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I agree the textures look kind of out of place.  The rest of the background is fairly clean and uncluttered, which make the textures extremely noisy.  The perspective is a little off in places (eg. the frames on the pictures on the wall should have straight bottoms (unless they aren't rectangular) since they're flush with the wall, and the wall is straight-on), but this is shaping up as a solid background

A little bit of progress   I'm trying out painting in B&W and adding colour after.



I'm planning on adding a background, but that horror show will wait for a bit

Nice to see how this came along   Spiffy job!

Yay, happy you liked it!

Thanks everyone, here's the edit

Thanks for the input, guys! (neat paintover too )

I agree with the composition problems with the fawn on the right, I'm definitely going to be changing that

As for the arm, she's not supposed to be leaning on it, but rather it's supposed to be off the floor, leading the turning of the torso as she twists around to face the viewer.  I guess it's not that very clear, so I'll try to adjust and fix that somehow (probably by introducing a bend at the wrist so it looks more delicate).  I might shorten the torso a tad, it's something I'll play around with.

Thanks again guys!

Just finishing up a sketch for a painting I'm planning to do, based on a pixel I made a while ago, but I increased the deer characteristics a bit.  I'm hoping to make this a nice detailed painting, so any crit you can give in these early stages would be much appreciated

I was picturing her to be quite tall, but do the fawns look too small in comparison?



(as you may be able to tell, some things were scribbled in just now )

and here's the old picture:


Thanks!

It's lookin' good so far!

Realism is not my strength, and I didn't look at any references so take all I say with a grain of salt , but I made a quick paintover (my edit on right):



The main thing was the eye shape--the inside corners of the eyes seemed to be going a bit upward, so I moved those down a bit, made them slightly larger, and added some space between the eye and the lower lashes.  I decreased the shadow of the philtrum, and since the head seems to be downward slightly (judging from the shape of the nose), I flattened the lips a bit.

I also trimmed the head on our right a bit.  Something that really helps me in determining shape and balance is to flip the canvas occasionally and work from the other side, as it helps you see the picture in a fresh light

My paintover's not very good, but I hope this helps in some way  

Keep up the good work, Ben!

Congrats on a fiiiiiine game, guys!

Yay, a sequel!

The art looks fabulous as usual and retains the charm of the original, although I also think the black outlines are also a little harsh and make the characters stand out a bit too much as Loomy said.  Perhaps a dark brown or grey would suit the background style a bit more
I quite like Nelly's voice (and I normally don't like speechpacks ).

I left this running in a window in the background for a while while I was doing other stuff and it crashed, which I guess would be a memory-related thing?  I dunno, but thought I'd mention it.

Good luck with production!

Just wanted to say I enjoyed watching all the entries come together--terrific work, everyone!  I wasn't able to take part this time (first there was a vacation... then forgetting... then laziness/slight intimidation ), but if a similar workshop is held sometime in the future I would try to participate

Ah, just saw this!  Thanks for playing guys, glad you liked it
As for a sequel... not for the foreseeable future, but who knows?

Heehee, I'm looking forward to this one   Good luck, SV and Pijin!

Oh, well, it does, but when I have a layer selected and a layer selected, it automatically makes a new layer and pastes everything into all layers!

I'm a little unclear on what you mean here.  Do you mean it appears in all frames, rather than layers?  Imageready is a weird thing to control (I'm certainly no expert at it, even though it's the animation program I use), but if you turn off a layer in a frame, it will usually apply to all the frames after.  Just make sure you're not confusing layers with frames

Ah yes, I see what you mean.  Thanks Redwall, I will try to fix that

I decided to keep the waddle, I think it suits the character more   I also modified the antennae bounce to be delayed.
Comments on the up-left walkcycle would be much appreciated:


Thanks!

I think shading would be appropriate   Pick a general light source and try having a go, and let us see how how you get on.  It's hard to give advice on shading when there's no shading yet

It's a good start
One problem I see is that the levels at which her feet hit the floor aren't corresponding with how she's moving, making it seems as though her legs are crossing each other as she walks.  I think this is due to the mirroring of frames 1&5, 2&6, 3&7, and 4&8--the positions of arms and legs will be similar in these pairs of frames, but not identical (and having this high a resolution makes it more obvious).  The mirroring of these frames is also contributing to the changing hands problem (in one of the frames, I noticed her left hand turned into her right hand if you look at thumb placement).
Hope this helps, keep at it!

Congratulations on the release of your demo   The game's got a unique look, and the "ping!" with the "Day 1" reminded me of The Shining, which is a good thing considering the game's premise

I assume this isn't the "official" demo, but just a preliminary one?  If so, I realize this is probably still in the WIP stage, but I have some critique/suggestions if you don't mind :

1)make text skippable
2)some of the button hotspots seemed too small and I had to repeatedly click in order to get a response (eg. "New game").  I also had this problem with selecting inventory items
3)the dialogue font is rather hard to read on some backgrounds.  This may be a personal preference thing, but I'm also not sold on using a font that is all-caps for a horror game.  It seems a little too shout-y for an eerie atmosphere
4)I think it would be good to make the player turn to face whatever he's describing
5)it would be nice if commands could be interrupted (eg. while he's walking to interact with a hotspot, I can click somewhere else to cancel that)
6)when I pressed ESC, in addition to the options menu the quit message also popped up.  Also, I could bring up the options menu on the opening screen
7)the mule deer slides during its animation
8)this is just my opinion, and perhaps it's not done yet, but for a commercial game I feel the game needs more animation (eg. log cutting (showing just the start before the fade), flag flapping)
9)the descriptions are rather bare-bones (once again, they may not be done yet)
10) I couldn't walk to the lake; I assume I wasn't supposed to be able to since it's a demo, but maybe disable that so people won't think it's a bug

I hope I haven't come across as too negative   The premise sounds good, and it will be interesting to see how this develops.  Good luck!

I also agree that the Longest Journey-style verb coin GUI is the best option if you truly do need more than one interaction,

Wow, TLJ had a verb coin?  My porous memory has failed me yet again

In my opinion, the "look" verb interaction is a leftover from text adventures, when the game world was described rather than shown. Think about it:

A modern graphic adventure. There's a character sprite on the screen. He's wearing a trenchcoat and hat, and hiding in the shadows. You select the "look" cursor/verb, click on him, and the game says "That guy looks shifty." Well, I knew that from looking at him myself, so "looking" at him in-game was a waste of time. An oversimplification, maybe, but if you continue to distill the look verb down to the core of it's function, you may find that you could do away with it altogether.

I think when the Examine interaction is superfluous (and I agree that it can be in some situations), it's often to do with writing.  Describing things exactly as they appear does seem a bit redundant, but including some background information, or adding a tinge of the character's personality to the description can provide more depth.  For example, instead of saying "That guy looks shifty", the character might add "I wonder if he's got something to hide", "I think I recognize him from a line-up" if he's a detective, or "I'd better stay away from him" if he's a timid character (well, nothing that lame, but you get my point ).  It's perhaps one of the reasons why the Examine option has been eliminated in many Myst-style first-person adventure games, where the character has no real personality (since the character is the player) and the graphics are detailed enough that the appearance of things are self-evident.