last character which needed a design for yet another undisclosed game I’ve been brewing with Horace-  I mean Scinaya:

 

Yes that is a spatula sword. She is also part of the same series of characters as the two knights from the previous entry.

this is the current battle system for that project (albiet rather outdated by now):

 

Almost last, and certainly not least, there’s yet more art done for, this time for a change, a game I can actually refer to by name,  Sayako .

 

 

A distant look at Ancora Hills Sanatorium, the actual setting of the game. The abandoned Sanatorium where the events of Sayako unfold.

Operational for 40 years, the Ancora Hills sanatorium served a vast number of patients while it remained operational, however, the reputation of said institution saw itself tarnished during the later run of its life, with varied reports of patient mistreatment and covered up negligence. The highly controversial case of Sayako Noguchi would become the last, yet greatest black stain on the records, right before the scheduled closure and decommission of the facility.

Today,sorrounded by nature, the intimidating structure still stands and remains largely abandoned, becoming an object of urban legends and vandalism.

 

This background shot was essentially yet another collab between me and Horac- Scin. She handled the colors yet again~

 

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Other than these recent developments I’ve been hooked on TF2 and cytus.

ffffffff.

Commercial Break.

If two years ago someone would’ve told me I’d be drawing stuff like this consistently:

I would’ve probably laughed in their face.

Drawing for me, was always a pipe dream.
I was never the drawn arts type of person.
While growing up I was one of those who often thought drawing was something some people were magically capable of doing just by grabbing a pencil.
You were either “born with the gift” or you were not.
I don’t really question how I came to accept such mentality as a fact, but I’m certain it has to do with the fact that I was surrounded by people who did “have the talent” and produced amazing pieces in comparison to whatever I did while growing up.
Whatever it was, at some point during that childhood I decided to abandon that idea of drawing.
“It wasn’t meant for me I guess”
Or something along those lines.

Ironically, being someone who loves all forms of art, a couple of years later, I eventually faced the need of art once again, when I discovered I had a strong thing for game design, the only culprit for this being stumbling upon of a very dear piece of Software for me, the RPG Maker series.

Soon enough I found myself immersed in writing and learning all the quirks of this engine, but it wasn’t long before I got tired of stock resources and came to the inevitable truth…

You can’t have a game without art.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t attempt to retake drawing at this point, but the world of RPG development, no, game development, is so vast, that is often easy to give up in one trade and jump into another when frustration starts kicking in.

This is the reason why many one-man army games never see the light of day of course, and I fell into this hole for a while too. Thanks to this, I messed with attempting to draw for…less than a month? lol before deciding that I should just find someone with the ability to do so and get him/her to do art for my game, while I offered my other set of skills in return.

Needless to say, that person never came. (No surprise there lolol)

Anyways, we’re now talking about 2007.
While jumping between trades was a fun experience for a while, not getting much progress in the game I was attempting to do was also starting to get on my nerves.
Couple a hobby which starts to become a chore, with the busy demands of school, life and expectations from society;
you have a one way express to hobby-ditch land. I abandoned everything related to game development and arts during this period.

Now lets fast forward to 2012. Over god-knows what reason (Probably a random mix of boredom and nostalgia during that day), I decided to see how the RPG maker series had evolved. Last time I had checked, the “Rpgmaker XP” version was all the rage(meaning my last brush with the community was indeed ancient). funny enough, I learnt that a new version was about to hit the digital distribution land. It was called Rpgmaker Vx Ace, and had features which made it promise to be the next best thing since Rpgmaker2k3.

I knew that in 5 years, I had forgotten everything related to the engine. I had also neglected writing ever since, and my composing was never really the main interest for me when it came to game development. If anything, my only improvement over the last 5 years would have been my coding skills, as I was pretty much forced to sharpen them for college.
To make it short, I knew that if I were to attempt making an rpg again, it would be a rough start, and of course, I would one day run into the same problem I faced back then….

The need for game art.

By this point I am sure many people are bound to meet someone who is good at drawing during their internet social interactions. Such never turned out to be the case for me…until this era of my life that was.
After a rough landing in the new Rpgmaker community, I somehow, actually came to become friends with a couple of great artists. I ended up ditching the main community and hanging out with these friends, who had really similar ideas to what I clicked with, meeting them was definitely a turning point in my return to art of game development.
It was a rather ironic turn of events, for someone like me who had not met, let alone befriend, a single artist through the internet up to that point.

