Ib

I found this free horror game that came out recently called Ib (pronounced with a long “e” sound, spanish speakers shd have no problem pronouncing it).

It plays very similar to Yume Nikki and Corpse Party (both great games). But I like it better than those two games cuz it has simple, cute story and it has less gross gore than Corpse Party (I love horror, but am not a fan of gore). This game is still horror and has a lot of fun creepy moments, and like 5 endings).

You play as a little girl named Ib who goes to a museum and loses her self in a creepy alternate world.  I love the way it takes a simple setting (a museum) and just goes from there.  All of the monsters and threats and puzzles have to do with art in some way.  It doesn't bog itself down with a needlessly long and complicated story like many Japanese games do.

The game does a wonderful job creating a cute relationship between the two main characters.  And I love the use of the rose as health.  It works so well.

The art is great too.  It uses a typical anime style but keeps it simple and adds in some nice shading effects and sketchiness.  It goes a long great with the creepy vibe of the game.  Here's an example:

Seriously, everyone should play this game.  Download it out here:

http://vgboy.dabomstew.com/other/ib.htm

You won’t regret it. Be sure to read the txt file that comes with it though.

The game has already established a bit of a cult following for itself.  Here's some great fanarts:

Animation Examples

Here are some examples of recent animations I've done, mostly 2D stuff.  The majority of these are from a game called Curse of Shadows, released on Xbox Live Indie Games, where I was the lead animator.

Last Sprint!!!! (or whatever)

ACCOMPLISHED:
I drew out all of the cutscenes for the intro.  And I helped color them.  Cristine animated them and put them all together.  We are awesome!

QUALITY:
Good. Even Russel said he liked it.  We're not used to getting positive comments on the first try, so I think that's a good sign.

EXTRA:
I had to a lot of random art fixes here and there.  Plus other stuff I don't care to remember.  Also, after the semester ends we're going to do an ending cutscene.  That'll be 100% extra.

EXAMPLES:

Here's da video

NEXT:
............NOTHING!!!!!! HAHAHA!

Sprint 4/9

ACCOMPLISHED:
Valkyrie helped me come up with a better design for the box art.  I tweaked it til I got something that I was satisfied with.  Everyone else seems to like the new box art as well.

I don't think I mentioned this in my previous posts.  But somewhere along the way (I don't remember which sprint) I made a smoke animation that plays to show where hidden enemies are (guards or shadow monsters). For this sprint I changed the sizes of that smoke animation so that we can use if to different sized enemies.  That was a bit of a hassle as the shadow monsters are all different sizes.

I also fixed some problems with the sprite sheet.  I had somehow forgotten to add the pushing and pulling to the new sheets.

QUALITY:
I got a lot of positive comments about the box art, so I think it was good quality.  I haven't heard back yet about the smoke effect.

EXTRA:
I outputted some hi-def videos of all Suni's animations and the guard's animations so that Alice will have them at her disposal when she makes the trailer for our game.

EXAMPLES:

 

The FINAL BOXART!!!

BELOW You'll see the guard animations with the new shading. You've already seen Suni's new Shading in previous posts, but not the guards so I figured I'd add him here.

NEXT:
Cristine and I are going to try to convince the programmers to somehow include the old man in our game.  He's oh so adorable, it'd be a shame not to include him.  Even if we just use him as a loading screen graphic.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  They have moving lights and that's essentially all the old man is...

Also we need to make some better art for the start screen.  And Cristine still wants us to start drawing up some simple cutscenes for the story even if they don't make it into the game.

Russel says that we can always patch the game and add a story later, but I think that's a horrible idea.  Most games on XBLIG only draw attention when they are newly released.  If the game sucks when it's newly released people don't play it.  Even if it does get patched later, it won't matter.  It'll just be extra work for us that will not result in any more sales.

The reason I think that a story would help is this: I have played a lot those indie games, and I've never come across even one that actually had a good story that was presented well.  If we could just have a couple stylized cutscenes in our game (like the stylized still images used in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smiles), I think it would do a lot to set us apart from all the other crap available on XBLIG.

Anyway, that's all wishful thinking.

