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Don't mistake the relative silence here for a lack of behind-the-scenes work on Rise of the Hidden Sun. We’re still toiling away, albeit slowly, to bring the adventures of ‘Rattlesnake’ Jake Dawson onto your computer screen in all of his 1024×768-pixel glory.

Since it’s been awhile since my last update, I thought I’d share this little scene with you all. It’s a just-completed location from episode one. We call this location "Off the Rails." Below I’ve posted the original black-and-white line art, an example of the coloring process, and then final finished version. Hope you like it. More to come in the months ahead!







Credit: Layout by Josh Roberts and Damian Isherwood, pencil art by Hazel Mitchell and Damian Isherwood, colors by Jacek Grzeskowiak.

Oh, also: Still no release date. Sorry.

New location! Click here for full size version and some discussion of the real-world location that inspired it.

Also: Just three background screens left for episode one.

Sheriff is intentionally misspelled. I'm going to have Jake comment on it if the player "reads" the sign. (Signs in the old west were often misspelled because they were hand written.)

Or I suppose I could just change it if it looks stupid.

[Edit by Darth]

(click for full-size)


Newly finished screen! See if you can spot all the differences from the pencil-and-paper versions I posted last year.



Edit by Darth - just resized the image to make it not blow-out the lower-res people's screens

Just wanted to drop in and share this new scene we're working on. It's for episode one. Going for a bit of an Indiana Jones vibe here, as always.



Hope you like it!

They start as paper and pencil, then get scanned into either PSP or Photoshop and then colored from there.

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I've been a bit slow with the updates lately, so I thought I'd share our most recently completed screen. As you can see, we’re still hard at work on RotHS. This one is a secret entrance into the haunted mine area of episode one.

Sadly for our hero, ‘Rattlesnake’ Jake,  the ways appears to be blocked by a very large boulder. We know that kind of trap doesn’t turn out so well for Indiana Jones. Will Jake have better luck? And what’s the significance of all this vulture iconography, anyway? Hmm...

Yep, April Fool's! Thanks for being such good sports, everyone! We *are* still looking for a new animator, but we're not even toying with the idea of scrapping these beautiful background screens. (Although it was a lot of fun to re-do them retro style.)

Here's your reward for putting up with my little prank:



Here's a look at one of our newest creations, a long vertical screen that hints at some of the areas you'll be able to explore in Rise of the Hidden Sun's first episode. This isn't a finished product yet, but it's pretty close. Hope you like it!

The rumors are true. Our lead animator has left the project. The fact that this keeps happening has led me to re-evaluate what we're doing here with the whole game.

Honestly, I'm tired of having to put the game on hold every time we need to find a new professional-quality animator. So I've made a big decision.

We're going old school. Goodbye millions of colors and 1024x768 screens. Hello "Rise of the Hidden Sun: Retro Edition" in all of its 16-color, 320x200-pixel glory! I've already converted two screens to the "retro" format and plan to have the whole game reformatted by the end of the month.





From there, it'll be a piece of cake to animate the thing myself.

More details and an extended preview here: http://rattlesnakejake.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/announcement-rise-of-the-hidden-sun-retro-edition/

We're making great strides on the animation front! These are the first two characters you'll meet in episode one.

Hawkeye:


The Old Prospector:


(Yes, he's picking his nose. I'm not above a little lowbrow humor... sorry, I mean "local color.")

Thanks for all your help! Here's Hawkeye as he'll appear in the game.

Thanks! This one took a long time to get right. Like all good treasure maps, there's a very important clue hidden very subtly in here, too. But will Jake be clever enough to see it?

Every treasure hunt needs a treasure map...

I've always seen them used interchangeably. Here in Massachusetts there are numerous historical "burying grounds." Thanks for flagging it, though. Might be worth a little more research on my part to be sure it's regionally accurate for the western U.S.

Here, I put together a quick version in sepia tone (appropriate ) to give you some ideas.

I didn't see this example when I made my other changes. I love it. I'll see what I can do now that I have an even clearer sense of what you mean. Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback, all. Here's another version that takes some of into account. I didn't want to redo the whole thing until I'm settled on the final look, so I used PSP to tinker a bit instead.



Changes:

- Hat is 11% bigger
- Upper legs are at about a 10% greater angle than before

I agree those changes do help quite a bit. Not sure if I'll add the wrinkles or not yet. I'm hoping to establish his age with the hunch and a white beard, but if that doesn't work then wrinkles will definitely be on the table.

Thoughts on this version?

This guy is supposed to be a blind-as-a-bat old cowboy named "Hawkeye." I'm going for old, squinty, hunched over, etc. Not totally happy with this sketch yet, but can't quite put my finger on why not. It could be the face. Suggestions?

p.s. I'm going for a Herman Toothrot kind of vibe.

p.p.s. It's a little choppy because I was playing with his hunch and just copied/pasted his upper body at a 20 degree angle - so that's why he's missing an arm etc!

Oh, that's sad news indeed. I've also always been more of an AdventureGamers reader than a JustAdventure one (I think for many of us they're like Pepsi and Coke -- "never the twain shall meet" and all that) but it's always sad to hear about someone's serious health issues. I wish Randy a full recovery. Thanks for posting this, Ascovel.

Here we have the final pencil art for a new location we've just added to episode one. The top image is the original location sketch, which Hazel whipped up based on a description and some of my chicken scratches. Below that is the finished version, which reflects my suggestions for additional tweaks. The windmill and the vulture will be animated in the final in-game version of this screen.

More info here: http://rattlesnakejake.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/from-concept-to-completion-old-sierra-burying-ground/

Just want to say I love the idea of a "classic edition" version of this game. Good luck with it!