Hey there, LDJammer. Caught up on sleep yet? Me neither.
I want to share with you a part of my game that I'm particularly proud of, the original pen and ink artwork, and show you how I made an ambitious-sounding undertaking fit into a tight solo development process.
First - the game in question:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-auto-analyst
The Auto-Analyst is a short, text-based game that takes the form of a 1950s psychological survey. I wanted the graphics to support the game's setting so I focused my research on the style of mid-century advertising:
I noticed deep, black shadows and heavy line weight which suggested that the artists used brushes (either traditional or digital). Instead of working digitally, I imitated the look by using Pentel brush pens and came up with this:
I really liked the character's look but I needed him to react to the player's choices - which meant I needed three more drawings. Instead of drawing the full character three more times, I took my initial artwork and placed it under a second sheet of paper. I outlined the character's head but drew different expressions. Here's what the rest of my art looked like when I imported it:
In Photoshop I layered the expressions, creating a file I could export my game art from by simply activating/deactivating the layers I needed. My final graphics looked like this:
It was a simple solution that saved me some time and, in my opinion, had a nice result.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for taking a look - and thanks to everyone who participated and shared their talent with the community. Now get some sleep. :)
