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"Foot Hockey" as it is properly called in Canada

please don't be joking

Oh man, this looks awesome!

One thing to think about is if a condition you're checking is an object's frame or graphic then that's another thing to store. If it's something's position, same thing. This means either adding this to your "stuff saved" list every time you add one (annoying) or setting variables instead of checking against specific object states (double handling).

This looks great, especially the amount of colour in the scenenry. Look forward to playing this.

Ha, I will. I've literally only used the oil paint tool, I prefer sticking to one brush and style and using that, and so 90% of its features and tools are a total mystery to me.

I haven't pulled any hair out, but I have spent quite a few swears on it already. I'm still to touch anything beyond the absolute basics, but I appreciate the offer of help!

For the background I used a combination of ArtRage and Photoshop Elements. Most of it was done in ArtRage, which I am rubbish at, but I also did some cleaning up/balancing and stuff in PS. I'm also still very much learning ArtRage as well, but love the cool painty effects I can get without the awful UI and insane price tag of Painter.

Actually, I consider this very much a placeholder style. While I like the brushiness of it, it really lacks the level of detail I eventually want to give my scenes.

But, as I did with low res, I'm happy to start simple and then increase the amount of detail I work into scenes as my skills increase. My goal here is to make a usable style, and then with that in place, see about honing it as I grow more familiar and comfortable with it.

Ta, though!

I agree about the brushstrokes, and they're largely due to the fact that I'm painting with a brand new program and I'm having trouble with control atm. I might see if I can touch up the scene and dampen some of them out.

I've not used Manga Studio, but have heard good things. Anime Studio has been odd to learn after doing frame by frame animation by hand for so long, but I can see some interesting potential here, and am curious to see what I can do with it. Thanks for the comments guys!

To do the character animations I used a combination of photoshop and anime studio. I agree the brain distorts a bit much there, chalk that up to me getting the hang of things. As for the leg extending, I've done extendable limbs before in low res, I kinda like to give stick leg characters inspector gadget style arms and legs. I certainly wouldn't do it for a character with more "realistic" limbs, but I wanted to start very simple for my first attempt.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hello!



I decided a few days ago to finally seriously focus on learning high res animation each night after work. Thus, I did, and have a small one room fully playable prototype game to show for my efforts. It's finishable!

What I'm mostly interested in is feedback about the animation style. The rest of the game is just stuff I quickly threw together - my intent was to see if I could create a game that's fully playable with high res animations, because I think animating a character is one thing, but being able to use the animations in a game is another thing entirely, and a super important part of the process.

Anyway, yes, enough blathering, if you'd like to check it out the link is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrnklj6x54c524q/Dooooot%20Prototype.zip

All feedback appreciated, as always!

I am of the opinion that the "Believe in yourself" poster is the finest thing to appear in any game to date. Well done on that.

I tried doing something a bit different to what I normally do, and so of course it came out looking exactly like everything else I draw, boohohohohoo :

With Blackwell, that's very rarely an issue. Dave usually leaves the specific layout of a scene to me; and he very rarely will give any direction about light, unless a specific element needs a dark corner because of a design. Therefore, Dave will show me where the exits need to be, where the objects need to go, and the rest is completely up to me.

Because Photoshopt is magical, I usually lay out the basic foundations of a scene because I start painting any light or shadow in at all. So, for an interior, I'll put up the walls, doors floors and ceilings, all in the sort of colour I want the room to be, and then from this basis work in the lighting and the shadows, keeping in mind where I then think everything will be, and defining a clear set of lightsources, so I can use these as a reference for lighting any objects. With basic lighting done, I start painting in the meat of the scene; the various furnishings, embellishments, lighting them according to the light sources I've already established. With that done, I do a final pass, touching everything up and doing any final colour adjustments needed.

Yeah, I'm exactly nitpicky enough to do that.

Me too, and I've done this plenty. You can adjust the "perspective" setting in Squirlz to change how much the ripple variance changes from foreground to background, iirc, and this can help.