Since I'm already ranting, why stop now? I've told Russel several times that the sneaking should not be mapped to the analog stick.  It needs to be mapped to a button.  Stealth games are like my favorite genre, and having sneaking on the analog stick is one of the most frustrating things you can do.  You have to constantly be careful to only push the stick a little, so that she'll sneak.  If you accidentally push the stick to far she'll burst into a mad sprint and the guards will turn and notice her.  All that could be fixed by mapping it to a button.  You still use the analog stick to move her, but she just does it in sneak mode.

Sprint 4/2

ACCOMPLISHED:
Oh so much.

I finished the Shadow Switch animation.  I also did a reverse version of it (Russel told me we need a reverse).

I did a sneak idle for Suni.  I know we probably won't use it, but it was the very last thing on our list of needed animations that we made at the beginning of the semester.  And I guess I'm a completionist.

I re-colored both Suni and the Guard so that they are shaded in more of a toony style.

That meant that I had to re-output all of their spritesheets again.

I also drew some art for the Box Art.

QUALITY:
Cristine totally loved the shadow switch animation

She didn't care for the box art so I'm getting my sister Valkyrie's help in making some more aesthetically pleasing art.  She's a graphic designer who has made logos and things professionally so she'll be a good help.

EXTRA:
I feel like everything I do is extra these days.  I helped Cristine with designing a Zen Tower for the village level.  And I did a bunch of other stuff I probably don't remember.

EXAMPLES:

 

The Original Placeholder Boxart I made

 The Boxart I drew

The Shadow Switch Animation. Some of the cool FX didn't translate too well to GIF format

NEXT:
Better box art.  Different shapes and sizes for the smoke effect (did I ever mention that?).  Fix some glitches with the sprite sheets.

Sprint 3/26

ACCOMPLISHED:
Suni's attack animation for stunning the guards.  I had to do a lot of tweaking on this animation to get it right.  I'm still not fully satisfied, but I've spent too much time on it already.  I've also heard rumor that we're going to end up taking the stunning out so I'd rather not spend too much time perfecting it.

I finished a very cool level design for the final boss.  But I don't think we'll be using it.  They're still working on the farm and city levels.  They haven't even started on the mountain or palace.  There's no way this final boss level is making it in.  Oh well.  Goodbye for good, Baghead.

QUALITY:
Like I said, the attack animation could be better.  I still think the palm strike I went with looks pretty cool though.  Cristine liked my ideas for the final boss level.

EXTRA:
I started work on making a short tutorial level, but I didn't finish that, and I don't think I'm going to be doing any more level designs.  So far people putting the levels together have completely disregarded my level designs.  It's not because they are hard to understand.  I created a numbering system and I uncluded documentation with each level so that all the puzzles would be clear.

Right now the levels are looking very awful.  I don't see anything from my original designs.  I mean they are using some of my puzzles, but they're also just putting things in random places.  Seriously, the levels they are making are nonsensical.  I have no idea why they put shadow monsters where they do.  I know they're working hard, but these levels are our entire game so they need to be put together in a way that makes sense.  I've voiced some of my concerns (don't worry, I did it in a nice way).  And Sarah said they'll keep trying to improve the levels.

Anyway, Cristine's got other stuff for me to help with, so for now, I think I'm off level design.  The reason I was on Level Design in the first place was so that I could make sure we keep the story I wrote progressing throughout the levels.  But Russell nixed having a story in the game weeks ago.  He says we'll put in a story if we have time (yeah right).  Even if we do have time, which we won't, a story isn't something that you can just throw in at the last second.

It's too bad cuz I literally have zero interest in games with no stories.  I don't play a game unless there's some kind of narrative driving me.  This is probly cuz I started gaming with games like Monkey Island and Zak McKraken. That's also the reason why I've never liked games like Tetris or story-lite games like Mario.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
We're getting close to release so all of Suni's animations need to be done.  The only one left to do is the Shadow Switch animation. I'm also in charge of box art.

