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I think you're going to find it less edible now. I hated to kill the chocolate egg, but it was really a doorway It does make me want to do a Willy Wonka AGS game though. Here's the final look for the entrance to the Horse's Ass room: 



One room, a short cinematic, and hooking up all the puzzles and then I have the Drafthorse puzzle hub complete!

Drooling over that art style.

Thanks, folks! Right now there is no luck involved - it's pure force of will and Netflix's ability to keep feeding me more bad movie fuel so I can watch as I work.

New room under construction - it's a nice shot that demonstrates how I lay everything into the scene. I'm off to Disney for two weeks, but I'm hoping to do some artwork on the drive there when it's not my turn behind the wheel.

Just be careful - O'Sirus moves like he's on 30 cups of coffee! I'm definitely not animation trained, but I have a "clutter" style that masks a lot of my flaws by confusing the human brain

I remember when I was working on it, I found a few "walk cycle" tutorials on the internet that really helped, too. Even the ones that are just stick figures are great at pointing out the key frames.

I think the robotic swing works in a "stiff guy in a suit" kind of way

I find tracking the arms is working well, but the legs are a bit harder to follow. Making the back leg/foot (and the arm, too) a shade darker will probably go a long way to help the brain sort out the cycle. I think you're using a cut and paste of the same hands and shoes (could be wrong), so it's easy to get lost without the shade difference.

And, to go along with the shot above - video of O'Sirus talking to the bar's patrons!

http://youtu.be/jQQpUAB8PjU

Got a preview of some barflies in the Horse's Ass:

Thank you for the huge compliments! Keep in mind the 7 years thing was only because I got distracted - it hasn't been *in dev* that long. I have been working on it nonstop for the past couple of weeks and the Horse's Ass bar is nearing completion (have a couple of little barflies left to draw/animate). Currently, it's just me working on the game, though I have one or two old sketches from Julien I'll use for inspiration later. As far as the WACOM tablet - believe it or not, I can't draw with a pen. My drawings on paper look horrible. The Crook's style is pretty much due to my poor drawing skills and my practiced mouse-sculpting burn/dodge abomination style. If I changed things up now, the quality would change. 

On the financial side - I'm currently one of those paycheck-to-paycheck types who doesn't really have the option to just drop things and take a risk - I wish I did. If Kickstarter allowed a "pay my salary for a year" option to get 'er done, I'd jump on that. However, Kickstarter is more of a "give me money to pay for __" type of deal. I did set up a Patreon, which is similar to a salary, bit I don't expect it to take off until I have at least the whole Drafthorse boat demo done. I plan to add 1-2 more rooms to it, finish the puzzles, and then polish. It's not a scary goal for me right now. Once I have a nice demo going too, I think it will be easy to find real voice acting. I do have some connections there. What I'll probably do soon is remove all the voices that are in and just leave the whole thing text until I have it more final.

I think once you meet the various people inside the Horse's Ass (ew), you'll realize this thing is going to be anything but cliche - my goal is to make each character someone you want to speak with because each one represents some universe lore. I know where things are going with the story, too - and they're going BIG.

I do have to say I enjoy working at Ubi and I think we put out some of the more artistic AAA games on the market, I just prefer the creative control of doing something on your own. Especially when you're a total weirdo.

Anyway, thanks for the ego boost - I hope I can find more people with your enthusiasm as this thing comes together!

I've added a quick demo playthrough (not exploring everything that's there so far) on Youtube. My formatting is a bit off, but it works if you fullscreen the video.

http://youtu.be/aWMcz8qQnKQ

I spent a large portion of the day playing through this game and loved every minute of it! The love put into it shows in the extra little details, so a couple of little code hiccups and typos are easy to ignore. There aren't enough creepy point and click games out there (Dark Seed was my favorite), and this one hit the spot just right. I'll probably pick up and play through the Cat Lady next weekend.

Very curious to see what you're doing with the reboot!

Little update (well, a big update considering the work involved) - The demo now features the animated Gnarled Scar logo, the intro cutscene, the animated title screen, the credits screen, the first room, the second cinematic, and a very WIP hub room with nooks as well as a few crannies. All in all, it's a great little snapshot of where I expect the full game to be quality-wise. The demo can be found here:

http://knobblycrook.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KnobblyCrook.zip   (around 80 megs).

Here's a shot from one of the cutscenes:

Loving the detail you put into the special effects! Sometimes the "exciting" part is missing from these types of games but you've definitely nailed it in the trailer. 

Thanks! I think it's probably the bright colors/parade float puffiness. I do love Nawlens.

The layout definitely works, it does have an epic feel, you just need to work on the polish.

A couple of tricks that will help if you use something like the Gimp or Photoshop for your art (I believe the Gimp is still free).

1) You can better blend those buildings with the fog by putting the fog color on a brush at 50% opacity and just painting until they sink into the background.
2) You could try animating the fog by redrawing it two times and then cycling the background at a slow speed,depending on if it is supposed to be intimidating or still.
3) This is a style call, but if you want really straight lines for something like the grid in front - you can use the rectangle selection tool as a stencil to make sure they're all perfect.
4) Consider breaking up the top of the scene with clouds or stars or anything to draw the eye out of the deep blue pool. You do have scribbles there, but they need a bit more detail.
5) Since that big building is the focal point of the picture (the woman's arm and gaze are both directing the eye to it), consider animating the flags, spotlights, etc. Sometimes when I'm not entirely happy with a background, I give the player something else to process in the area of the scene that looks better

That's a cool reference and definitely a childhood favorite. That story actually would make a pretty unique Point and Click game.

As for the vest talking, yes - it's actually part of the lore. There was a great wizard playing around with animation magic when something went wrong (we'll discover what) and caused a huge explosion. Everything in the Crook is a mix of objects found around the Wizard's mansion blended with animated inanimates - so O'Sirus is a mix of a chair, the wizard's spittoon (helmet), and the wizard's face, which will start talking to him once he meets other parts of the wizard.

Thanks, guys! Thought I'd do another one of those in-progress comparisons. This is for the title screen, which has an up-scaled prisoner O'Sirus portrait.

For me, upgrading to 1024 allowed me to put a *lot* more detail into the art, which is a blessing if you're somebody who enjoys cluttered artwork. It takes longer, yes, but if you're not trying to create something in the classic style, I do think it's worth it. Just my 2 cents.

I added a screenshot of the opening cinematic in the first post. I should have the intro cin finished today and added to a new version of the demo by tomorrow.