Becoming a Games Art Student.
Dev Diary #1
This week, I began my journey as a new Computer Games Art student studying at Portsmouth University! Within the first week I got to meet my classmates and lecturers, as well as get a taster for what the classes will be like! During this time, I was also set many assignments, most noticeably a game development task in which we work in pairs to create and submit a game within two weeks following the theme of a 'one-button' game.
After learning of the task and meeting my project partner Daniel, we set off on coming up with ideas on what we could make. We decided upon a simple clicker game in which you pet a dog, the core focus of the game being simple, cute and relaxing. After finalising the idea, we assigned roles for what we will each create and contribute to the project. Having had more experience in using game making software, programming, art and making games, it was decided I would be in charge of creating the art and putting the game together in Unity whilst Daniel learns to use Unity and C#.
After setting up the project in Unity, I turned my attention to the art and started with planning out what I would need to draw and what style or colours I might use. I started by picking a breed of dog to draw and decided on a golden retriever due to their simple one-colour toned fur. I then moved onto making some mock-up animation loops for the sprites, as I felt these would make the animating process easier as I had a base to draw over. When it came to the colours and style I would draw the sprites in, I decided to emphasize the core theme at the centre of the game and that was to make it cute, simple and relaxing! I went with a warm colour pallete of reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows and made the outline a dark brown instead of black as I felt these made the sprites softer to look at and thus more calming.
One issue I hope to follow up on before next week, is the lack of communication. Considering the project is due next Friday, we don't yet have any code to actually build the game on and I feel that if we are to submit a working game next week, we really need to get started on this. Whilst I wait to hear back about the state of the programming for this project, next week I will be moving on to creating the UI art stuff such as a mouse icon, background and menu buttons.
