MMP 270: Introduction to Video Game Design
BMCC Fall 2021
Today I made multiple versions of different scenery, and imported them into Godot.
To expand, I’d make a darker layer of dense trees on a parallax layer. I felt it made sense that the trees I already made keep speed with the player since they’re closer.
Here’s my main character, Agent Buster, animated and working in game.
I looked at a lot of diagrams to get his motion right, since bunnies move quite different to humans.
Below are the sprite sheets used to make him.
Part 1: Inspiration
First is Angela from Lobotomy Corporation. Her design is very pretty, I particularly love the cross-hair detail in her eyes, which stays until she is free from her mission as an AI.
Second is Peacock from Skullgirls. She’s meant to be the “cartoon character” archtype, having her empty eye sockets stylized to look like 1940s cartoon eyes. I also like the literal bear trap she has for teeth, and the eyes on her arms.
Third is Tomerry from Library of Ruina. Tomerry is a fusion monster of the couple, Tommy and Merry, and the grotesque form brings the player their first impact at how messed up the game’s world really is. Coupled with the in-game sounds, they make for a great first boss.
Fourth is Max from the Sam and Max franchise. He’s a cute lagomorph creature with sharp teeth and a craving for violence. Also sarcastic, I greatly enjoy everything about him.
Fifth and finally is Hat Kid from A Hat in Time. She’s a cute alien child in a top hat and cape, wielding an umbrella as a weapon. I really love her base color palette, the colors blend well and is easy on the eyes.
Part 2: Character Sketches
For my character design, I wanted to make a snowman girl using my favorite color palette of white, blue, yellow, and orange. The main over-all thought in creating these variations was that each one should be relatively easy to animate should they become the final choice, meaning no extremely fine details.
There were three constants between every variation, being:
1. I want her hair to be white and short.
2. I want her to have a big floppy sweater with pom-poms mimicking the snowman buttons.
3. I want her to wear boots.
Every other difference shown was pretty much just me sketching it out, thinking, “Well, what could possibly look good here?” both in terms of clothing style and color placement. I knew the sweater should also be mostly white because well, snowman. But what about the accenting dark blue? Each variation, I played around with where it could be, same with the legging colors. I also played around with different skirts and no skirt at all, as well as boot length and style.
In the end if I had to choose, I’d say I would go with the middle variation, but with taking the bottom sweater trim and fur boot tops of the right variation.
Today I managed to put together a simple game with my avatar, by following along with the video and utilizing the given assets. Here is my progress below:
Also to note, in order to make this video, I had to go on a whole side quest of updating my video driver, because OBS straight up refused to record unless it was up to date. That is why it took me nearly 6 hours after class actually ended and I finished this to make a post.
This is my avatar. It is unique to me, because this is the persona I created for myself on the internet. It’s simply a chibi gremlin.
I made the canvas quite large by pixel standards, 250×250, in order to play around with the different features in the program I’m using. I found a quite helpful tool that while not a paint bucket, made filling in areas much easier.
For my skill tree map, while I want to try and do every single task, these are the most important tasks I want to do to learn for future independent development. It totals 59 points should I complete them all.
Learning animation for sprites is most important for me because I want to be a sprite animator for a video game company in the future. Learning how to actually make levels is second most important, especially since there are a few game ideas I have that I’d love to develop. Lastly exporting and publishing just seem like the next logical step for actually making a game exist.
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