Quick one this time. I already uploaded these to the tumblr blog but I thought I’d share some thoughts on the game’s sprite art.
Development of the game’s visual style has gone on for some time now. It’s been through a couple of iterations, above is a sort of timeline on the changes made throughout with Luanne’s sprite (with the final design on the far right). The thing with the visual style was to find a balance between “form and function” so to speak. The smaller and less detailed sprites on the far left are by far quicker to produce, but lack the distinctiveness I was aiming for between sprites. However if I add
too much detail then spritesheets start taking forever to produce and it starts to limit my ability to do another factor I want to accomplish visually:
Animation! Again back to balance, I really wanted to focus in on how the visuals engage the player, and that is always between what the visuals
are and what the visuals
are doing. I had to make a choice between more detailed drawings or more frames of animation, finding a middle ground between the two that I know I could produce at a consistent pace was important (especially considering I have to do it all myself haha). But yeah, exploration's something I really want to promote to players, and I felt a good way to prompt that was to offer interesting things to look at, things that feel tactile and lively, and to also visually "reward" them so to speak for interacting with the game.
Well that’s about it for now, hope you found this interesting! More to come as always, see you then!