Space Dev 6 – Making friends

In an unusual sense of the phrase, as in this week (along with an assortment of random task nobody else had time to do) I made the sprite of the player thief’s friend and accomplice.

We’ve had some discussion along the road about what, in the setting, happens to the stuff the player steals. The concept doc wasn’t entirely clear on the matter, so eventually we settled for adding an additional character for the sole purpose of helping that make sense – and also so that they may provide a bit of in-character tutorial. Stuff like that.

Above is the player character probably on their way to make some crime happen, as made by Adrienne. Now, more than even the environment I’ve been making, the additional accomplice character really needed to fit in with the thief’s look. I’m not good with that, I may have mentioned. I’ve always leaned more realism than cartoony, more sketches and painting than clean, clear art. Ideally, Addis would’ve made the accomplice sprite but she’s been real busy working on Mr. von Fancy’s animations. We’ll have to make do, though.

Now, this accomplice person needed to be similar enough in design to the thief to be recognizable as an ally but also not actually mistaken for the thief. Which is why she has visible hair and follows a colour palette leaning red to the thief’s blue. It is a her, by the way. The thief’s agender, but as we were talking over my sketches for the accomplice Ellen was like ”It should be a girl” and I was like ”Yeah.”

I’ve tried for the same nice round style of everything, and emulated the look of the other characters to the best of my ability. My lines aren’t as clean or as steady as I’d wish, nor the anatomy as well fitting, but it worked out alright and you won’t be seeing the accomplice for long regardless.

Her involvement in the game will be limited to the very first floor of the game, the tutorial level, as it were. As intensely as Addis endorses Paint Tool Sai for All Things Art, I don’t actually have the program and made the accomplice in Photoshop instead. Fortunately for me, all of the animation required for her was entirely limited to blinking like a normal person, and doing the shift eyes like a criminal person. I bet she’s already given that money bag a name, way that she’s cradling it in her arms.

About Charlotte Eliasson

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