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Haha this game made me laugh and did indeed remind me a bit of my days as an office worker

I would have liked the ending sequence to have shown something like Colin sitting in his underwear playing the new Ben Jordan (after fixing his busted computer) at home and realising how good life is... but I guess it is your decision.

Also, the whole stationery thieving thing is accurate, which adds to the humour.

Nice work, especially for a very first game

Holy crap Vince, that's the biggest font ever  :o.

I zoomed out to 50% and still had to scroll horizontally to read long words like 'shouldn't' 

Also, I am Babar's slave. I must obey Babar. Babar is my ruler.

Happy birthday to CaptainBinky.

I really have nothing else exciting to say here, so it's just a boring normal happy birthday post.

Manicmatt! Happy birthday! Or else!

I find mspaint useful for basic sprite sketches mainly because I can resize the canvas instantly, unlike most other programs where one needs to dig through menus. A small point, but one I notice.

However, once I slowly got into the habit of using graphicsgale regularly I became more comfortable with it's interface and now hardly use paint. I have done walkcycles in paint but it does take five times as long to do.

Oh yeah... Paint Shop Pro. Thanks for the offer, but it's not for me .

You've got about three different threads for this one character (all slightly different I know), but I decided to post this in here because I don't see the need to have you jumping between three different threads for the same sprite.

To me, her face still really looks like a man's face. I think you could really benefit from sitting down and trying to make it more feminine before you go jumping into the side view.

I have done a quick edit that focuses only on the face - there is still much that could be done, but for a rough idea:



I've given her an expression here, but you may wish to consider a more neutral facial expression.

As for critique, the anatomy in both the front and side views seem a little awkward to me - her legs seem too wide in both, her breasts are enormous in the side view, and her back isn't curved in the way a human spine curves. Also the shoes are the sort of shoes that women who scare me wear .

Anyway, I hope this helps and good luck with your drawing

I had a few little ideas (not about the pose, sorry  )



His shoulders seemed a bit too square and his head kinda short, so I narrowed his shoulders, gave him a forehead, adjusted the ears and did little tweaks to things like shoes and shading. Looks good, anyway, and I hope this gives you an idea or two

That layout you've done is excellent! I had a go at copying it (normally I wouldn't copy things, but I really don't have any better ideas) with a few little changes... this is just a sketch of course:



Couple of things:

I really had a hard time convincing myself it is ok to let things overlap, so perhaps my head is stuck in some stupid place where everything must be 100% visible. The stove should probably be pushed out a bit more but I'll need to convince myself properly first.

Same for the low vanishing point, even though I really like the way it looks.

Any thoughts before I have a go at painting it up?

Hi Alla,

The light is not supposed to go off .

You need to figure out how to get the:

Spoiler

Cat to catch the jellyfish

[close]

Spoiler

The jellyfish is scared away by the cat everytime the cat goes near it

[close]

Spoiler

Perhaps instead you can chase the jellyfish towards the cat?

[close]

Direct hint:

Spoiler

Interact with the cat until it sits (not sleeps) and doesn't follow you, then move to the jelly fish and interact with it once or twice until the cat catches it

[close]

Hope this solves your problem!

Yeah, those foreground objects look pretty enormous when I put everything into the game.

Guess I'll have to make them smaller.

Aww man, matte painting. I always hear about it and wish I could do it 

Some of the sprites have things that caught my attention but ProgZ mentioned them all. The backgrounds look really great, good work . I'd buy something that looks like this  .

Yeah, I sorta had it in my head that I was starting again, because I guess indoor backgrounds seem so different. I've tried again here, with hopefully more depth, a better angle and some interesting (and unorthodox) shapes for things... I'm not really sure how to establish a focal point, although I guess I could try doing a take of the room at a different angle to see if it takes the focus away from that window.

I've included an upscaled character sprite for reference - obviously I wouldn't let him walk too far forward because I really want to avoid scaling sprites.



Also, the steps were more space filler than necessary, so they're invisible here.

Thanks guys .

As for making more games, well, I definitely plan to, and I hope I can make the things in there interesting  .

No telling how long the next one will take me but 

Reactor 09, Cedric and the Revolution, Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy, Once Upon a Crime, Hillbilly Burger Bastards (you'll have to look hard to find it  :'(), Ben There, Dan That! and some others that I've forgotten or have been mentioned here.

Thanks Kangourou pas sympa and electro, I see now that the door is very big and that I do need to work on my highlights and shadows. I will work on it and see how I go!

Nik: !

Edit:

Here I have had a quick go

Play indie games! They're better! They're cheaper! They're made with more love! They might be more innovative!

