As the artist on my team, the morning after LD submission means my mind is a jumble of old sketches, pixels, and keyframes. Let me puke it all up in a post so I can remember what I did!
Theme to sketch to artwork
“You can do this in like an 20 mintues, right?” -your boss
Our team had so many great ideas for this theme. Haunted carnival ride, kraken, reverse tomagotchi. My favorite non-developed idea was the player controlling a vacuum cleaner that chases a dog around the room trying to scare it…anyway.
Once we decided on a multiplayer fighting game Monsters…BRAWL! with monster costumes, the ideas rolled in. I wanted some recognizable monsters but also some that didn’t exist yet (See: moar googly eyes please). Here’s what the transition looked like from my brains to paper to the computer box (left).
Now with less poop
Now that I had some dudes (dudettes actually. The skeleton has a little extra rib…so it’s a lady!), I had to pick a style? Well, I made a paper cutout style and then ended up hating it. Too flat? Too poop? Yes. Very poop. So I went back and looked at some old Disney animation backgrounds and Samurai Jack backgrounds and got inspired to do 2.5 D…err…or like 2.25 D if ya wanna get specific.
Major breakthrough: Using the tools I know
For the characters, I did the outlines in Illustrator and the animating in After Effects. Yeah, after effects. Don’t you judge me, I’ll be whatever I wanna do. In LD 32 I used a new program and ended up nearly setting my computer on fire. With hate. So this time I did what I knew and felt like sunshine and puppies. Some LD’s are for experimenting. It’s a great place to do that. But some LD’s are for polishing the skills you already have. That was gonna be my LD, the one where I don’t almost Carrie everyone on my team. I have red hair, I’m already susceptible to Carriing.
But man, I do wish I’d gotten time to do the Lovecraft cultist costume. So many tentacles….which…is weird to get excited about. Uh, anyway, finished artwork!
Idle. Because every game character is super fidgety.
Run. Or for the werewolf, tiptoe. Apparently.
Action 1: Hit. Ghost has no hit because *he’s a ghost duh.*
Our director called these hotdog forks. A forest of hotdog forks.
Idle, Run, Hit, Jump, Fall, Dash…for 3.5 characters, this was the most I’d gotten done in any Jam. If After Effects was a person, a sexy sexy person, I would hug them. And give them candy and kisses. Don’t tell my husband. Crap…he’s on my dev team.
The Post-it box (See: a sticker reward board for adults)
It came around to Sunday and, for the first time in maybe possibly ever during a Jam, I felt like I had everything we needed to publish a bare bones game. How did this happen? On the second day, early, we all sat down and took out freaking post its and wrote every last damn thing down that we needed. Not a trello board, not an excel sheet. Neon pink freaking post-its. And when you finished something you move it to the other persons board (for me, to the programmers’ board) or to the wonderful, glorious Box of Completed Tasks. It was so satisfying to watch those post-its go away. It was like watching someone squeegee a window. Have you ever watched a squeegee? It’s, like, weirdly satisfying.
Those were the takeaways from this jam for me. If you like our artwork, go play our game Monsters…BRAWL! You can play it 1Player…I promise.
Now, onward to rating more games. Y’all have done some great work this LD, now rest up!
Jodi, Artist, Walking PNG sequence, Mortem Poster