Long time no see

As I've been busy with my thesis and my teammate has also been busy with his, Blooning Away hasn't really had an update for a while, although I did update/streamline the look of the objects in the game when I felt like working, but not on the thesis. Here are some before and after animations and why it changed.

BEFORE

Drawn in illustrator using a brush to give it a handdrawn look, which I thought would contrast nicely with the very clean background but also be a quicker artstyle, making production faster.

AFTER

Seeing the handdrawn objects in the build and animated did not satisfy me. The clash between the squeaky clean background lines and the messy handdrawn felt too big and therefore I opted for a cleaner line (it's not pixelated as the gif might suggest) using the pen tool instead. Surprisingly it does not take that much longer to draw and animate with this style.

B'looning Away, background art

Despite taking a break from it for several months now, I'm slowly returning to it. Background art is completely finished but right now I need/want to start some prototyping before moving on to more art.

In the meantime, some cuts of the background art.

 

 

 

B'looning Away, back to work

One month of vacation over and it's back to work. Here's what I slowly managed to finish within the last week (working a bit slowly at the moment, adjusting to not being on holiday anymore). However despite working a bit slowly at the moment, I can see this project finishing for january.

We're moving into space with a space hotel. (Very Jetsons inspired)

In development: B'looning Away (mini-update)

My development frenzy for B'looning Away has kind of died down now after the initial 2-3 weeks of total excitement and now it's down to work. Although in that time I did manage to squeeze out backgrounds for 3 out of 5 levels, so it's been a very productive frenzy.

Here is a shoehouse for the game.

In development: B'looning Away

No rest for the wicked, I've started working on a game again almost right after finishing up all the mandatory semester projects.

The basic concept is the same as Neno from my first semester, however it will be completely redone and all the extra narrative and gameplay stuff that was piled onto the Neno will be stripped off, so it will end up being the concept initially pitched. The reason why it's important for me to remake and work with this concept again is that I feel it has potential to be an interesting experience (although not necessarily a game). There's something very innocent and nostalgic about blowing around a balloon.

The game will now be about a boy who has lost his balloon (so there is no longer a boy from space). The player will then be left to explore the universe and fly higher up or collect things to fly down and reunite the balloon with the boy. The balloon will always be moving upwards in a certain speed unless the player collect things which will weigh it down for a while, and then it starts moving up again. A very simple premise for what is a very simple game.

Although I initially thought I was going to reuse the art assets from Neno, I ended up redoing everything again and it looks much nicer now when there's no time constraint and absolute creative freedom. In fact I am enjoying creating assets for this game so much, that I ended up having made the background for the first level within one week, but there's still a long way to go.