Spring Break Sprint 3/12 and 3/19

ACCOMPLISHED:
I finished Suni's death animation.  Made it as creepy as possible.  I'd like to make some alternate deaths for when she lands on spikes or drowns, but I think Russell and Cristine need me to get other stuff done first.

I created a fairly cool level design for the Palace level.  I would really like to create one final boss level.  Something that brings everything together and puts the players skills to the final test. Hopefully we'll be able to put a cool final boss level in.

I created a design for a special chasing guard (who I would re-use as the final boss). I was very clear to ask Sarah if we could have a chaser.  I even specifically asked her if it would be too hard because of the chekpoints and how the game has to reset when you die.  I know they'd had problems with resetting states before, so I wanted to make sure that we could include this guy before I did the work for him.  She told me that we could have him in.

But unfortunately, after I did the work, she tells me that we can't have him.  She says that it's just to hard to have a constant chaser because of how their checkpoints and resetting states after you die works.  So we're not having this guy as a constant chaser.  This was a little frustrating to me because I had specifically asked her if that exact thing would be an issue and she said no.  Oh well, hopefully we can still use him as a final boss.

QUALITY:
The death animation is my favorite of all the animations we've done so far.  Cristine absolutely loved Baghead's character design (the constant chaser and the final boss).

EXTRA:
I didn't get the chance to do much extra this sprint.  I spent most of Spring Break catching up on all my other classes that I've been neglecting because of this game.  But I guess you could count Baghead as extra since we're not using him (unless we end up having a final boss level).

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
Suni's attack animation (for stunning the guards).  A level design for the final boss level.

Sprint 3/5

ACCOMPLISHED
Revised Pushing. I decided the original pushing didn't look good enough so I re-did it.

Pulling.  I got the pulling animation done.  The problem with this animation is that she pulls things of different shapes and sizes, so it's hard to tell where she should grab on. Also apparently her hands will appear behind the object, and we can't change that, so it doesn't matter too much how her hands look. I tried to make the pulling as generic as possible so I can change it if the programmers have any ideas of how to make her be able to realistically look like she's grabbing things when the objects she pulls are different shapes and sizes.

I also made a design for the Mountain level.

QUALITY:
Good. I re-did the push to make it better quality.  Cristine was pleased.  I hope to keep the quality as good as possible for the animations.  Cristine really liked my design for the mountain level.  It should be a very cool level.

EXTRA:
The push animation revise was technically extra. No one told me to make it better, but I like it a lot better now.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
The death animation got bumped to next sprint. I will also work on a level design for the palace level. And do some art for the final boss.

Sprint 2/27

ACCOMPLISHED:
I did a stun animation for the guard. I made pushing animation for Suni, but I will probably have to change that.  We're not 100% sure how pushing and pulling is gonna work with the animations, so I'll have to keep working on those.

I also designed the mountain level.

Quality.
Good.  Except we will have to try again on the pushing and pulling. Just because of the restraints of our game.

EXTRA:
I did a kick animation for Suni. I also did a quick and easy idle animation for the guard, cuz I thought he needed it.

EXAMPLES

NEXT SPRINT:
Refine the pushing and pulling animations.  Do a death animation for Suni.  Design a final showdown level.

Sprint for 2/21

ACCOMPLISHED:
I made fixed the guard's alert animation and I refined the sprint animation.  I also designed the imperial palace level.

QUALITY:
Good. As usual. Sarah was pleased with the level and Cristine liked my new guard animations.

EXTRA?
I technically wasn't assigned to refine the guard's sprint animation.  I just didn't like it, so I fixed it.  So that was extra work.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT SPRINT:
Do a stun animation for the guard and a pushing animation for Suni.  Also, design the Mountain level.

Sprint 02/14

ACCOMPLISHED:
I created a design for the city level and I started on the storyboard for some cutscenes.  I ended up including an old man in the level design, so I had to draw, trace and animate him so that he could be put into the level.

QUALITY:
Cristine really liked the level design and the old man animation.  The quality was good.

EXAMPLE:

EXTRA:
Technically, the old man was all extra work.

NEXT SPRINT:
I'm supposed to fix some animation that are making the guard not work correctly and I'm supposed to get in some more Suni animations.

