Over the past week I have been learning new things more than I have been doing. The only thing I have to show is that I am working on some new concept art of the characters, starting with Finn. It is really important that you draw your character in multiple poses before you put in the work. That way you know how the character will look like from multiple angles. I didn’t do this in the past and I had an obscenely hard time figuring out what characters looked like. But now I am trying to fix that problem by doing that beforehand.

But really that isn’t the biggest thing that I did this past week; that I can’t show. I have been learning how to use various software, particularly Adobe products. I have access to the suite and figured that Escape Industries and my other projects could use it. So I set off to learning After Effects and a bit of Premiere. Luckily, I have access to Lynda.com so I spent a large chunk of my time over there just learning and soaking in all of the tutorials and videos they have. I still am in the process of learning these things so, again, I don’t have anything to show. But hopefully soon I should have something to show you guys as I really excited to put some things into practice!

But all of this begs the question, why do I need this skill for Escape Industries?

The music theme for Fingeance has been an extremely tricky proposition. Normally when I am coming up with music that is for something, I get a feel for what I need to do pretty quickly. I could look at what I was making music for or it be described to me and I could get a basic idea of where I want to go with it.

Fingeance on the other hand…

I looked at the game mechanics, the art style, the setting, the characters, etc. I looked at all of these things and I couldn’t come up with anything.

Not a single thing.

I couldn’t think of the tone that I wanted everything to fit under. This has been going since late last year. I had been struggling to find any semblance of a song. I turned Lane and Stephen and asked what they thought they wanted in the game, but that was fruitless and as GlitchCon grew closer I eventually just recycled older tracks from my collection.

Getting Our Groove Back

We didn’t really find our muse until after GlitchCon where I tasked everyone to come up with a list of songs that they felt would work with a multiplayer shoot ‘em up with roguelike elements. Eventually, after much discussion, trials, and tribulations, here is a sample of what I came up with:

Again, this is a very early version of the song (in fact, those who use FL Studio can probably spot the standard loop in the song) it really is there to help me get a sense of where to go with the song in terms of tone and instrumentation. I was looking to create an underwater vibe to the song, but the stereotypical song for those are “chill” type beats. I needed to pump the player up for adventure. That is where the DnB beat hits and hopefully that will help out energizing the player.

What do you think? I really am curious to hear your thoughts on if I am on the right track or not. Leave a comment and tell me what you think!

This past week has been rough… I have had a major set back. My computer charger died on me and I haven’t been able to work on Fingeance since last Saturday. I was able to finish up that menu system that I mentioned I was working on last week, but other than that I haven’t had the chance to really work on much in terms of art and sound.

So instead I turned my attention to the logistics of Escape Industries. I thought about how we are running the site and some possible endeavors that we could look into. I even thought about some design work in the game as I couldn’t do much else.

What about you? What are some of your opinions on how we are doing in terms of blog posts and social media updates? Do you like our current schedule of posting 3 times a week? Where else do you want to see us post on?

With all that said I sadly don’t have a lot to show you so it is going to be a short post today. Hopefully I can be up and running soon. But check out Friday and Monday for Lane and Stephen’s posts!

Recently, I have been working on reworking how the menu system works in the game (yeah, I also code as well). So I thought I would take the opportunity to show what the menu actually looks like in its current iteration.

  The splash screen has a simple animation where the all the characters slide in to the frame. To be honest… this one was rushed. It was to meet the deadline for GlitchCon and we wanted to have something visually appealing for the players to see before they went in the game. I wanted to make a custom image that I would then animate… but we ran out of time.

The main menu on the other hand wasn’t rushed. I was able to design the menu and the animation a lot closer to what I wanted. I wanted to have cool splash art on the side of the menu to add more visual interest, but for now I just left the characters.

The last major menu that I worked on (for the main menu) is the character select screen. This is probably the one that is the closest to what I had envisioned in my head. I liked the idea of seeing the characters in huge portrait vs a grid of them like and Super Smash Bros. Though, I really don’t like the animation for this one; it may be simple but I just don’t like it that much.

Alright, that is all of the menus that I want to talk about in this post. Of course these aren’t final menu designs but it does help give an idea of how the game should look. What do you think? Let us know by leaving a comment!

One thing that I feel doesn’t get the recognition it deserves is lighting, and up until recently I didn’t give it that either. Lighting can really effect the mood and tone of a setting, changing something from looking friendly and approachable to menacing and repulsive. Again up until recently I didn’t really give it much thought (well, that’s not entirely true… I knew it was important I just didn’t bother to learn much about it).

