Update 7/17 - Animated Scenes and Graphic Updates

I've spent the last week tackling two things I was kind of nervous about: animated scenes, and facial expression graphics!  These are both things I've not spend much time on, but I wanted to get them done, since they are needed for my "Day 1 Vertical Slice" project I'm currently in the middle of.  Basically, I want game-day 1 to be as polished as possible, so I have a standard to work towards for the rest of the game's assets.  That meant facing my fears and throwing myself into something I wasn't sure I could do: an animated Magical Girl Transformation scene!

Since this is an 8bit-ish game, I didn't want anything too complicated, so I settled on two poses and an outfit switch.  But I wanted Chiyoko floating, with her hair and skirt kind of flying around.  So I had to watch similar scenes in anime, and find some tutorials as well, before I figured out how exactly I would go about it.  That's when I noticed that these things kind of blow around in this "wave" pattern, so I did my best to arrange it into a four-frame loop.

The result was, originally, kind of a mess!
But, I decided I'd try to transfer it to pixel art anyway, and I was very happy with the result!



Having it come out so well was a huge confidence boost!  So I decided to seize the moment and move on to the next challenge: facial expressions! I have plenty of experience drawing passive smiles and blank expressions, but for expressions with actual emotion behind them, I had to, once again, dive into the YouTube tutorials and image searches to figure out how to convey each expression convincingly.  The portraits are also very low resolution, which adds to the challenge!  I managed to get Chiyoko's full set done, and counting her various outfits, she now has 40 face graphics to keep track of!  I think the result is worth it, as expressive portraits help make the story scenes more polished and entertaining.



Each major character will have a similar range of expressions, and I kept room to add more if needed. Next up, I'll be polishing the character designs for the supporting characters, redrawing some of the scene backgrounds, and updating some of the music.  The "Day 1 Vertical Slice" is nearing completion, and I can't wait to see the result!

Thanks for checking out my devlog, and have a great day!