{"author_name":"Ranquil","cat":"LD #35","comments":[],"epoch":1461050880,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"6208","p_author":"Ranquil","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"41647","p_title":"Transformagician \u2013 The Artist\u2019s Perspective","p_cat":"LD #35","p_event":"LD35","p_time":"1461050880","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1460678400","event_key":"33","event_name":"LD35"},"text":"

Hi guys! I’m Ranquil<\/strong> and I worked as an artist in this jam for our game Transformagician<\/strong>. I thought it could be interesting to hear an artist’s perspective on the development of the game.<\/p>\n

\"nalle\"\"tapa-minut\"<\/p>\n

I, along with the game’s programmer HuvaaKoodia<\/strong>, study in a game school. However, I don’t actually specialize in graphics; my specialization is in game production and design. Still, in this project I worked as an artist and left production and game design to the programmer. I wanted to focus my efforts in this jam to produce graphics because, even though I’m not an artist, I’ve always been interested in making game graphics and I wanted to see what I was able to pull off in the given time. Seeing all the nice comments about the graphics really warms up my cold, dead heart! \":)\"<\/p>\n

The process of making the graphics began by finding some reference pictures for the color palette of the game. I wanted to produce something slightly surreal but still intelligible to human beings so I chose pastel\u00a0paintings as my source for colors. In the end I used 2 paintings as a full range of overall color, made individual palettes for each piece of graphics and and allowed colors to vary a little in shade and ever so slightly in hue from the palette. The end result seemed to work pretty well!<\/p>\n

As for character design, I started by sketching very vague outlines for the main character and the enemies. Then I started making the sprites in Photoshop while using the sketches merely as a very rough guide. The main design ideas could by summed up in three phrases: topsy-turvy, not human and artificially created life. If you take a closer look at the character design and the ending, you might start to notice the theme of\u00a0artificially created life on your own too.\u00a0As for animation, I reused the torso and the head with as many sprites as possible but the enemies in the last level required drawing each and every frame from scratch beca\u00a0use of the… consistency of that particular enemy. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

What I’m the most proud of, though, is the ending cinematic. I had absolutely no idea I could pull off light in a three-dimensional space that well in a limited amount of pixels or that I could make all of the frames in just 3.5 hours! Of course, HuvaaKoodia added quite a lot to it with clever compositing. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

All in all, I enjoyed this game jam a lot, improved my skills and a learned lots of new things. I don’t know whether I’ll take part in the next Ludum Dare but I’ll definitely keep on jamming!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tldr<\/strong>: I’m not an artist but I made graphics anyway, did good and learned lots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Play Transformagician here!<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>","time":"April 19th, 2016 2:28 am","title":"Transformagician \u2013 The Artist\u2019s Perspective"}