Lately I've been refocusing my efforts on creating some marketing art that shows the breadth of the game world. Here are some progress shots of my latest effort, the old water mill!
Here's the finished artwork that I posted this Saturday. This took me a disgusting amount of time to finish, like, over 2 weeks. Happily, the next piece from this same area is already halfway done. Things are going much faster now that a lot of the design work is complete.
This mill is located in what has come to be known by outsiders as the village beyond time. It's a human settlement nestled along the banks of a peaceful river, and was once the location of a central trading hub for an ancient people. Forgotten machines deep underground power a magical field that surrounds the area. Inside this field, the land is especially fertile and the seasons do not change. It also seems to ward off malevolent forest spirits. The villagers enjoy the relative safety provided by the magic, but lately it has become unstable. They do not understand this magic, but perhaps if you can find a way into the caves below, you may be able to find the source of the disruption...
You can join me on my Twitch stream Mondays at 8 CT (tonight in 2 hours!) at
www.twitch.tv/lunoland to see more in-progress art!
Here's my original sketch where I worked on composition and colors. A big challenge here was the design thinking about how the watermill could be functional while still fitting into the layout I planned for the village.
Next I worked on the details of the house. I had been referencing a ton of old houses, watermills, and charming villages and trying to combine all the aesthetics I liked. I went through about 4 different variations of thatched roofs before settling on this one.
The water wheel itself took a fair amount of iteration for me to feel confident about animation and to get everything to read right in the game's perspective. I ended up wasting a lot of time making a hand-illustrated tree-line (not pictured) that I ultimately threw out in favor of the cut-and-paste approach you see in the final image at the top of the post.
I also wanted to add a few words to this post to explain why I'm postponing work on my demo in favor of creating this marketing art. My thinking is that I've spent a lot of time describing what will be in the game and demoing features, but in order to spark player's imagination I need to show people, "Hey, these are some actual pieces of the world that you'll be exploring".
I need this sort of art to find any kind of funding, so now seemed like as good a time as any. I finished a lot of features, but I'm still not growing my audience very well and without that I don't think I'll ever be able to finish the project. At first, I naively believed that I would be able to split my time 50/50 between working on impressive art for a finished scene and more gameplay, but it has quickly taken over 100% because:
1. More so than high res, I think, pixel art backgrounds require lots of time to paint in all the details.
2. Drawing a new area requires additional concept and design work.
3. Even once you have the design for a new scene, the minutiae of how you'll draw any new objects the scene requires takes additional iteration and design (e.g. "What does an ancient stone staircase look like in my game's art style?")
4. I'm slow at art.
An additional stumbling block time-wise is that I'm really trying to invest a high level of polish into this stuff (I mean, I'm always trying to do that, but yeah). I've been thinking a lot about crowdfunding lately and I've recently convinced myself that if I try it, I'm only going to get one shot: If I fail, what publisher will be willing to take a risk after I've already shown that the project doesn't have an audience? Since it's still one of the primary avenues I'd consider for funding, I'd have to go all out.
Initially I was hoping to only create scenes that will definitely appear in the smallest version of the game to avoid wasting effort, but I'm almost three pieces in and starting to rethink this. To build an audience and refine a pitch, you need to show your game has a lot of a possibility. I think players need to see your pitch and be able to imagine what it's like to play the game, but also to feel like the game world is much bigger than what you actually show. To get folks engaged and also provide an opportunity for them to project a bit of themselves and their hopes into what the final product might be. It's a hard target to hit.
Having an audience and hype early on doesn't guarantee success, but neglecting it seems a surefire way to fail these days. My goal has always just been to make something awesome that I can be proud of, but if I want to finish it in less than a decade I'm going to need more time than my current job allows.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether or not I'm thinking about the right things, or what sorts of areas you'd like to see me take on next.
Community
