next »

[stewiepixels]

been learning and practicing animation and aseprite program for the past 2 months.
This is what I came up with. I'll leave it for now and move onto next animations, will come back to polish it later when I'm more confident animating hehe 

[joey4track]

Actually I think it looks great, it looks like shooting that gun would give me whiplash

[stewiepixels]

after 1 million of iterations on the character's silhouette and color palettes, as well for the environment, I think I'm more or less happy now with the colors and atmosphere. I think this will be the first environment you will get to explore in the demo.
Now I'm gonna shape and polish it as well as making tile set  elements.

[DarkWanderer]

This looks wonderful

[thefoolishbrave]

I really love your animations and style. Seeing all the different and fun pixel styles on this site, makes me wish working on games wasn't such a huge investment because there are so many style and stories to match them that I want to try!

The next game I work on, I really hope I can apply a less cartoonish style, and really have some sexy visuals like these! Look forward to seeing this come along!

[stewiepixels]

hey, thank you. Hope you find some time and get to experiment with ideas though I know how tough it is with the time...

[stewiepixels]

oookay, so im trying to come up with a concept for the outside area before we enter the underground/ alien ship interior.
Been thinking something like this, having about 5 layers of paralax, lighter colors ( as many people said before my env. are too dark and look bad on older screens, etc) 
What do you think? 

[stewiepixels]

I don't think this whole thing is going to work. I somehow feel disappointed.
  After developing a small working grey boxes prototype I spent about 4 months developing the visual direction for this game.
It all started with a vague idea of a girl with a huge gun.  I started creating lots and lots of concepts. Iterating everytime, the concept was getting better and better. I started to like it more and more as I was developing it.

 Here's a comparison of and of the first rough concepts and the current state.


It changed and evolved drastically.
In the meantime, I picked up learning 2d pixel animation. In a couple of weeks of tutorials, I started to get some decent results.
 Aaaand, after all this time intensely working on this, I started to lose motivation (wich is absolutely normal) and I knew it is time to take a break and come back fresh. A friend suggested that I should post some stuff online, that people getting interested in it will motivate to continue working on it. And I did. Posted it in groups of tens of thousands of people. Got 7 likes from my friends.
  Hell of a disappointment.
 Twitter doesn't work. Instagram, tumblr, too.In fact, nothing works. I considered different problems. But even after inspecting everything, like the correct hashtags, the best time of the day to post and so on, I still got little to zero interaction.

Then I remembered something. I year ago, I painted a 25 minute concept art piece for a friend of mine. He posted it straight away on FB in a group with #screenshotsaturday. At the end of the day he got over 1300 likes and a load of people screaming how awesome it is and when will it release. It was a little girl, with sword and shield, in a forest. That super generic cute colorful thing, that people seem to love.

Now what I was doing with Nanoheia seemed to me pretty unique, I put a lot of thought developing it.I love it. In the end, no one cares. I choose to make something different rather than colorful forest, unicorns and rainbows and I regret it now. Could have gone the ''safe'' way and do what everyone does, except better. That was a mistakes. And while I learned a lot, I still regret the time and resources spent.
For now I'm not 100% set to cancel the project. I was aiming to make a 5 minute gameplay demo only.
I will stick to it and have one last try before I quit.

**probably no one reads this damn post, but I felt I had to write this somewhere. It can be very depressing working alone at times.

[nathy after dark]

I'm really interested in this based on the look, and the promise of dark sci-fi with Alien inspirations. Keep it up.

[basementApe]

It looks bloody fantastic and I really hope you keep working on it! The shooting animation's very solid too.

Now what I was doing with Nanoheia seemed to me pretty unique, I put a lot of thought developing it.I love it. In the end, no one cares. I choose to make something different rather than colorful forest, unicorns and rainbows and I regret it now. Could have gone the ''safe'' way and do what everyone does, except better. That was a mistakes. And while I learned a lot, I still regret the time and resources spent.

Alien got a lukewarm reception when it released. Now it's an all-time classic. Best not worry too much about what's popular with the masses. The indie scene doesn't thrive because it caters to the lowest common denominator.

[tylerfunk]

Just saw this now and wanted to chime in it looks awesome!

I understand completely about burn out, which I've suffered from, but my work has not even come close to how amazing this looks!

I'd say the art is there and it could be popular. If anything, I think people just want to see more if this in motion. Show the parallax backgrounds, ruffling of leaves in the breeze, animate the water, etc. Just take that concept image, recreate it in game with animation, and I think people could be blown away!

If anything, work on the game that is cute and easy, and then move on to this when you have more experience behind you.

Mind if I ask what engine you're using to program the game?

[joey4track]

Yeah well I am tired of things that are 'safe' and get a million views. Tired of it! Tired of the same old crap and I'm tired of awesome things like what you have made here getting overlooked. I feel the same way, I like to think that my music is pretty different than what you normally hear and it's a total bummer when I make something that sounds unique, that I really like but then I see it get zero engagement. Well if we stop making things like this because they don't get as much attention as the boring generic stuff we will never have cool things and we will never move forward. It is a trend in many aspects of art and entertainment, there is an overall shift into doing the same boring things over and over again because it's safe- I call it The Blandening.

Quit if you must but there are people out there that appreciate things that are unique and special, if the creators that are capable of capturing something different stop doing it, the world is going to suffer for it. Just my two cents on the matter, I really like what you are making here personally and hope you keep it up.

[stewiepixels]

thank you guys for the warming words. Means a lot.
 Over the next 4 weeks I'll see how it goes when I present moving things.
While I'd like to continue with it no matter if there's an audience for it, I can't afford to take this risk right now, even if I fully understand the importance of creating something different.

