Daniel Giesbrecht

So apparently I got behind on the game and neglected to post on my blog. The blog for the game about dyes... DyeWorks or something of software-esque, whatever we're calling it. So here it is.

I've travelled quite far down the creative path, pumping out many of the visual assets. We, the visual team, decided on our style last fall. I was inspired by political cartoons of the day, and wanted to utilize a similar pen-drawn sketch style. We hoped for less clean, modern appearance and more hand-drawn essence. Character styles would not be caricature like in the old political cartoons, however; for the purpose of appealing to the younger player audience, we opted for a more child-friendly cartoon with enlarged head and eyes.

Colour choice is slightly more difficult: since the game is about dyes we wanted to include many colour options, but ran the risk of the screen looking too overwhelmingly saturated in hues. I did some mixing and matching in Photoshop, and I believe I struck a good balance between vibrant colours and aesthetic appeal.

So what have I done in all? I have drawn an entire screen's worth of background for the shell game scene, for the dye heating game, the resource gathering game, and the dye research game, and am working on one for the intro screen. I have sketched the moving character for the gathering game, the advisors for the main game, the interactive spaces and elements of the gathering and dye heating game, and a few other things here and there.

I always feel like I could be drawing more details in each of these pieces. As an artist I am a critic of my own work and am always adding on to the art assets to improve their aesthetic. I think a lot of them need more work, but there are not many of us in the art team to spare, and we are running out of time. First priority is simply finishing everything, then I will work more on tweaking the finer details.