Despite the title of these posts being Daily Workshop Log, I don’t intend to these to be posted every single day. Rather, I’ll publish them as progress happens, instead of waiting to bundle them up into the weekly update. As is the case today, where due to a busy day with work yesterday, and an overwhelming amount of tiredness, I fell asleep before even beginning to write yesterday.

Over the past two days, I’ve been working on some artwork for me to use in the prototypes I plan to build for some of the game mechanics for The Inventor. I’ve not done anything towards programming in this time, but it’s been quite refreshing to have some time to work on an area I don’t think I’m very good at. It’s also been good to see some of the initial visions I had in my head come to life in a small part as I’ve built the very basic set of sprites.

Pixel art practice

My first step was to do some doodling on the iPad. I started using an app called Pixaki, which provides a pixel canvas to draw on. I started with some of the basic objects a player might find on the ground, or begin crafting with in The Inventor.

I started with a canvas of 64×64 pixels, as I felt this leant itself well to drawing with the pen, and it was closer to the style of pixel art I had in mind.

These are my first efforts, and while there are quite a few things I’d improve now, it served as a great kick of to get some practice, and some understanding of pixel art. I noticed that the sizing was different, the colours didn’t match, and they were crude in style and shading, but I was happy with my very first attempt.

Finding Pixel Art Resource and Tutorials

I then headed to the internet to look at some tutorials and see what tips and hints I could pick up. Some of the useful ones I found included Youtube videos from Juniper Dev and Hanapix, as well as some very good guides from PixelArt School.

I also looked into some more Aseprite guides, and started looking at some colour palettes. I’ve decided to go with Endesga 32 (EDG32) which is provided in the base sets for Aseprite. I’ve chosen this set as I like the warm colours of the palette, I think they lend themselves well to the art style, initial setting and look i want for the game. And also there are only 32 colours to start getting used to. I’ve already ended up adding one or two more colours when my vision isn’t quite met by the existing palette.

Finally I came up with a list of assets I would need to start having a go at making a very simple game, Prototype 002 which will look at movement, some world items to move around, some very basic item pick up and a very simple UI. This would include items such as a Log and a Plank, world items such as a Tree and a Rock, some basic workshop items such as a Crate and Barrel, and a player sprite.

Making Sprites in Aseprite

After my first attempts with the cube and walls from my basic game, I decided to pick up with the small world items, and crafting items; stick, log, plank and stone.

This time, armed with a little more knowledge on shading, and colour theory (a very, very basic look at it) I attempted to make a set that looked like the belonged in the same world, were made from the same wood, and felt like my vision in my head for a game.

Worth noting here; I don’t intend these to ever be the final art in the game. This is simply me using The Inventor as my way of learning, both by making and experimenting with the art, and making assets that can grow and be used in my prototypes. I don’t want to look at the small games I make now and see a Flappy Bird clone, or a Space Invaders recreation (again not that there’s anything wrong with learning that way, its just not for me). I want to start to see my ideas and visions come together from an early point, I want to work on The Inventor from day 1. It almost certainly won’t resemble the final game, but it’s still The Inventor.

It’s also worth saying that I decided to start smaller here also, with 32×32 pixel canvases. I’ve decided to learn the basics at this size, and grow them out in the future when I feel more comfortable with drawing them.

So, here it goes. My first ‘official’ pixel art attempt.

What do you think? I’m pretty pleased with them. I know there are issues and areas for improvement, but I set myself some short timescales to produce these (around 15/20 minutes per sprite) in order not to get lost in adding or changing marginal details. There will be a time for that, but it’s not day 2 of the project.

I also went on to make some sprites for the larger items (Crate, Barrel) and the big world items (a tree, a boulder). In won’t share every sprite here, I want to keep some surprise for the prototype dev diary’s!

After this, I spent quite a lot of time on the player sprite. As of writing this post, I still haven’t finished the side on view of the player. Again I’ll keep this close to the chest for now, but it’s just a simple pixel art character, inspired partly by the style of Stardew Valley. One thing I will share is my initial sizing sketches, using a basic (and very bad) stick figure, is started to build my mannequin for players and npc characters.

I started with the stick figure, and added shapes around that, until I had some of the rough proportions I was looking for (right). I then tried to fill out the body, and made a circular head (middle). In my final effort (left) I found a shape I liked, although I later thought the torso looked too much like armour so slimmed it down and refined it for the final sprite. I’m looking forward to sharing that further down the line.

Outside of Game Development

As always I like to share some of the things that I’ve done or that have happened around the game development project. Over the last two days:

• I underwent an interview for an internal role at work. I didn’t get the role, but I have some good feedback and guidance for growth in my current role, and some development goals to reach the levels of the next role.
• I’ve spent some good quality time with the wife and baby in the evenings. We’ve enjoyed a nice walk with some friends this evening, and we’ve been making our way through some older Disney films from my childhood (currently The Rescuers and Aristocats).

That about does it for this Daily Workshop Log. Some target goals over the next couple of days for me are:

• Finish Player sprites and some basic UI sprites.
• Design and build Prototype 002.
• Watch some more Youtube tutorials for pixel art, game dev videos and Godot videos.

So until the next time,

All the best,

Steve