Lugalias - I use construct2 for quick prototyping and testing things, and unity for the game. Construct is super fast for this and extremely comfortable. With the recent updates I was even considering to stay completely with it. It matches all my needs for my project.

Joey - yeah man, it's sad, and it's always been like this. That's why there were lots of starving artists wich only got famous after their death heh. 

 The Blandening - I should remember this term.

[Pixel Noise]

Listen, don't get too down about your stuff not getting interactions on social media. It's not really a measure of your project's worth - it's just that breaking into social media can take time.

And I've seen plenty of devlogs for really good, interesting games go completely ignored for long times by people - I don't know why, but it just happens sometimes.

I know that outside response can really help motivate - but don't let a lack of response demoralize you, either. I think you've got something very cool going on here.

[joevor]

Really nice color palette and style, looking forward to more pics and so on

[thefoolishbrave]

I don't think this whole thing is going to work. I somehow feel disappointed.
  After developing a small working grey boxes prototype I spent about 4 months developing the visual direction for this game.
It all started with a vague idea of a girl with a huge gun.  I started creating lots and lots of concepts. Iterating everytime, the concept was getting better and better. I started to like it more and more as I was developing it.

 Here's a comparison of and of the first rough concepts and the current state.


It changed and evolved drastically.
In the meantime, I picked up learning 2d pixel animation. In a couple of weeks of tutorials, I started to get some decent results.
 Aaaand, after all this time intensely working on this, I started to lose motivation (wich is absolutely normal) and I knew it is time to take a break and come back fresh. A friend suggested that I should post some stuff online, that people getting interested in it will motivate to continue working on it. And I did. Posted it in groups of tens of thousands of people. Got 7 likes from my friends.
  Hell of a disappointment.
 Twitter doesn't work. Instagram, tumblr, too.In fact, nothing works. I considered different problems. But even after inspecting everything, like the correct hashtags, the best time of the day to post and so on, I still got little to zero interaction.

Then I remembered something. I year ago, I painted a 25 minute concept art piece for a friend of mine. He posted it straight away on FB in a group with #screenshotsaturday. At the end of the day he got over 1300 likes and a load of people screaming how awesome it is and when will it release. It was a little girl, with sword and shield, in a forest. That super generic cute colorful thing, that people seem to love.

Now what I was doing with Nanoheia seemed to me pretty unique, I put a lot of thought developing it.I love it. In the end, no one cares. I choose to make something different rather than colorful forest, unicorns and rainbows and I regret it now. Could have gone the ''safe'' way and do what everyone does, except better. That was a mistakes. And while I learned a lot, I still regret the time and resources spent.
For now I'm not 100% set to cancel the project. I was aiming to make a 5 minute gameplay demo only.
I will stick to it and have one last try before I quit.

**probably no one reads this damn post, but I felt I had to write this somewhere. It can be very depressing working alone at times.

First off let me say, I love the way this game looks and I think you should keep working on it, that being said, reality check time.

It sounds like you want people to flock and throw themselves at your game just because it exist. That's really not how it works, and when I first came on the indie scene with my junk 2D tapper thinking it was going to be the next thing I was setup for a huge disappointment. Do you know how many people are pushing indie games out these days? Just take a look at how quickly your game will get pushed back pages on this site, that isn't including the people who don't post here or on other sites. There is so much to choose from these days, you have to FIGHT for your audience. It's a slow fight. The biggest problem with success for a GOOD indie game is reach these days. You're competing with AAA titles on steam, indies who have been promoted by publications like Kotaku and Polygon, and then all the other indies of your genre that are further along.

Your game looks good, but so far, you've got no juicy animated gifs, in game action, or story line for people to latch onto. Your expectations are too high for what you've put out so far, you are far too concerned with the quantity at this point. One person on here saying they really like your game is HUGE, that means they actually looked at your game, and liked it so much they decided to take time out to let you know.

How often do you scroll pass things on Twitter or Facebook without any interaction even thought you probably read it?
I have done 2 Kickstarters for a game and failed both, I had a lot of internet support and a decent following, I'd get 50 notes minimum on my posts and it still wasn't enough- indie is hard and it takes A LOT of resolve, keep at it if it means enough to you. You are making the game YOU want to make, if you're only making it so other people will like it, I think you've got your foundation wrong.

[Ayramen_Studio]

Love the dark mood and cool pixel art style! 

[stewiepixels]

thefoolishbrave - totally agree with every line of yours.  My bad that I had these expectations based on the reception of other work of mine wich I did for the others.  

Yep, not quiting yet,  working on animations and assets to put those juicy moving thingies online. Will see then.

I'll also be working on reaching those super small group of people that are alien, horror and metroid fans  on different small forums.  It is indeed a slow process of finding the right audience for your project.
Thank you for your thoughts.

Mind if I ask you what were your  kickstarted projects ?

[nathy after dark]

Everything thefoolishbrave said is super true and incredibly important to know and never forget. I can also say from experience that even when you start getting more likes and retweets the way you want to, it still won't make you feel good or successful. Plus, even at that point, you'll make some posts (and whole games!) that just go unnoticed. Here are two amazing articles from indies who've been there: Minimum Sustainable Success and Writing Indie Games Is Like Being a Musician. In the Bad Way.

This is all very heavy stuff to accept, but I don't think it's dark when you really think about it. The takeaway is that your creative work, mental health, and self-satisfaction will all be more stable if you can find a day job (ideally even outside of games) that gives you steady income, and that way keep the focus on the parts of gamedev that are intrinsically rewarding.

All of that is just my opinion/experience. Except for the part about likes and retweets being unfulfilling. That's just a fact.

(You wrote a reply while I was typing this that maybe makes it all redundant over-explanation, but I thought I'd post anyway in case it helps someone else.  )

[LyricalReverie]

Your pixel work is really nice. I am fond of the scenery, in particular.