One of the best tips for artists I have...

Hey folks! happy to report the backend of the mermay game is finally done! I've also planned out all the puzzles that will be in the game. So now I'm going pedal to the medal on art right now! Since most of my supporters have probably never seen what my art process is for big projects, I thought I would share it here in more detail than normal, because maybe it could be useful for other artists? Let me know if you're an artist and this was interesting at all, lol.

Below you will see some in process shots of the entire game map. Don't worry too much about spoilers; none of the puzzles have been added in; this is just the environment that Lani swims though! I made this map in about an hour. If that seems like a crazy brag, hear me out -- it's not because I have any special talent, but I use a great technique that I will tell you about, which I call "harvesting randomness".

You can see the strange organic shapes behind this sketch are essential to the technique. I'll usually grab a highly detailed image from pexels, then go into photoshop and use the filter stylize>find edges to make some great squiggles. But you could do this with any kind of scribbles or amorphous splotchy pattern.

I was fortunate enough to have a great art teacher when I was in high school who taught me about Surrealist Automatism, art that was produced "without conscious thought". The processes developed by the first surrealists involved, among other things, using randomness as part of your work. My teacher encouraged everyone on the first day of class to go through our empty sketchbooks and literally scribble over everything; rather than agonizing over ruining a crisp blank page with a bad idea, this gave us permissions as artists to just work over what was there without any conscious blocks. It was so jarring, but I was shocked at how well it worked! Even better, whenever we were stuck trying to come up with ideas about composition, we could just flip through the scribbles and use them to build around.

So that's what I do now when I need to bust out art quickly. it turns out, many concepts artists employ similar techniques, sometimes called "building with shapes" because it's so incredibly effective. I have learned as an adult that our brains are actually abysmally bad at "coming up with ideas" when there are no restrictions, which is why looking at a blank page can be so daunting. But our brains are VERY good at combining ideas to come up with something new. To look at a scribble and say "that kind of looks like a chandelier" is much, much easier than asking yourself "what should the chandeliers look like, and where would I put one?"

anyway, once that sketch was done, all I have to do is color it in. I started on the process today, but It won't be done by this weekend, I fear! Still, I'm really happy with the progress so far. I really can't wait to put this into the game and have Lani swim around in it.

That's all for today! I hope this was a useful post to all my artists supporters out there. I'm kind of obsessed with telling everyone about harvesting randomness, especially now that a lot of people use LLMs to come up with ideas for them because they feel it is too hard, maybe someday I will make a video about how they can approach things differently. But of course none of that can happen until I finish this game!!!

Here's your sign-off joke:

Q: Why are fish such good musicians?

A: They're very familiar with scales!