Yes, perhaps I didn’t need to worry about art now!

But nope.
I never asked nor wanted them to do art for my ideas.

Not only where they busy with their own projects, when it came down to it, I discovered that I simply wasn’t the beggar type when it came to obtaining resources tailored for my demands. I hanged out with them because they were people I enjoyed being with, not because they were people I was expecting to flood with requests at sneaky times.

The answer then was clear.

I needed to, for a change, actually attempt and stick with art.
And it needed to happen soon.

Initially, my objective was very simple. (Well actually, it is still my objective.)
I didn’t grab a pencil to become a master artist or awesome to their level.
See stuff like this?
http://alicexz.deviantart.com/art/The-Lights-203459866
http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/Wonder-275594528
http://einlee.deviantart.com/art/in-the-shallows-150602338

It is amazing, and I love it, but it was not what I was going for this time. No, my resolve was…

“I just want to be capable of doing functional art”.

And what is functional art you may be wondering?
Basically just stuff which doesn’t look too terrible or relays the idea of a character design or location I need.
And with low expectations, but a clear objective in mind, I set off to actually start drawing seriously for the first time in my life.

We’re now talking about…somewhere around May 2012.
what came out of such noble task I had decided to tackle you wonder?~

Obviously terrible things lolol.
Guy lacking any basic notion of art, starting off with stylized proportions, and in need of anime illustrations for his games. I certainly had the full recipe for terribad.

One thing was different from before though.
This time around I had a solid objective in mind. I really wanted to actually get somewhere with my “functional art”, I really needed to, so despite of a really frustrating start, I kept at it, day after day after day after day after day after day after day.

And this is also where the awesomeness of my friends started to show too.
When they saw I was actually gonna do this seriously, they started to give me some really in-depth critique with my initial terrible rag dolls which were meant to be people. anatomy, perspective, foreshortening, drawing in layers, acquiring a tablet,color theory, mixing colors, coloring to attain the look of distinctive textures such as metal properly,etc. Gradually, what had started as me not being concerned in the least to fully grasp the basics, became a true learning experience with the aid of my friends.

And I guess this is the part where we arrive to…this day.
Pretty much a year and a half since I went from stickmen of abnormal proportions to actually feeling closer to the functional art I set out to do.

Not much has changed when it comes to me and my objective.
I still don’t strive to become an incredibly good artist, like the ones I admire, or like many others around here.
But the one thing that has indeed changed is the level of frustration when I grab a pen.

I don’t know where the future will take me from here when it comes to art, but at least I can say, I set myself to do something last year, and I am really close to the end goal of that.

This long blog entry isn’t meant to give any lesson or talk about working hard even when it seems you are going nowhere.
This is actually a thank you to the friends who have really helped me along the way. A huge thank you to Moon, evileagles , Archeia, and Scinaya for helping me realize that like many other things in life, art is the product of really hard work, and meeting amazing people along the way is the best part of the process, thanks for all the tips and sharing a lot of what you guys know, it really made a huge difference,and also a huge shoutout to Fomar, Caz, Indrah, Cele, Ocean,rhyme,puddle,yami and Ralph for all the times when quick feedback was given and for simply put, being awesome people to hang out with. To many more years of making games and drawing together gais~

Day #Something ~Not exactly art but..~

Finally putting some of the art made to use!
A pre-alpha display of a battle system I’m putting together with Nessy and Yami’s Luna engine and some custom side scripting.

If you’re curious about the implemented and intended game mechanics, they’re listed on the youtube video description~

Day #Whatever ~I haven’t been slacking off!~

I really haven’t.
I just figured a daily updated might be a bit too spammy after all.

Regardless, this is what I made today!
Yet more of me practicing colors and stuff…
And of course, my ever favorite chibi battlers, meant to be used in my RPGmaker games.

This character was designed as a bitter elf, the last of her kind. She despises human, and controls absurdly powerful magic.

Of course I’m just butchering a rather ellaborate background story but hey, for the sake of keeping these updates brief, She’s a powerful elf witch!

