Mini Update: Discord and Creature Winner

Here's the official DiBS Discord! 

It's free for everyone to join.

It's quite small, and there are only a few channels on purpose. You can find a few design documents, early drawings of creatures, and an archive of DiBS debug builds. You can also share suggestions, bug reports, and generally how you feel like.

Here's how to get that Discord role (if you haven't already)!

• (Please bear with me if I can't respond. I'm probably making the game or just busy breathing. Still, I'll see if I can help!)

Oh, and here's announcing the creature for the next update:

Koubold!

Here he is in all his rough glory:

His shtick: Runs away.

Grapple: Uses his staff to push Moxie around. 

Anyway, that's kinda it, next update is on December 28! 

Although, you could stick around for the art process:

=== Art Process ===

Base Color

Figuring out what color to use. Brown is such a hard color, so it's important to only focus on the base color. 

Asked Discord (which was DiBS Debug Discord at the time) which color they preferred. Majority preferred 3, so we go.  

Detail Progress

In DiBS, detail would get lost in the darkness, which is why putting too many details is low-priority. So like other creatures, koubolds have a minimalistic design. This way, only the most important details can be seen (and because it makes animation easier :P)

Key question while designing this guy: "What do I want to emphasize hmm?"

Personally, I found it easier to break it down to three emphases:

• --- Movement Emphasis
• --- Depth Emphasis
• --- Detail Emphasis.

Movement Emphasis

These are the movey-bits. They will be the first thing people see, so it's extra important in how it flows. The first to emphasize is the hands and feet. 

If you can't see the hands and feet, then it's not worth animating them, so the koubold needs these hand and leg braces to guide where his limbs are. 

No matter how much he's moving, you always see or at least guess, where his feet/hands are.

Depth Emphasis 

Depth emphasis is putting emphasis on giving "volume" to my crappy flat drawings as efficiently as possible.  

Thighs are great at this. I like putting designs on thighs because they do double duty:

First, they add depth. 

They solve the "thigh looking flat" problem. All it needs is two curved lines and it makes the thighs look thick. I also don't need shading because the thigh design itself conveys volume, rather than through shadows. (It also means animations don't take longer and are harder. heh.)

Thus, fast and easy depth

Secondly, the thigh designs point to... somewhere. 

Detail Emphasis

This is where we put emphasis on details. If the image feels like something is missing, add or change it.

The thighs initially had circles. While it solved "Depth Emphasis," it seemed too distracting since your eyes would just look at the thigh-circles and nowhere else.  

Which is why the final design is literally two lines pointing at the crotch. 

We emphasize what matters in the game. 

In fact, this is the same design process for Moxie herself!

Oh, and we put a white circle on his head. Just so we know where his head is.

Fun fact: I wanted to try using a 3D model for the koubold. Hence, almighty T-Pose. It did not go well.

And that's it! Thanks for reading a bit of the design process! 

Again, next update is on December 28. Hope to see you there!