Hobnox Audiotool

The audio tool is a fantastic way to make cool sounding music all from within your browser. Make 10 short loops and randomly loop through them for a simple background track. The tone matrix tool is particularly awesome.

ColorLovers Palettes

Sticking to a palette will improve the appearance of programmer art tenfold. The palettes are only of 5 colours so try finding two matching palettes to get a good range.

If you know any other handy sites like these, post them so we can all use them

Well, I sort of have a design planned out for my game, so I decided to take out a pen and start drawing. Here’s what I sketched up in the past 5 minutes.

Notice the beautiful asset list: brainwave, eyes, hand, mouth, and nose. A more delightful art asset list I have not seen!

…sleep. Though before that I felt like doing a little drawing to get the subconscious primed on the theme before sleep.  Here’s a quick 3 minute sketch of a possible doomy world:

Woot! My article got featured on gamedev.net:

Better Programmer Art: Or how to fake it as a game artist.

I use a lot of examples from past LD48 games (mine and others), and most of this is stuff I’ve learned through doing these contests. Ironically, in the most recent contest I didn’t have time to replace the placeholder art so it pretty much ignores all of these tips. 

Hope this is helpful to the community. Enjoy!

Jovoc

I didn’t get home until ten o’clock, but I checked on my phone to see what the theme was.  Luckily, it was the one I had done the most thinking about on Monday, so I didn’t have to do much thinking while away.

I’m going to do a racing game, perhaps like Outrun or of the Night Driver/Enduro variety.  I’ve done a little mock up of the screen, just a sketch really.  I’m not sure I like the perspective, but the sprites will most likely be used.  Click to enlarge (sounds like a Viagra ad!?)

From here, I’ll probably colorize the art and then cut it up to make individual sprites.  I should probably just use bounding rectangles for now though, and get some actual game logic going…..but I have learned that if you don’t do your graphics right the first time, you’ll likely not have time to return to them later.  So take the extra minutes now so you don’t have to set everything back up to fix them.

I’m tired, but I want to get something going before I go to bed.  I’m being kept company by a neurotic kitty and a can of No Fear Energy Drink.  Oh, and my Gobstoppers!  Though I think I’m already candied out…  Listening to Iron & Wine right now cause it’s calm and quiet.  Tomorrow I’ll bust out some loudness.

Since people are posting pellies, here’s the one I made last night:

(slightly tweaked)

Well, this started as a clever idea.

One of those drinking birds, with a pelican beak, drinking from a trophy. Alas, it really looked terrible, so I hacked it somewhat, creating this slightly more carnivorous scenario.

The idea was to use something iconic embossed on a medal.

(click for full size)

Made in Gimp with a tablet. First time I’ve used the smudge tool, went a bit crazy with it =)

This is what my characters look like.

It’s just a template, since I’m going to add hands as an overlay so I can create multiple images.

I think I found a concept I like. I’m currently calling it “Pillar”, as in a pillar/tower, and caterpillar. Here’s some concept art.

A character composed of blocks, that acquires new blocks as he moves. The controls I haven’t figured out entirely, but at the very least I think it’ll be based around the idea of picking a block on the character as a pivot point, and rotating him.  Probably constanly moving, walking in to walls, until told to turn around (or automatic after a few seconds).

As blocks are collected, they become part of him, evolving in to Tetris like shapes and beyond. The rotating mechanic is your ability to get to new heights, and cross gaps. Physics wise, I think it’ll be entirely axis aligned, since it’ll be far too easy to make shapes that couldn’t normally keep balance.  Legs would sprout wherever needed, purely for look cohesiveness.  Face always moves to the front middle of the shape.  Perhaps tails and other things sprout if a shape deems it.

My only concern at this point is trying to figure out, level design wise, why you wouldn’t want to always create a long piece.