Big world (ie, not indie) innovative games come along every once in a while, but it's a lot less financially risky for the big companies to give the players what they know the players will buy instead of trying to convince them to buy something new and different that might really suck because it's not Halo 9.

People get stuck into a safe mode of thinking with most forms of entertainment, whether it be music, movies or games, and it's pretty hard to convince them to broaden their visions, I guess. FIFA might be the same game it was 8 years ago, but I bet it ships some heavy units still . If I have to read about another game which really pushes some boundaries and gets awesome reviews but is a commercial flop I am going to cry. Like this:  :'(

And besides, there are innovative things out there, if you look hard enough. Sure it might be little innovations rather than something like Darwinia, but look at stuff like Singularity. It's going to be a first person shooter, yeah. You're going to shoot monsters, yeah. It's (hopefully) going to be very different to say... Painkiller (though I liked Painkiller, the first time). It might be evolution over revolution, but there are people trying new things . Look at a game such as Deadly Creatures. It's basically a platformer/beat em up game, but it's new and exciting! It tries new things! It does them well! It's not the hugest advancement ever, or the biggest step out the box, but it has no sexuality (well, I sure hope not, that'd be kinda creepy), the violence is fairly suited to the game's subject matter and it tells a story in a different manner to the norm.

Yeah, making 23 Tomb Raider games isn't pushing the boundaries. But it does make the industry strong, which means that games like Deadly Creatures have a greater chance of success than they would otherwise. I guess. Maybe. Perhaps.

Ah, I've bored you all now. Where's my glasses dammit? Damn kids!

mumble grumble Resonance mumble grumble Aquaria mumble etc

If you mean like a text adventure with pictures, this is also possible.

See Chatroom. (admittedly there's not much in the way of pictures until the end, but the possibility remains).

Wow, there's a lot of information since I last posted here! Thanks Loominous, that's something I've never considered before - I often shift the hues when I do pixels but have only done it a little bit here. I really like the bright effect that gives the ball.

I'll have a go at making some shadow regions and see what I come up with .

Misj', that's very interesting, thanks . I guess the same sort of affect can be achieved with saturation levels as well, right?

It's interesting that a lot of drawing the scene is making it stylish and functional as well as just trying to make a picture look real. Still lots for me to learn, but I've got time .

Layabout: Yeah, definitely. I remember Nikolas did something similar a while ago (it is stickied in this forum).

As for my own stuff, the main thing I want to show now is what I've been dreading a little - drawing an indoor scene.

I have to admit that I really have no love of drawing indoor scenes, I find them a lot harder than outdoor scenes, but it's definitely something I intend to improve at. This actually came out better than I expected, which, considering the state it is in, shows I didn't expect too much...



This is an indoor scene intended for the last 'egg house' I posted. I used the colours that I had used in that scene to keep it all feeling like a part of the same thing, however obviously there is a lot less brightness and saturation. I tried 'filling up' most of the image space instead of doing a circle in the middle like I usually do, so hopefully that sort of works, and I realise I did a pretty high POV, but it felt right at the time.

The funny thing in the bottom left hand corner is supposed to be a staircase that leads to the second storey.

Any tips?

Looks really nice.

The background in the third one looks a bit like the Atari logo .

I used to use the gimp, which has some adjustment layers (obviously not as advanced as in photoshop)... but as soon as I switched to Photoshop I noticed my brush strokes were instantly smoother, and I'm very reluctant to stop using Photoshop. I will see what I can find, but if I can find an affordable copy of Photoshop I'll probably grab it.

Misj':

Big thanks for the paintover, you've really got a much cleaner style than my sloppy work ! I really like the character you gave the shapes with your pencil lines. I agree that it's not the greatest composition wise, it's something I'm still learning the basics of I guess.

Is there any particular reasons you use the multiply layers? I've never really heard why these are used or what they do, so I am interested to see that you chose those for your line work and shadow layers. Thanks for the info on the screen layer as well, I've never used one of those before, so I guess it is something to experiment with!

I have done a bit of playing around with Corel Painter but it seems a little harder to work with - I guess it's probably better for people who are actually good at painting with a brush, which I am not . It is still pretty fun to play around in but!

As for my own practice, I have gone back to speed painting in order to try and train myself to use better daylight colours in my images:



Pretty rough, I know, and I really had a hard time making the rock that is supposed to be a foreground element look right - I wasn't sure whether it should be darker or lighter. Quite satisfied with this as a speedpainting, but am still certain there are probably tons of things I have done wrong .

As for using paler colours - I like bright colours .

Edit: And another speed painting, with a similar purpose (to try and paint a scene with noon style lighting)