Starlight

A very brief post to note that I'm still working on Wish Upon: Starlight. I finally found some free time yesterday and worked on one of the NPC homes:

It looks like the kind of house I'd want to visit! 

The biggest mapping time-sink for Starlight is the main star city. It's the largest of areas you will get to visit, and thus has all kinds of homes, shops and other interesting areas. It's also the first area you visit at the beginning of the game, so it has to be finished before I can move onto other areas. Phew! It's going to be so much work!

I'm going to try the new thing of mapping non-puzzle/exploration areas first and making the events, cutscenes and puzzle areas as I progress with the game.

Work and more work

I haven't posted in over a month, and it's mainly due to the fact that I've been pretty hard at work on these. Yes, they're finally on sale. I can now sit back and enjoy a breather while I ponder what I'm going to be working on next.

I have a lengthy list of themes/ideas/concepts and it's so difficult to choose just one! I've also got to make more progress on the Modern tiles. I know of quite a few folks who are waiting on those!

I may also make a character pack first. It'll likely be a base pack with heroes, villains and NPCs. Then I'll move to other themes I've tackled (or am about to tackle) with the tiles. Phew, so much work!

Starlight: NPC faces

Making faces for NPCs is incredibly fun. Not only do I get to practice my art (and goodness knows I could use practice when it comes to character portraits), but I get to give them all kind of wacky emotions. I can go for a subtly smug look, or a look of utter boredom. Or maybe even insane grin or two.

It also helps quite a bit with dialogue. As I'm drawing a character with dialogue that's ready, I can really play up the emotions. Or if I'm drawing the character first, their look gives me ideas about what kind of personality they may have. It's a pretty fun process.

I'm definitely glad I decided to make NPC faces, too. :)

Starlight: Update

If you've been following my progress on Wish Upon: Starlight, you probably know that I did a whole lot of going back and forth about facesets (particularly style) and the font. I think I have finally made a decision about what to do for both.

First, the facesets:

 You can see all the faces in my project thread.

I added some slight shading, definition and better-looking eyes. I think it's the perfect happy medium between having a resource that looks good and still being able to create them relatively quickly. I will be able to create the faces for all NPCs - or at the very least, the most important ones.

I will be working on some more maps/events when I get some free time. Between making resources and doing other work-related things, I've found myself with very very little free time left. And because I often feel brain-dead by the time all the work is done, I end up playing a game to wind down instead.

However, I will definitely make a very big effort to go back on track with the game production. I think it will just take some organizing and making sure I've set time aside for game progress.

Community Character

Scinaya (with a bit of help from Archeia) made this super awesome portrait for me:

Isn't it awesome?!? Scin is one talented lady!

Here's my post with my community character info. It includes a faceset and a character set along with a link to a download with all the portrait emotions.

Now you can add me to your game. How cool is that?

Tree~

I will not have time to make a proper entry this week, since I will be very busy finishing up the add-on pack for the modern tiles. So, I leave you with a graphic:

This was a tree that someone requested a few months ago. I just got to finishing it up today. Sorry for the delay, Paul!

Expect a more proper entry sometime next week.

Summer contest

We're holding a contest at the official RM forums:
Summer Fun Contest

This is your chance to win a copy of Ace, or any other product that's currently on sale at the official store. The deadline is in 3 weeks, and all you have to do is create a summer-themed mini-game! So, if you've been itching to get your hands on Ace or if you even want to just have an extra copy of Ace to give to a friend, think about joining the contest.

La-dee-da

My surprise is still on track, which I am very happy about. It will be unveiled on Saturday, the 7th at whatever time I'm up and awake. It's been a bit of a mad rush to get everything moving smoothly, and I'm still wishing I had more time for it. But between chores and other duties, I've had precious little free time.

I am still working on the tile add-ons for the Modern Day pack. I'm hoping to have them completed within 2-3 weeks - depending on how much details are still left to paint. So far, I've completed the grocery store, the clothing store and some of a newspaper kiosk. I've still got a few ideas to go through and then it'll be all about assembling and quadruple-checking the tiles.

Other than that, I can't really think of anything else that's important enough to report. Just the usual "Luna is busy like a bee!" type of thing.

And just so this update is not completely useless, I give you a random mug shot (thank you Jalen for the chibi base!):

One of these days, I will sketch up the whole RTP.

No Title

I was recently interviewed for the official blog, so I figured I should toss a link to that. There's a bit of info on my current projects, how I go about making tiles and how I got into art. It's not a terribly long read, but some of you may find it interesting.

Other than that, I'm taking a much deserved break. The past couple of days have been spent in a mad rush to get the modern tileset ready for sale. I am just blown away with how much support we've received for it already. Thank you soooo much for buying the tiles, everyone! It's inspiring and motivating me to keep making more tiles.

Lastly, there's a matter of a super secret something that will be unveiled in two weeks. I'm very much teasing you all with it right now, but I think you'll like it. It was something I've done to challenge myself and hopefully inspire others to rise to the same challenge. So, stay tuned~!

Starlight: Weekly Update 1

In between fancy tile making, I've found a bit of time to make some faces. As I've mentioned already, I'm using Jalen's chibi base and making faces with that base is almost ridiculously fun. Each face takes very little time and I know that using them will give those characters so much more personality!

And since pictures speak more than words, here is a sample of some of the NPC faces I've finished:

They will be a little less fuzzy in game.

Other than the fun artsy thing, I've also got most of the gameplay planned out. I'm actually very excited about it because it sounds both fun to make and fun to play. I'm going to try finish making the database soon, so I can be better organized through the development process.

Things to do next week:
- Finish more NPC faces for the main town hub
- Get started on skill and item icons
- Finish up items database (for stuff that's planned so far, anyway)