So yeah, I’m in.

I’m still considering whether I’ll actually take part in this particular game jam because I just took part in another jam last weekend.

Buuuut, right now it seems pretty likely that I will. 😀

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

I, along with the game’s programmer HuvaaKoodia, 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!

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 paintings 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!

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 artificially created life on your own too. As 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 use of the… consistency of that particular enemy. 😀

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. 😀

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!

Tldr: I’m not an artist but I made graphics anyway, did good and learned lots.

Play Transformagician here!

Aaaand I'm in! It's been a while since I last took part in LD!

If you're looking for an artist, hit me up! I'm a 2D artist and a game designer who's got 4 years of experience at game jamming and I've worked on actual game projects too. Check out my portfolio: https://ranquil.artstation.com/

Discord: Ranquil#4190

Are you an experienced programmer or team looking for an experienced artist? Then look no further and hit me up!

I'm a 2D artist and I have 4 years of experience from numerous game jams and longer game projects, even some that have been released on Steam. I'm looking for an experienced programmer or team because I just want to make something cool that I could maybe show to a potential employer, but I also just wanna have fun. :D Take a look at my portfolio!

Stuff I can do: * Digital painting * Cel shaded art * Comic book style art * Manga style art * Pixel art * Traditional 2D animation * Textures * (Simple 3D props)

In case you're working with Unity, I can also do Canvas, Animator and light-related stuff!

Discord: Ranquil#4190