So I set out to make a lighting system in the game to help vary the level overtime. And boy does it add a lot to the game. Having dynamic lighting (where the light changes in real time) makes the levels feel more alive. For example, instead of having a three minute level look the same throughout the entire level maybe have the lights get progressively darker as the level goes on; or when a nuke goes off change the lighting to accommodate for that. It helps vary your scene and it isn’t that hard to accomplish (I’m saying this in regards to Unity). Grab a directional light and start messing with the values.

I approached lighting with modularity in mind. I wanted to make sure that I could accommodate any situation that we need as well as transition between two lighting conditions easily. This system has been extremely helpful in making the some of the set piece moments that occur in the game really pop. Though I will be the first to say that I have a long way to go before the lighting is on point, but it really is a proof of concept at this point.

So if you are finding your work looking bland, whether that be 3D or 2D, try messing with the lighting of the scene. If you have already set up your lighting try changing it every once in a while to see what else your scene can invoke. Try it out and let me know what your results are! So far it has been a positive one for me.

Remember to check out Stephen and Lane on Monday and Friday, respectively.

It’s time to dive into the characters of Fingenace! They make up an interesting bunch where everyone brings something to the table. So let’s take a look:

Finn

   Finn is a hot headed fish out for vengeance! He is the leader of the group… or at least he tries to be. He is intelligent but stubborn, blinded by his hatred towards the dolphins. When he gets fired up there is no stopping him from venting his anger!

Since Finn is such an angry fish I really wanted to push that and highlight just that. So I made is eyebrows extremely long to really sell the loud and flamboyant stature that he gives off. This decision can be seen in all of the other fish in the group as they have extremely long eyebrows or eyelashes, but none as intense as Finn’s.

Bubbles

Bubbles has one goal: to blow things up, and she plans on fulfilling that task. She is the youngest out of the group but that doesn’t stop her from exploding all that stand in her way.

Bubbles is interesting in the way that she really want to explode things. So I wanted to push that attitude that she alludes. I think that she was the most successful in terms of having a personality as she is just dripping personality from this stance.

Gil

Gil is very precise in what he does and he does it efficiently. He is a sharp shooter always thinking one step ahead of him. When the others aren’t up to par, that is when he loses his cool.

Gil was hard for me to nail down, I’m not really even sure if I am done with the look of it. When I was imaging him, I was picturing a slick and slender fish. He has given me the most trouble in terms of conveying his personality. Through is body language.

Dorsa

While Dorsa wants revenge for what the dolphins did to them, she also would love to benefit from all of this… Financially. She wants all of the money and scrap that these dolphins have for herself. It isn’t every day that you come across an opportunity as rich as this.

Dorsa is very intelligent and thinks highly of herself. I tried to pose her in a position that accentuated that fact. Other than that she really was an enigma when I was designing her, but in the end I think that it turned out well.

So that is an overview of each character and some insight as to why I designed them the way that I did. Things are still in the air but I think this is about what they are going to look like in the end. What do you think? Let me know in the comments and hope to see you next week!

In other news, we went to Glitch Con last weekend! It was great seeing all of you and being able to interact and show the game off was a blast! But I am sure Lane will be talking more about that on Friday.

Remember check out Stephen on Mondays and Lane on Fridays, while I take on Wednesdays.

(In case your wondering why this wasn’t on Wednesday, yesterday was April Fool’s… no one would have taken it seriously, it’s the internet!)

Hello everyone!

I am Charles McGregor, the artist and musician for Fingeance. You may have seen some of my work over at Tribe Games like Glitch in the System. I am here to help Fingeance look and sound great! So you can find the majority of my posts be about the art and audio of the game (with some User Interface talk spliced in sometimes).

Fingeance art style is inspired by western comic books, with very bold and directional inking. A lot of the inspiration also comes from the Sly Cooper series.

I really liked the use of thick and thin lines of the art it helped give it that comic book feel in the cutscenes. Besides the fact that I really like the Sly Cooper series, I think this art style fits the comical story of Fingeance.

I still got a ways to go in terms of fine tuning the art style before I am completely happy with it, but so far I think I am on the right track.

So that is a quick overview of the overarching art style of Fingeance. Let me know what you guys think of it and what you want to see me delve into in my posts. