I know this question is a little trite but where do you get the inspirations for your designs for the ominous island?
Its not trite at all, you are essentially asking how to be creative, which is a taught rather than innate skill that requires deliberate cultivation.
Creativity is a form of problem solving born out of limitations. You need to be able to recognize what your limitations are, then consider your options for integrating them into your solution (consider the classic example of a coin being used in absence of a screwdriver). There are a number of limitations we are all working within when creating things in the game: low resolution textures, limited options for features, placement barriers. There are also common limitations you see players impose upon themselves though they aren't explicitly limitations that the game places on the player, like wanting a character to look acceptable at every angle and in every expressive animation.
A common limitation I've seen others mention is their inability to draw, but I've seen this this easily sidestepped with stamps and tracing. And I will mention that even skilled draughtsmen feel frustrated if they are used to dealing with particularly high resolution images due to their perceived lack of control over the smoothness of their drawing. This is a pixel based application and requires both an eye for simplification and the patience for meticulous cleaning of details (using the joycons and not a stylus) in order to be legible at the resolutions displayed in-game. So the ability to draw in itself is not something that effortlessly produces what the creator desires. Anecdotally, many pixel artists I've known can't "draw", their process is closer to cross-stitching, perler beading, or even building in Minecraft.
Outside of all of that you are in a sandbox where you are allowed to create essentially anything at all. There is no real guidance in the form of island items or game progression. Once again, creatively it is more akin to Minecraft than it is to Animal Crossing or The Sims -- you are literally in control of all the creation that happens within the specific "biome" of the island. This can lead to a lot of choice paralysis and aimlessness if you don't begin setting your own limitations to work around.
These limitations don't have to be draconian. A simple limitation is picking one feature from the mii maker and then building around it until you have something interesting. Personally, I utilize the island layout and object maker to impose thematic limitations, building up the island itself as a character and then creating miis that could live within it.
For example: I wanted an ancient area with a crumbling temple and that's how Doomsday Scroll and Sacred Fountain were conceived (as well as a few others I have not yet made). I wanted an area reflecting the spectre of wealth, which resulted in Flayed King, Charred Queen, and Executed CEO. I wanted to suggest that the island is teeming with wildlife and felt that couldn't be properly communicated through single anthropomorphic creatures, so I made the siblings Flock, School, and Pack (eventually Herd will join them).
Making buildings and objects for the island is how I block out these barriers. Here's the process I went through with Nana Scarab:
I made a post office.
I want a nonhuman creature to run it.
I do not want that creature to have an abstracted form.
I want the creature to be iconic and simple enough to form a postal logo.
A pony or horse is off limits.
And the process for Frolic:
I made a carousel.
I want whoever lives in it to evoke a feeling of unbridled joy.
Essentially the base/tentative limitation is "theme", and the theme is reliant upon neighborhoods or areas developed on the island.
As someone who absolutely requires strict creative limitations, I deeply appreciate the object makerā¦ If there were an update made to it I believe the only thing I would want is the ability to flip or rotate the shapes.
really love a corruption arc where the character is trying way too hard to make it work but they're in over their head and it's uncomfortable and embarrassing and they're swallowing their own puke every time they do something awful and damp with sweat and trembling but insistent that they can do this, they want it, they're not a child, but it's like they're playing dressup in clothes that are too big for them and trying to convince their own reflection in the mirror that they fit and it's just no fun to watch at all
+ then they find inside them a capacity for cruelty far more upsettingly vicious than anyone could have imagined and decide that because they enjoy how unafraid it makes them feel for the first time in as long as they can remember it must have been their true nature all along instead of something that had to be starved in the dark until it grew desperate enough to claw its way out šāāļø
locusts are SO fucked up. imagine if your apartment complex got too crowded during a drought so everyone in it started overproducing serotonin until they gained 100lb of pure muscle and then chewed through the drywall of every building in the neighborhood
āHaha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.ā
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
āY2K came to nothing amirite?ā
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
āRemember the hole in the ozone layer?ā
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those āitās gonna be an apocalypseā disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think thatās going to happen. I donāt know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope wonāt help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
me: QUIET! this is the deadliest ray known to man. one milli milli milligram of poison from its sting is enough to stop a grown man's heart in under a minute! and he answers only to me! behold your DOOM!
stingray: *nudges my hand*
me, getting down on my knees in front of the tank so i can look him in the eyes: Mortimer, please. i'm trying to be intimidating here.
germansingergirl
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