Devlog May 8th - Northern Hills map and characters

Welcome to the first devlog of May!

Since last time, we have worked on the Northern Hills area. In previous updates, we have just shown off the finished area, but this time we'd like to show off the process.

Last time, we had a rough sketch that looked like this:

Check last post for some thoughts on why we drew the sketch like this

Movement in this game is tile based (press once on the right arrow and the character will move a tile to the right). Therefore the next step is to ensure that all the walkable space is aligned with a grid. We decided that in this area, the walkable space will be dirt paths and have a light brownish colour. 

If you look closely, you can see a few places where we deviated from the sketch. We also re-drew the sketch in the upper right corner to add more details.

Next step is to add the basic colours and shapes. 

Here, we have removed the sketch to make the image more clear. But in our drawing program, we can always re-enable the sketch if we want to compare it with the final product.

When adding trees and rocks to an area, we can re-use things from previous areas. For example, the farmhouse in the top right is copied from the farm you start on (with a recoloured roof and a larger door on the left). The grass details and a few trees are also copied from other areas.

Compared to other outdoor areas, we have added more rocks and fewer trees. That's deliberate to give this area a different feel than the previous forest areas.

Next step is to add some shadows:

We like to draw shadows in completely black and then lower the opacity. That way, shadows on a green background becomes dark green, shadows on grey becomes a darker grey etc.

In general, we imagine the lightsource coming from the left, so shadows fall to the right. Of course, our style doesn't have actual perspective (for example you can see the front of the house as if you're looking straight at it, but the roof is also visible as if we're looking at it from above.). That means that the shadows won't always make perfect sense, but we'll do our best to make them look believable.

It's starting to look all right, but there are still some parts of the area that are just one colour with no details. We want to break the monotony with details.

Finally added berries to the berry bushes in the top right. 

We have given the dirt paths and the thatch roof a little bit of texture. We also added some highlights to all the trees, which is something we haven't done on previous areas. Some of the trees (especially the central one) are quite big, so it's nice with more shades of green to break up the colours.

This is probably good enough for now. We can of course always make adjustments in the future if we find something we want to improve, but we're ready to move on to the two new characters we will meet in this area.

The first one is the farmer who lives in the farmhouse.

Meet Invitus, simple farmer with an intimidating look.

Invitus here is sort of a joke character. The idea is that at first he seems really scary and sinister because of his pale skin and scythe. But he's actually just a farmer with albinism.

This is intended to be a contrast to another character in the game who appears to be a normal farmer, but has hidden qualities.

The other new character in this area is Amalthea:

We struggled a bit with her design, but ended up liking the result.

Amalthea is a Satyr, and she has the ability to turn into a sheep. So we have drawn two versions of her, one in her sheep form and one in her satyr form.

Her hair is white to match the white wool of her sheep form.

Amalthea is also intended to be a funny, light-hearted character, but she will also give some crucial information to progress the plot of the game.

That's all we have to show for now. This time we focused on drawing, and next time we will put the new images into the game.

We'll explain more about that next time, which will be on May 22nd. Talk to you then!