Enter Bloody Muscles

Don’t get fooled by the title. This isn’t about making art for video games while sitting on actual ice to raise funds for jello-wrestling schools for the ladies (although that would be pretty badass).

What the title really mean is that I didn’t make any updates for months because, well, Bloody Muscles has been put “on the ice”. The main reason is Lachhh. It is all his fault. Everything. Even cancer is somehow connected to him.

Apparently he needs to work on faster projects to get some money to pay his rent (Always thought he was living in an abandoned mine shaft) so naturally he can’t work on too many stuff at the same time so I was like “What?! YOU work with someone else?! Fine! I can find someone else too!! I don’t need you!! You’re a bad parent!!!” ...and I DID find an other coder. But just like the Karate Kid song says, history repeats itself, and the coder for the new project I was working with had pretty much the same things happening to him. “I need money, if I don’t eat for more than 3 weeks I die, the tumor on my neck is getting bigger every day, blah blah blah...” 

So long story short, coders can’t be trusted. I wish cats could learn to code. That way I could buy one make it work for its cat chow. Anyway, I’ll be posting some stuff I’ve made for the second project so far, that way this update won’t be all about whining and coders.

Quick color test of the new Bloody Muscles character style. I like it! I'm actually happy with the result. I don't know yet if I'm going to put as many details in the final product as there is here though... I really, really like to put lots of details, put it tends to take a lot more time to do. Tough call.

Woah! It's been a while since my last post! What did I do since then you ask? Well, not so much solid, "showable" stuff I'm afraid. I did a lot of experimentation on the main character design. And just when I thought I had it (actually did an 8-angles rotation of him holding a gun), I was struck with doubt, and then I had a flash of a whole different design idea...

Why couldn't I come up with this idea in the first place instead of losing about two months on a design I'm thinking of scrapping now, I don't know... But I am no stranger to this kind of situation; I've been there before. Back when I was working on Berzerk Ball 2, I kind of did the same thing. Had a whole bunch of design done that I ended up remaking all over. Maybe it's inevitable... Maybe making it wrong the first time being just a natural step of the whole process...

The only thing that's bugging me now is the time I got left. With so many months gone and still so few "real" work done, I got to pick up the pace from now on if I'm to ever see this through! On the bright the new design is gonna be much simpler/faster to mass produce (let alone much cooler !).

Some sketches of how the main character could look like in-game. Also, pretty cool looking mug shot top-right! :)

Funny thing about early character design is that you always start sketching with the main character... However, sketching and designing a new game is a big polishing process in which you always get better and better as production goes... So what that mean is that what you start out with is inevitably going to look less good than the last things you'll do... 

So that's why logically we should not start with the main character since he/she is so important! We should start with some random enemies, or some remote locations of the game and then move from there all the way to what's more important like key locations and items, bosses and the hero...

Now I know all this... but still I can't shake the feeling that I need to work on the hero straight from the beginning. That's because he's the one the story and the whole game is going to revolve around. He will define the style and how the rest of the world he's in will look like. This step, like so many others in early game development, is just an other part that can't be done just once. You WILL have to make changes along the way, and this means counsciously working on something you know you will eventually throw away and start all over again. It may sound counter-productive and a waste of time, but in the end the real waste of time would be to spend countless hours to try and nail every thing down on the first try - and fail.

As much as I'd like game development to be a very streamlined and clearly defined "step by step" process, it's not. It's a mess. We just have to go Rambo on everything we feel like needs to be done at the moment without over-thinking too much just to get some basic work down and then start building from those bases. Then, as production goes, we can just come back and scrap, tweak or ajust anything that needs it.

One of my teacher once told me that (refering to cinema) creation was achieved out of chaos...

I've been trying a lot of things to nail the main character's face this week. As you can see, it didn't go very well. It's hard for me to post those kind of sketches because it really goes against the principle of "showing how good I am as an artist". This shows that on the opposite, before I can achieve anything good, I do crappy stuff. A lot.

But I decided to post them anyway, because that's the kind of things I liked to see from senior artists when I was starting out. I liked to see that even THEM had trouble drawing straight once in a while. Drawing (and art in general) is no magic. One doesn't just take a pencil/music instrument in his hand and start generating awesomeness... Well, some does, but they're probably aliens.

Most of us aren't aliens, though. We need to work our craft, even after years of practice. For every good drawing I do, about a dozen ends up in the trash can. But doing bad stuff is what leads to good stuff. Not giving up is key. I know this by experience.

This is one of those weeks in the early stages of a production where you can't seem to focus on what you should do first. I'm trapped in an "unproductiveness" kind of loop where every time I start working on something, I realize I can't keep on working on it as long as something else isn't all figured out.

Before I can work on the game art, I need to know how the characters and background settings are gonna look like, but before I can do that, I need to know how the game is going to be played... So I need to know the mecanics, upgrades and battle system... Is there going to be a level up system as well, an inventory? Is there going to have heavy dialog narration, or everything will be revealed through action and notes lying around? What's the main difficulty of game? Finding your way out or fighting enemies? Oh yeah and about those enemies... who are they? Monsters? Evil dudes? Robot dinosaurs?? What happen when you die ? Do you have limited ammo? Secret passages? Multi-ending? Hard mode? ...

Welcome to my blog - a place where no cheesy food and shirt-wearing-dog photos are ever going to be shown. Let's go back to what the internet was truly intended for: sharing photos of trees that looks like genitals, viewing videos of monster trucks crushing uncool people's cars and finally HOW THE HELL DID I DRAW THIS FANCY HEADER PICTURE YOU SEE AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!?! :D