Art Poll Preliminary Results
The results so far are pretty interesting, and there are definitely some differences from what I was expecting! Character art had a much more dramatic lead than I was expecting, with 181 votes more than the nearest option. UI and other art surprisingly surpassed location art, which was originally planned to be the first art art item I'd work on getting into the game.
This means that I'll be focusing on character art first, and leaving the map locations with blank placeholder images. I wasn't really expecting to get a lot of interest in UI art, which has me wondering what and where improvements would be worthwhile. (Creating a better logo and title text? converting menu buttons into image buttons? Creating data or stat bars? If you voted for UI, let me know what you'd like to see!)
If there's a particular artist you think would be a good fit for the game, leave a comment with their name or website so I can check them out.
Brief Update:
This image shows a couple things. First is a little more of the grooming menu. The more interesting is that the version of AW running in the image is an independent executable, running from it's own .exe file instead of running in a browser. This was a bit of a test for now, but it's good to know that a switch is possible, as it expands the possibilities for running smoothly even with a large amount of image assets. The exe version doesn't require any extra software, and doesn't need to be installed.
As part of the test I compiled executable versions for 64 & 32 bit Windows and Linux. I compiled a Mac version, but have no way of testing it myself. For now, I'll be sticking with the html file format to run in your browser, as there's no reason to switch yet. I'm sharing just to let you all know that I'm doing my best to watch out for potential problems or limitations in the future, and find ways to avoid or mitigate them.
It's back to work for me, thanks for your support!
Comments (3)
Although I voted for character art, I don't think it should be added first. There is a very good reason to put location art first: it is easy to do. On the other hand, character art, like monokuma described, can be a really complex addition but definitely something that would add a lot of value to the game. So why voting on character art? Since it can get very complex to get it done properly you should start working on it. I really don't mind if the very first image will be related to location, character or anything else.
I figured 'UI / interface' art was referring to general work on how you interacted with the game, refining the menu systems, fine tuning it based on actual play. I'm sure we've all played games where doing simple things required extensive menu navigation and seemingly simple things were made inordinately difficult. I figured it made sense to do some of this work early in the process before correcting problems might become difficult or impossible.
Ahh, good point. I've been concerned about that myself, and I've been trying to keep things clean & simple. It's also the reason for some of the UI tweaks along the way. Definitely a concern, so it'll be getting attention regardless of art commissions. :)