Art Update!
What’s up, gamers? Ta-Dah! Games! is back again with another dev update!
A lot of our recent posts have focused on the story and programming aspects of Growforth, so today I thought I’d update you guys on the artistic side of things.
Personally, I’m still pretty new when it comes to digital art, so creating the backgrounds has taken a lot of time. However, as I’m getting used to the process, I’m moving quicker and learning new techniques. First, I usually start by sketching on paper some of the key elements of whatever background I’m creating. For example, in the cave scene, this would include the crystals on the wall and the stalagmites/stalactites. I’m much more comfortable drawing on paper, so this step makes it easier for me to then have a reference to look at when I’m trying to replicate it digitally.
Here’s a sketch planning out the design of some of the mushroom trees in their scene.
Next, I open up Clip Studio Paint and start sketching the outline of the background, usually beginning with the player’s path and building around that. In certain areas, such as forests, it’s VERY important to make use of the layering tool. This makes it much easier to erase certain parts of objects far in the back while keeping the objects in front intact. It also allows me to select certain parts of a layer and move it around to see how it fits in different areas. Layering is also very useful for the next step… painting!
A WIP sketch of the mushroom forest. The basic outlines are there and painting has begun. Further sketching for trees in the way back is done later.
When painting, I start at the front and work my way back. In the beginning, I first focus on trying to get the right base color for whatever is being painted. Once that base color is filled in, I start messing around with textures, gradients and shadows. This usually takes quite a while, considering I have little previous experience doing so, so it’s very much trial and error.
After the key elements are colored, I switch to the ground and the background of the background, for lack of a better word. At this point I usually start with a base color for the background and outline parts of trees from there. This may sound a bit backwards, but it’s much easier for me to know when there’s no white space left, and saves me from drawing an endless amount of trees. Then, I add a layer to the very bottom of all my layers and fill it entirely with a base color that’s used to make all the colors more uniform and further ensure I have no white space left. In the cave scene, for example, this color would be a dark gray.
Once everything is outlined and colored, I clean up the outlines and save the background, but it’s not done yet! I then make a copy of the background and add a blur effect to it. This blurred background is used in place of the original whenever something appears on screen, such as an object or a character, making them stand out more.
Here’s an example of both final backgrounds for the bridge scene.
As someone who entered game development as primarily a programmer, getting the chance to improve my art skills is both incredibly awesome and quite a challenge. However, I really enjoy this process and look forward to further improving my skills in future games!
- Clarissa McCarthy
