It's been a while since the last time I did some pixel art... In the meanwhile I was concentrating on learning to use Unity and keep up with my schoolwork. However now ART is BACK (!) with the upcoming game jam organized by Le Monde (see http://playtime.blog.lemonde.fr/hits-playtime-3-continue/).
I will be participating to this event together with my friends Boris (@Bobo_oh), Raymond (@SuperMouf), and my love, Glennie (@ORPH4NUS).
The story of the team and how we came up with its marvellous name is quite interesting... Raymond was the first to know about the event and immediately told Boris. They decided right away to make something for android, as we are all google fans around here.
Then they eventually had an argument because Ray wanted to do something in 3D but Boris wanted to do something more oldschool, like, say, hardcoded in java and visually pixelated. They finally came up with the agreement that the game will be in pixelated 2D, at the price that there must be (a) salmon(s) in it. A pretty good deal if you ask me.
Boris told me about the event and the salmon(s) during the next lesson. I was immediately integrating the team, as a coder and a pixel artist. Therefore I declared that if Raymond could have salmon(s) in the game project, well I wanted (a) robot(s)! If that's so, Boris also added a constraint: the game must end up fun but philosophical...
A little while later, I told Glen about the game jam, and he decided to join the team as well. If he has to give any, he announced that his condition is "time"...
Why so many constraints before we even know the theme?
I actually don't think this kind of conditions are a restriction to imagination. I have two reasons:
- First, they are not too precise. For example with the salmon thing, we can have just one salmon or a thousand, a salmon hero or just some random fish NPC in the background... In that case this is more of a suggestion that simulates imagination. It presents itself as a challenge: Can you integrate something that silly in your design and still make an awesome game out of it? Hell, yeah, I bet we can! Be prepared for something you never saw before ;p
- Second, it gives everybody in the team a good hand on the end product. Maybe some of us are more imaginative than others, or some are better designers, or speak better... These little constraints give everybody the same great power to tell what is going to be in the game. Hence even if you didn't have that much inspiration on the moment or the other team members didn't adhere to your ideas, you can still be proud that the finished product integrates something you suggested!
After all these adventures, we eventually decided to marvellously name our team:
Salmons&&Robots
The double '&' is there to reinforce the nerdiness of the entire team <3Enough suspence, here are various stuff I created for our file:
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| Personalized avatars |
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| Our team's avatar |
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| Color study |