Evidently, I'm Bad at Blogging

I'm working on fixing that though.

So July was a massive flop for me. I had a major artist block that refused to go away and life wanted to get in the way as well.

Thus, I'm thinking of changing up the way I post updates and how I go about achieving goals that I set out for myself. This art block really crippled my workflow for the entire month so I'm hoping to avoid that.

The Plan is...

I'm going to try to aim for monthly goals and post small updates weekly. That, and work on making a more long term plan for this project. From there, I can work on the smaller monthly goals with (hopefully) a clearer picture of what I need to achieve and how to go about it.

Other Notes...

I think part of the reason my art isn't working as much as I would like is because I've unintentionally signed myself up for a whole lot of things without considering my schedule. Such things include holding a producer role for the semester 2 pantomime with the UWA Panto Society, and starting on an online diploma of project management.

I should be able to juggle everything, but I really need to say no to things sometimes.

Planning Up!

The big picture goal is obviously to get the game out with some killer artwork in an year and a half or so (date not determined, don't quote this). Starting out on the smaller goals, I need to get a working art style for the project that'll be visually interesting and successfully implementing it into the test level that we have now. That should be a solid months worth of work just on the 3D assets and animations.

In Case You Didn't See It...

On my art page on Facebook, he's some work I've done in some of my spare time when the block wasn't as overwhelming.

Hey look! My toe got into the shot.

I need a better way to post these rather than just using my phone.

I had this sketch for a while from before the July block, I also found some fantastic paint pens. So I went over the line art and put the pens to good use. I managed a to nail the cell shaded look on Samurai, it worked much better than I thought it would.

9/10 Would definitely recommend buying these pens.

I'll post updates when I have some art ready to show you guys. The project management course is actually really helping with time management and planning and I'm only halfway through the first unit. It's almost like they know what students are like with assessments.

Anyways, I'll update you guys soon!

Jason.

Late Start to the Year

Starting Up Again...

After a failed project to functionality problems and finally settling into a work routine, I'm going to start posting regular updates every fortnight to document the results of my sprints. With any luck, it'll keep the momentum up for my future projects.

The Project That Got Away

My old TAFE friend (now colleague), Alex and I had an idea for a game that was similar to FTL, but with free movement of your ship in space and more resources to micromanage. The player would need to find their own way around space while trying to make a living without dying. 

The project was scrapped after a month or so after discovering that the functionality we were aiming to put ingame was impossible to achieve in Unity.

A design for the Human Medium sized ship

The New Project

Soon after scrapping the project, we did some brainstorming for something more achievable coming straight from finishing TAFE. Our first thought was to do something simple, yet fun to play and fun to make. 

We settled on making a hack and slash game. They are simple enough to make and lots of fun to play if done well. My approach to this project is to make an art style that is stylised and exaggerated while still being readable.

Concept sketch for a playable Templar character.

Playable Samurai character.

Gorilla like demon enemy

The very basic premise is that the player takes control of a type of warrior from history (Templar knight, Samurai, etc) and somehow finds themselves in Hell. Players then have to either survive until they are overwhelmed, or find a way out to get back to the world of the living.

Moving Forward

This sprint is for developing the art style. I'm aiming to get a basic idea of the style and make the base meshes for one of the playable characters and some enemies. If I complete those, I'll work on environment assets for later down the track.

See you in 2 weeks.

Jason