Son of Suck

I'm working on things that don't suck so badly. At the size I drew these (1/3rd to 1/4th of a 9x12" page) I can't use my pastels to color them (too thick) so I played with my daughter's carefully organized 92 color crayon set. She has every color lined up and sheets of paper where she's drawn the color and written the name (admittedly, I helped her with that, but she uses the guide). I'll have to confess I used her art tools tomorrow ;)

These color selections are the son of suck, however, they scale down well.

I bought my 9 year-old a book called "The Art of Drawing" by Willy Pogany. Apparently it dates back before my time, and has my hero's work on the cover, George B. Bridgman - a man who, among other things, taught Norman Rockwell.

I had no idea the book was that old when I got it (being that it was a new, enlarged reprint), but I saw the work on vanishing points, skeletal structure and muscles, all without genitalia, and I thought "This book is the kind I learned to draw on, only it's great for my daughter!"

GP2X community doesn't need more programmers, it needs an artist

I've realized that there's a lot to SDL C++ programming for the GP2X - and the issue isn't that there aren't talented developers, it's that most of them can't draw. With that in mind, I started work last night on my Tablet PC. The efforts didn't translate well to 48x32 pixels, and once again I found the lack of tactile feel on my TPC to be less than desireable.

So, I broke out my 10 year-old pastels, which I never used, and worked up the animation you see. The full original of the first frame is here.

I'm going to build up a graphic library and then find programmers to help me make an original Zelda-like game.

Note: That animation looks like ass. For one, his/her belt doesn't move with the body well. The left shield hand disappears completely, and the pose could just look better. Lastly, the hair didn't come out well with those colors. I intend on making a new avatar with the shield facing forward... if it's on. Otherwise the left arm will be there. In this manner, the hero/ine won't start with a shield. I am my own worst critic, and I think a decent GP2X RPG will be sold on what it looks like (those thumbnail screens we all look at to decide whether to download a game) first.

I won't be letting the GP2X community know about this until I have quite a few characters and general overworld background/tile-set ready to get their mouths watering. Then I'll see who comes to my rescue with regards to programming. Heck, perhaps some programmers need rescue from their lack of art assets!