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[Bacrylic]

A pixel sidescroller, conceptually inspired by Kingdom Hearts and The Pagemaster (the movie, not the game)

[Bacrylic]

I'm in charge of the art, so heres some stuff. My partner is the programmer, but he's kind of busy at the moment so devlog updates will be done by me.

Here's our main character Alex and some of his animations.



And his booksword. A weapon that says "reading can kill".


Also some enemy concepts, the inklings.

[Romain Rope]

Really like the Inklings.

Especially this one.


Is it a head on the top?

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah, the inkling designs are great. This already looks like it has a lot of personality.

[EuthimisK]

Looks really interesting , especially the book-weapon . Good luck and have fun developing!   

[Bacrylic]

Thanks guys.

@Romain Rope, yes that is it's head. A part of the concept behind the inklings is that some of their body parts are made up of punctuations. The golem there has a period dot for a head, much like our pawn inkling.
Pawn


Although this one is gonna be a bit special, because I want to give him these reaction marks in-game. But all inklings will have attacks that stem from the books on their bodies. An attack will either come from an appendage or something that pops out of their book. For instance, the Pawn's long-range projectile attack is that a dragon pops out of its book and shoots a fireball, much like in the poster.

[Bacrylic]

I'm not satisfied with my current tileset, but for all sake and purposes it gives my partner something to work with in the meantime. So to make sure we have what we need for the game I'm jumping back to working on our basic enemy character, the Inkling Pawn and concepting out it's close range attack. My partner says projectile attacks could have a lot more bugs to fix, so we're not gonna show the fireball just yet.

Here is a test for the Pawn's idle anim.


And here is the concept for close range.



Let me know what you think. I kind of like the arcing slam down hit for my taste (#1).

[foofter]

Just wanted to say that roll animation is really satisfying! 

[Ayramen_Studio]

Really nice and fluent animations! Cool character design as well! :D

[Bacrylic]

Thanks a lot guys. One of my goals for this game is to make sure the animation has character. So, much appreciated. We're hoping to get to a point where we can get funded so I don't have to go back to job searching, and my partner and I can work full time on this.

Stay tuned for more updates.
 

[Romain Rope]

Thanks guys.

@Romain Rope, yes that is it's head. A part of the concept behind the inklings is that some of their body parts are made up of punctuations. The golem there has a period dot for a head, much like our pawn inkling.
Pawn


Although this one is gonna be a bit special, because I want to give him these reaction marks in-game. But all inklings will have attacks that stem from the books on their bodies. An attack will either come from an appendage or something that pops out of their book. For instance, the Pawn's long-range projectile attack is that a dragon pops out of its book and shoots a fireball, much like in the poster.

Really interesting design.
So you're going to use these "punctuations" in a Metal Gear style ?
To tell the player that he was spotted for example ?

[Bacrylic]

@Romain Rope

Yeah, thats pretty much how I was gonna have it, although I wasn't planning on it being a sneaking experience. Instead it was gonna be like if you got noticed (!) and if you left their range they would chase after you with a (...) or if they attacked you from a distance and you blocked (?)

That gives me an idea to add a sneaking element.

[Bacrylic]

Did some work on my inkling during comiccon. Not the best work station, so it still needs some work but people seemed to dig it.



Starting the gauntlet attack.



Also, we had a name change decision, 'again'. Because people probably won't be able to pronounce Athenaeum, we're gonna cut it to 'The Book of Alex'. Any complaints can be directed at my partner, although he has an understandable reason for doing so.

[Romain Rope]

@Romain Rope

That gives me an idea to add a sneaking element.

Adding sneak/stealth is always a good idea. Always.

[Bacrylic]

@Romain Rope

I'm interested in it, but that verdict as to go through my partner as well. An thats definitely not something that would make it into our first demo. There is a lot we want to put in that probably won't happen until we're funded.

[ionside]

Looking really cool. Brilliant work on the animations!

[Bacrylic]

@Ionside

Thank you very much. I don't have an indepth background in pixel art, or too much exp with pixel animation, but I believe I can uphold our promises on what you'll experience in this game. And I'm not so hard headed that I wouldn't bring someone on to assist me when the time comes.

Small add, but this honestly took me a bit of time to do.
The pre-animation before the attack.

[Bricabrac]

Very nice design! Following 

[Bacrylic]

@Bricabrac

Thank you very much, and glad to have you on board this crazy ship.

[Bacrylic]

Still working but wanted to add a little comment.

Guys I'm sure you've already met but say hello to the Summoner (name pending) Rank3.

My reason for posting about this little guy is on account of it being one of my favorite concepted ideas ever. Particularly because this is no ordinary Rank3 monster. This character is gonna have a move that makes your experience in our game different every time. We can't offer a procedurally generated game, it just wont fit with the story and we frankly have no idea how to do it. Though we have thought of a way to bring a bit of randomness to your experience. The 'Summoner' at some point in time will set off an ability that will Kirby Style suck up all nearby Inklings in a set radius. After being sucked into his book, they're ranks will be added up and the Summoner will release a new Inkling with the rank of the sum total. I'm gonna have about maybe 2-3 different types of inkling per rank, or try to. So if you let this thing suck up 3 PawnsR1 and it only adds a +1 during the move, you could be facing a Rank4 Golem Inkling at any time. You may want to kill him fast, or maybe let it happen to test your grit against something tougher, because they drop better rewards. 

Happy Gaming guys