TheMartinExperiment

Another cutscene!

This time I managed to use my compensatory time to take two days off in a row. I intended to use these days to draw two or three short cutscenes and speed things up, but Murphy's law had other plans for this weekend. We suffered a power surge that set off my power surge protector. The hardware shop nearby was closed, so I looked for replacement fuses online and found a shop that promised fast deliveries on the same day. I went for it, but since it was such a small package, they had put it at ...

Finally, another productive day off

It feels so good to sit on my PC with enough energy to pull one more cutscene! Here, Martin is interacting with the back door key (keys not included in this demonstration). Now I have to draw him interacting with the entrance door.

You guys kept supporting me these last months, even though I couldn't keep up fulfilling the perks I promised for each tier, so thank you very much for not giving up on me! I will release this game no matter what!

Another day off, another cutscene

Today I managed to finish the lineart of this short cutscene. He's grabbing the cellphone of that passed-out woman to see who is calling.

Now, some rantings about my short-term contract at the hospital.

I completed my first 30 days working there already. Last Friday (19), one of our coworkers from the first floor had a crying crisis because she couldn't keep up with the routine of the ambulatories, so they chose me to replace her there to prevent another sick leave. Yes...

Finally. Another full day off.

I used this day to finish this cutscene, and now I'm preparing the next ones. This hospital is draining all my free time! I couldn't get to my computer for five consecutive days. The only thing holding me there is that generous paycheck. I can't wait to get to the end of this contract and get my free time back.

I think I'm getting back on my tracks

I've had only hellish-tier days since I got hired at the hospital. I discovered they hired me that quickly because they are VERY short on staff. Like, dangerously short. I started working on Friday, and three days later (Monday), they were already assigning me 17 psychiatric patients to take care of on my own, and the next day they marked me as able to take 12-hour shifts like the veterans. Usually, you would only trust this much responsibility to someone after a week or two of training, but ...

Wow, I suddenly got a job

This past week I was suddenly drafted to work in a very high-profile hospital as a licensed practical nurse. At first, I got mad at this hospital for only calling me five years after I applied for the job (I had even forgotten of them after all this time), but then I called them the next day, and my jaw dropped when they mentioned the intended wage for my position. It's huge. They are paying almost five times more than my previous hospital.

And what is better: the contract only lasts fo...

More cutscenes incoming!

It was supposed to be something else going under the door, but I haven't figured out how to animate it properly.

June's monthly build is out!

I just sent a link to all level 3: Contributors to download it. I've spent all may developing my drawing skills and also making tools to cover where I'm still lacking. Now I feel confident enough to take a big step and draw as many Martins as I can during July!

To help me manage this workload, today I bought a new hard drive, thanks to your patronage! Thank you so much for this! If I give Photoshop one more terabyte of space to handle, it must let me wo...

I made a 3D system to draw 2D hair easier :D

I (kind of) hacked my way inside Blender for an entire week to make this work. Apparently, Blender wasn't built with this kind of functionality in mind, which is weird since this is a well-known technique used in many old-school games.

I asked for help in some communities to understand what was happening in some dark corners of Blender's documentation, and even though I got the directions I nee...

I think I'm getting the hang of this drawing thing!

I've been drawing cutscenes this entire week. I'm focusing more on Martin than the woman because I can draw his entire body in a few minutes with almost no difficulty, and he moves a lot in the cutscenes (so he almost always has multiple sprites per camera). I have yet to find a consistent way to draw her hair and clothes (maybe I should 'cheat' with 3D as I did with Martin). Also, drawing stylized faces has proven to be a bit of a challenge. I need to practice more.

17 body parts = 20 poses

With these parts, I can make mini procedural animations and interactions during gameplay with almost zero effort.

(Now that I'm seeing all the parts working together, I started to notice some continuity problems with the line art that I'll fix in the future, maybe during the coloring process...

I'm fully recovered!

Thank you guys for all your messages! I survived the dengue fever, and I'm glad to say I'm back working on the project!

I plan to make a sprint and cover the most sprites I can for this month. Now I'm figuring out how I should organize the files and set the goals to keep you guys updated.

Guys, I catched dengue fever

I'm very sick. All my joints are hurting so bad, headaches so strong I can't sleep. This morning I started to spit blood. I fear this disease evolves into hemorrhagic fever.

Wish me luck.

My adventures on learning how to draw #1 (lots of images)

As you may know, the artist had to step off the project some months ago, and I don't know if he will ever come back someday. I hope he will.

I've contacted some other artists, and they agreed to work on this project initially, but after some days of interaction, each one of them suddenly vanished. So I'm still working alone.

I started a drawing course on Udemy, but if I had to follow every step of the program, it would take months to see the results re...

April's development build ready!

159 frames updated with new backgrounds!
I'm sending the link to all Level 3: Contributors right away! :D

This month I will focus more on learning how to draw. I'm still without an artist to help me with the characters.

Development build almost ready

I've been working on these backgrounds almost full-time since last month, and they are finally coming together! I have 11 of these renders 100% finished. There are six more requiring small fixes before rendering that I'm working on right now. I will try to release this month's build on Saturday with all these additions. I can't wait for it.

Two new Discord channels are available for patrons

1. Task Tracker: A channel that automatically reports progress on every task of this project.

You may expect irregular pacing updates in this channel because each task has an individual number of steps required to change its status. Some of these tasks have just five steps to be completed, while others have complex checklists with more than 80 steps to be fulfilled.

For simplicity, this tracker ignores any checklist and reports only these four status changes: 1....