Sprint for 02/07

ACCOMPLISHED:
I animated Suni.  I made sure she had all of her basic animation in for the demo we did.

These animations included:
Run
Sneak
Jump

I wasn't assigned to, but I also did these two extra animations:
Idle
Walk

QUALITY
Cristine helped me animate the jump, and she was very pleased with the animations I did.  Everyone on the team seemed to think the animations were good.

EXAMPLES:

EXTRA?
Like I said, I did do the idle and the walk animations even though I wasn't assigned to.

I also experimented with switching out some of her body parts to see how easy it is to changer her costume while still keeping the same animation info, so we don't have to reanimate her.  Turns out it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.  Giving her bare legs instead of pants was a lot of work.  I was still able to reuse the same animation data rather than reanimating her legs, but it took a lot of work to get them in there.  So I don't think huge changes to her costume are a feasable option.  However, slight changes, such and changing her color or ading a few extra lines, extra details, etc are very easy to accomplish.

NEXT SPRINT:
For my next sprint I am supposed to start a storyboard for the first little cutscene of the game. And I'm supposed to come up with a level for the city.

Sprint for Tues 01/31

ACCOMPLISHED:
I tweaked Suni's design a little bit.  Mostly, I removed her sleeves and added some ruffles to the skirt of her tunic.  I made a few other minor cosmetic changes here and there.  And the end result is a character I'm happy with.

I separated her body parts and sent them to Alice for tracing and coloring in Illustrator.  This is where we had a slight problem.  She was supposed to get them back to me so that I could have animations done by Tuesday.  That didn't happen.  She had some problems with the character design and wanted to change a few things.  Mostly, she didn't like the baggy pants that Suni wears.  I got my inspiration for those baggy pants from several pictures I've seen of anime-konoichi girls, so I thought they fit pretty well.  But Alice hated them.  She didn't even start inking or coloring until I drew up a set of bare legs and sent them to her.  By that time it was much too late to get any animations done.

Now, Cristine and I both like the ninja pants.  Alice hated them and said we should make a compromise.  We've already discussed having multiple costumes you can unlock in the game, so that seemed like a good compromise to me, but Alice really wanted to get rid of the pants altogether.

Needless to say, Cristine and I were a little bit annoyed because right now is not the time to be discussing the character design.  That was something that we mostly finalized last semester and tweaked a little this semester.  We asked everyone on the team if they liked Suni's design, and almsot everyone said yes, or gave some specific things to change (Jeff, for example, suggested removing the sleeves).  Alice kept suggesting that we try a bunch of different designs, but she never gave us any specific feedback about what to change until now.  And unfortunately, we are very behind, we need to start animating, and this is not the time to be changing her design.

Long story short, after this slight disagreement, we all decided (Alice included) that it would be better if I just take the characters through the whole process from drawing, to inking, to coloring to animating.  Having this multiple person workflow was supposed to speed things up, but so far, it has just slowed everything down.

On the plus side, Alice did do a very good job picking out colors.  I kept the color schemes that she picked out.

QUALITY:
Cristine was pleased with my new design.  She thought the ruffles skirt and the no-sleeves look was a great improvement. 

EXAMPLES:

EXTRA:
The first extra thing I had to do was draw a bare-legged version of Suni for Alice before she would start working.

I also had to re-ink the lines myself, because Alice didn't like the size of the feet and re-drew them smaller.  She also made a few mistakes on the eyes and other parts of the body, and on closer inspection none of her vector paths were actually closed.  So I had to re-ink everything.  But like I said before, Alice's color selections were very nice.  Especially the orange scarf.  It looks very iconic.

NEXT SPRINT:
For the next sprint I will finally be animating Suni!!! YAY!  Cristine will be helping me.  I have the AE file set up so it's very easy for multiple people to animate her.  It's also very easy to change colors and costumes while keeping the same animation data so we don't actually have to redo any animations.

I will be animating a Walk Sequence, a Run Sequence, and a Sneak Sequence.  And more if I have time.  Cristine will be animating jumping, falling, and landing.  And possibly pushing a pulling if she has time.