2021: Back to art (Patreon)

In the second half of 2020 I focused exclusively on game dev and stopped posting and charging on this patreon. For the first half of 2021 I'm going to do a 180 and return back to doing mostly art and art related projects. I took a long time to decide, but I wanted to be sure and not second guess myself.

So why back to art? The original game concept I was working on didn't work out: the main core feature (the ability for the player to inject narrative and customize the story) ended up being too hard to visually present and manage, and less exciting in practice than it sounded in theory. The project had to be retooled conceptually from scratch, on top of that I noticed I was completely overwhelmed on things to do (paint BG, paint character sprites, ui, card art, map art, sound recordings). 

January I took a month off to cool down and properly re-plan.

I could spend another 6 months starting from scratch around a new concept, downsizing it to fit what i can realistically achieve, but honestly, I missed art, and I was tired of saying no to people who asks for art, or fans who are just curious to see a follow up to White Fangs, the comic that launched with this patreon. It's time to be focused and go back to my reliable creative job, and keep gamedev as a running hobby... until I have something to show (mostly switching to 3D, as 2D character art has shown to be completely unworkable for me).

Not that everything was a loss: most of the coding work has been saved and is ready to be used for alternative projects. Lots of character art is ready to use, plus some plot outlines. Finally I pushed my art toward new techniques to try to cope with the massive amount of work needed, especially in char design and flat coloring.

In the thumbnail of this post a piece for my friend Rodrigo of his character Andrew I did as a gift early this month, and also big thanks for being close in this difficult moment.