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Shouldn't her boobs move a little too?

I can tell from the picture you don't want to promote her as 'slutty' but unless those things are artificial they'll bop around a little. 

Looks good so far everythings a bit stiff and unnatural but I'm eager to see your revised version.

Good luck with it

- Sean

The setting and basic story may be cliché but it gets a lot better, trust me. I won't be showing any of the key areas. Everything shown so far is from the start of the game. I'll be keeping a lot of things 'secret' from you guys.. I wont ruin the fun

Glad to here it.

Today was a slow day and I didn't get much done. Tied up some loose-ends with the latest area The Canteen (Screenshots Above). Devised a proper puzzle for this area. Next thing for me to do is break from the mapping sides of things and look into programming one of the games key features. I'll update the thread accordingly when I have something worthwhile to say.

I reckon that at the current pace of development unless there are any set-backs I'd say early March.

For your first try it's really great

The barrel looks slightly funny shaped and the Bin looks a bit too high. The car and building is nice. Overall a good looking picture. Just try to fix up the shape of the Bin and Barrel.

The model itself would look good. The Maxis Development team made it

I've had difficulties finding somebody that has the time to work with me in the project. As a result I resorted to once again exploiting the software I had access to. I can't pixel backgrounds very well but I can map in UnrealEd so I used that for my backdrops. I own the sims and there's easy animation software around for free that is quite easy to learn. Although this style of graphics creation may be frowned upon by some it's much harder than it sounds. The locations in my games do share meshes with the actual game that I own but I've built the structure from scratch,textured and positioned meshes aswell as light the whole thing to produce something truly unique. Then I've had to cut and edit imagery in PhotoShop so it's actually quite time consumeing. I'll hopefully end up with a unique style at the end of all this and doing it 'my' way has actually saved quite a bit of time. Whether or not the game itself will be any good is anybodys guess  :

I can only get better though eh

Not quite criminal but not quite innocent either   8)

@ Mordalles - Be patient... it'll be bloody soon enough  :o

My apologies. I've added my 'base' character model to the original post. Thanks for the links 

Hey Guys!

Seeing as I haven't been able to track down my own artists I've started on my own character art. I'm useing some basic meshes and textures I found on the internet as well as a very simple but capable animation program that uses a 'Bones' system. Basically I need to be shown how it is the human body moves during the process of a step. I myself am not very good at visualisationg and would really appreciate some 'Skeletal' diagrams or Walk Cycle examples.

Thanks for any help you can offer
- Sean

Why has everything moved to the right?

Send it back leftwards

Looks fine now, interesting style you've chosen to adopt.

Pardon the double postÃ,  Ã, 

Today, I've worked on one of the 'Puzzle' areas I spoke of. I've attached the room backgrounds that I'll use for this area.

By 'Tide-Line' I meant a watermark. The water wouldn't stay at a constant 'High/Low' level. Now if we presume that at this moment in time the water is at it's lowest point we should be able to see evidence that the water also raises upwards at times. This would be acheived by 'moistening' the wood. Makeing it look slightly wet.

I'd say drop the guns. Keep close to the original story. Brighten up and cartoonify/magicize the graphics and most importantly really work on the character models. If there's anything graphics wise that you simply must not cut corners with it's the character models. After all I as a player would be stareing at them for longer than anything else. Try getting photos or sketches of Harry Potter (Actor or Comic) and then drawing a base model from that. Your current sprites look flat and lifeless. Kind of like a 2D bit of paper thats been chucked on a nice background.

Good luck with it, I look forward to playing

It looks pretty good so far. Nice form and overall shape. The 'texture' of the metal isn't brilliant but it works quite well. The wheel inner edges are really pixelly even when zoomed out. I advise you try and soften them a little. It's a nice image and with a bit of refinement should look really great

Also, I don't mean to be an ass but next time it might be better if you just modify your post instead of double post.

Thanks for the comments Duck 

In reply to the corridor comment I'm not sure about the amount I will have at the moment. A lot of the game is based around the corridor system and although they don't take too long to travel through a couple of people (Yourself and Dr Lecter) have mentioned that featureing a large amount of corridors may not keep the player interested. I won't have an excessive amount. Moveing from Puzzle area 'A' to 'B' via the corridors will take around 2-3 minutes maximum per area switch. I think that the corridors help build the tension as I'll be adding some events between each transition. The player won't know if they're going to encounter something whilst travelling around.. hopefully it'll keep them edgey. A lot of my game is based around story and as such I don't want to add a lot of puzzles that feel disjointed and random. I need a certain amount to interest the player and lengthen the experience but as it stands a lot of the gameplay will focus around studying clues.. and then flashbacks and confrontations to piece everything together. It's not a traditional puzzle game. More an 'Interactive' novel I suppose. I think that for now I'll carry on adding corridors as I have been and then if I get enough negative feedback about the excess amount when I put it out for testing I'll start cutting unneccessary stuff out. I'm not an experinced developer and I'm haveing to expirment with things as I go along. Hopefully I'll have something fun and playable at the end of my experimentation.

Thanks for your comments  

I like the image overall.. really good work!

However as others have pointed out the arm looks a little dodgey and the perspective doesn't match. Although if I'm honest I didn't notice any of that until after I'd read the crits  :. I think the eyes are a bit weighted and dark and that makes her look a little manly. Her chin is too square and wide to suggest feminine form. Overall it's a great piece it just needs refinement

Thanks for the comments ProgZ.

I myself have been worried about the darkness of the images. Also, 1 of my 3 'testers' so far mentioned the fact that he couldn't see anything at all except rough outlines. Obiviously his monitor was a bit crappy but that's something I'll have to consider. Keeping everything 'dark' was the way I planned to create a creepy atmospheric environment. However, if I lose playability beacuse of the brightness then they will obiviously need to be revised. I'm quite an adept photoshop user. Perhaps I could exploit theese talents to add effects to the images that make them appear 'Dark, Moody etc' without actual losing too much of the visibility. It's possible that I could perhaps 'Overlay' brushwork on the lighter areas and degrade the area to a 'gritty' level. That way I'd have control over the entire image compistions lightness levels instead of just a basic.. 'Oh, it's dark'

I think today will be spent working on one of the main 'Puzzle' areas. At the moment the corridors interlink each main puzzle room.

I prefer the first image.  :

This one is equally as nice but the camera angle is slighlty more 'boring'. The first image in my opinion was a little bit more exciting. However, either image that you choose out of the two will be excellent so it's really up to you. This image seems simplier and backgrounds like this one are probably quicker to produce which speeds things up. I like the usage of the boat in this version but the area itself is quite 'squared' and plain. Also, the pier legs perhaps you could sketch a 'tide line' onto them. At the moment if you focus on them for a few seconds it kind of looks like they are 'sitting' on the water instead of being submerged in it.

Very nice backgrounds and I wish you luck in finding something you like  

That PSP image is better than the first. Like others have said useing textures and plug-ins without a lot of experience usually ruins an image. Everything looks disjointed and the seams of each image part are clearly visible. The PSP image is slightly more seamless and 'flows' quite well. I agree that the Path and Castle could do with some refinment. Perhaps the perspective could be revised as well. Keep at it, you can only get better

Thanks

I won't know how well the idea works as a game until after I finish it but hopefully it should be pretty fun. Also, I had a nifty idea for a game feature that I'll be looking into today and over the next few days.