Saturday Update!

Hello again! It's time for more updates!

Last week, I took a short break break from placeholders to do some new color/inking tests.

The first thing I did was change my inking strategy a bit. As you might be able to tell, he looks a bit more stylized, more pointy. In my first test [ and my art in TPOF ], I used a uniform outer layer and often kept lines more smooth and rounded- using smoothing some of the time.

With this new style, I've forgone any smoothing, and varied the thickness of all the lines- even the outermost edges.

The flats are fairly self explanatory, but you might notice that they seem to just look nicer by themselves than with previous styles. This is because the inking [ and the stark black shadows ] are doing more heavy lifting in the design.

This style DOES take a bit longer to ink- but a LOT less time to color. Which I think will really help with the development schedule, as I have so many images to finalize.

To finish the style off, I add some very simple cell shading to every part of the design. Most colors have only a single other color of shadow. No shading is blended whatsoever. I think this gives it a more 'animated' or cartoony look.

Two other important parts of this style are the bold colored highlights [ in this case, the slightly greenish yellow of Strade's basement lights, meant to be a bit unsettling ] and the only soft blending- the blush on his skin around his cheeks, elbows, and hands. I decided to break the cell shading rule in this instance because the slight blush really makes him feel a bit more alive.

Overall, I'm very happy with this style. People on social media seem to like it, and I enjoy drawing it. It's also a bit easier than the heavy painting rendering I did with TPOF.

Ren's experiment involves a bit more shadow, since this sprite is used at night- when the basement's lights are off.

I chose slightly darker, duller flats for the same reason.

Here it is all finished, with blue highlights for more of a 'nighttime' feel. There's no blue light in the room, but I'm going with the 'rule of cool' more often in this project and paying attention to realism a lot less.

In that same vein, I've also been using basically no references for any of my art. I still use my anatomy textbook, but I'm not taking photos or looking at poses. The point of this in my head is to 'embrace the wonk' and get a more stylized, interesting, and even weird look to the visuals. The art in the original BTD was wonky. Backgrounds were constantly bulging, anatomy was all over the place, and it was really rather cartoonish. I actually really liked that about it, and that's why I'm making these choices now.

Anyway, those experiments only took Monday and Tuesday, I went back to placeholders for the rest of the week.

It was a bit slow going to be honest... I've just been feeling some burnout that's making it harder to work. [ don't worry I have a vacation planned in just a couple weeks ]

But I did start getting more into the events of Day 3

For the first part, I was able to mostly use existing sprites, so it was just a matter of coding and editing.

With just the odd new expression needed here or there.

But then I moved on to a scene that needed more unique art:

Hopefully I'll be more productive next week- I have a lot less extra chores and appointments to worry about.

Anyway, I think that's all I have for now! Thank you guys so much for your incredible support- and to the Americans I hope you had a good thanksgiving or at least survived it! 

Stay safe and have a great weekend! <3