Day #4 ~ An uneventful day…~

Except for all the doodles made. This time I actually did want to practice coloring a bit more indepth than just applying gradients. Light is still a tricky thing for me. I’ve been drawing a lot of chibis lately for two reasons.
A)I’m working on a game which revolves around this style for art.
B)I find the simplicity of chibis as a great element to practice perspective and character design~ I can just lay the rough idea of whatever it is I have in mind. ´w´

A practice on perspective and colors indeed.

Today…

Has been a not so frustrating day for the most part.

For the past few days my productivity in game development activities has been a lot slower than what I would have wanted. I tried to force myself to work on my game during my spare time, but soon enough found myself not getting anywhere with that. I started to wonder about what I really wanted to do and tried to find inspiration in stuff which had previously inspired me, only to discover that it wasn’t really working anymore, which ultimately led me to ask myself if I was no longer into game making as a hobby. If I had to describe it…nothing I was coming up with,creative-wise would satisfy me, everything felt mediocre, and I wasn’t really feeling in the mood to give it the extra which is required to overcome the “block”. Have you ever experienced this kind of frustrating situations?

Either way, I casually mentioned to some of my friends about my inability to “create”. One of them wisely said something along these lines…

If you’re not feeling what you’re doing then you’re probably not really doing what you want?

So that’s when it hit me. I realized that it wasn’t a matter of creative inspiration. It’s just a matter that I’m not in the mood to work on that game for now. Inspiration is a really weird thing for me. I can’t fake it. So I think I’ll just focus on doing things which don’t feel like a chore at any given time. Regardless~ I’ve been drawing today, this is what came out:

I was experimenting a bit with this shading style as a friend suggested. As for the subject, she’s actually a girl I’m constantly redesigning and drawing.(Well the “constant” part doesn’t apply to actually drawing her). You can actually see a version of her from a few months ago if you scroll down a bit if you want!

Other than that I want to share this:

I’ve been working on just about everything to these anime OP mashes. The user has kindly put together and uploaded several mixes, so if you’re ever in search of some high quality anime music to listen to while working, his channel is great for this.

Until the next time~

Sometimes…

It feels as if many people I know dig too deep behind the workings and mechanics behind game design implementations.
They try to find patterns and complex explanations behind every element they come across during a game experience, ending up with course-like theories and statements which tackle the very psychological elements as to why they found that fun or engaging.
For example, the other day I was reading something like this:

[9:43:41 PM] x: one thing masterful about ocarina of time
[9:43:46 PM] x: link’s look changes as you get upgrades
[9:43:50 PM] x: new tunics, new shields, new swords
[9:43:54 PM] x: he looks nothing like he did at the start
[9:43:58 PM] x and the player can reflect
[9:44:13 PM] x: same with MM and later zeldas
[9:44:21 PM] x: that whole concept I think is important
[9:44:27 PM] x: changing the visuals
[9:44:38 PM] x: showing how the avatar has evolved
[9:44:44 PM] x: on its journey

I wonder though, is the secret to a successful game really to be found behind the thorough understanding of such concepts?
Does successfully crafting a memorable game experience really need such a complex approach?
Did the dev team behind Ocarina of Time actually had this kind of thinking in mind back when they decided on that feature?

I think not.

Even after factoring in the scientific approaches many books suggest towards game design and keeping our own common sense above all, I still think 90% of what we consider memorable or fun was simply something the designers thought to be cool and rolled with.

And yet here we are, sometimes complicating the process of game design more than what we should.
I really want to meet more people who are into game-making and think like this someday. People who just go with that they believe to be fun, and instead of conceptualizing everything, just do what they feel is right.
This is a luxury we have as hobbyists, as there is no budget or deadline threatening or preventing such risky(By serious industry standard) approaches.

I’m not saying game design is not needed, that scientific approaches are far from necessary, or that people can create memorable games without understanding basic notions of what makes a good game, but if you ever ask me, at the end of the day, it’s not about the approach I take, how much planning I do, or what psychological factors I take into account while doing said planning, what I consider to be the critical concepts of my games are not the ones which surface after taking all sorts of things into account, but rather the ones from which the idea was born. Things which I simply found cool to theorize and to go along with, not the ones which surfaced after careful thinking. Working in the opposite manner, transforms game creation into a chore, rather than a fun activity.

TL;DR: for me, It’s about thinking of cool stuff, and going along with it, keeping common sense as I work.

All about chilling.

Chillaxing.