A lot of the time, something I will do with have a layer of dark, transparent colour that fades to invisible between the water layers and the top layer that represents where the land will cast shadows on the water. While this doesn't do a perfect job of hiding it, it can mask some of the little errors that are mostly noticeable along edges. I'm very picky about this sort of thing.

Squirlz is good, but not perfect, but I've used it a fair bit.

Something you can do to make it better: create a dummy image, with the reflection you want for rocks and stuff upside-down, so squirlz reflects things to where they should be in terms of depth - if that makes sense. So, for a program that reflects things on a flat horizon, you displace reflections manually yourself, so that when the program reflects it everything lines up perfectly. A nice way of doing this is to leave your water as an alpha, take the top half of your image and flip it to where the water should be. Then paint in where the reflections of rocks, more forward bits, etc need to be on that reflection. Flip that back, sit it on the opposite side of the horizon line, and then stick that in the program. It's extra work, but it results in a perfect reflection, as long as you're only using a static scene.

Hope that makes sense!

That particular scene was done using one of those free "YAY WATER EFFECTS" gif makers online, which meant I had to split the image in half, render them separately, stitch them carefully together and then merge them with the final image. It was an awful method, not recommended. I take it you used software of some sort to render yours?

Interesting that you bring up Shishkin, since as I mentioned in the previous post I tried to use one of his paintings as a reference, but was completely unable to replicate the grass-tuft effect I was attempting.

I need to pay more attention.

Andail covered a lot of good points and so I am trying to cover different points because I think there are a few areas he glossed over/didn't cover. I really like the picture! I don't think I've seen you paint a scene as nice as this before, and that's why I am going to pick on this one now when I didn't pick on the others, I guess?

Paintover thing:



Some notes which aren't all covered in the paintover:

Firstly, to me the biggest problem is that the image is a series of very linear, explicitly defined zones, and that ruins the unity somewhat. You've got water zone, front trees, back trees, grass, sky, and you don't let them mix a great deal. Why do the trees change colour halfway back? If it's for atmospheric perspective, the shift in hue is a bit much - it'd have looked much more varied and dynamic if you mixed the two hues of wood together. Also with the grass and the roots, Andail pointed out - I tried tweaking this in the paintover.

I also think the general composition is pretty flat. The stream goes straight back and never really does anything. The foreground objects feel like a flat thing laid on top, rather than an arrangement designed to frame anything important in the image. I'd have put the shrub more to the left side, open up a space there to let some of the middle ground stretch out rather than cutting it all off with a linear wall of foreground.

Lighting is something Andail talked about, and I'll repeat because consistency is important. You've used rim lighting on your foremost tree, but foregone it for the most of the rest of it. Those little bright gaps in the foliage are great, and they're light sources, so let them spread a little bit. Let the light bounce, diffuse - that's what light does.

Also, trees shade themselves, and I never thought about this until Ilyich - who is way better at painting forests than I am - told me, and he proved it with Ivan Shishkin - who is better at painting forests than pretty much anyone. See that big old branch blocking the sun from the other branch to it's lower left? That needs to cast a shadow. This is super hard to do, and I never remember to do it, but I may as well point it out because it's useful knowledge.

Let your water meander a bit, make it interesting. Put stuff in it, give it more shape than a direct route. Water moves around rocks and elevations, so let it wander some. Yep, I know this makes it harder to do your reflections, but it makes for a much more natural composition.

Maybe there's some useful stuff in there, sorry it took so much writing to try and explain my ideas, good luck!

For the login...

Spoiler

Look on the fridge

[close]

For the password...

Spoiler

Head to the electronics store. After reading some emails, have a chat to the clerk

[close]

Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed working on this game, and what a cool group of people I got to work with; Dave, Thomas, Ian, Ilyich, Janet and, of course, all the voice actors. I'm super proud of this game and glad to see it released. Hope you guys enjoy!