Cycle 1 Week 2

The second week of our first assignment has ended and a couple of unforeseen developments have occurred. Initially our roles were already very clear: Kim was the project manager, John in charge of art assets and I was responsible for the programming. However, for most of Week 2 John wasn’t very active online, updating us on his progress pretty sparsely. Whether he was busy with other commitments or simply too scared to admit he was a bit behind, I decided to take matters into my own hands and started to create the sprites for the different types of ship components that can be unlocked. This was only to give me something to work with whilst establishing the games functionality, however during the week we decided to shift the responsibilities around to play to our apparent strengths. I ended up focusing on asset creation and the games interface. Kim is to concentrate on the overall game functionality and John is now in charge of the obstacles and their spawning system.

I had dabbled with pixel art before, but this was the first time I was seriously directing my efforts towards creating assets respecting the art style. The first iterations of the sprites weren’t not half-bad, resembling the form of a space ship to a certain degree. It wasn’t until our lecturer directed my attention to the design where I figured out what was missing from the sprites: a sense of perspective. The ship had no shading, despite it being “made up” of overlapping components which would no doubt cast shadows. However, by simply darkening all the corners facing a certain direction (i.e. everything facing the bottom right) and brightening up the corners facing the opposite direction (i.e. everything facing the top left), the change in gradient creates a sense of depth, enhancing the sprites overall. Although I don’t get immense joy from creating art assets, I definitely feel more confident in creating sprites in a pixel art-style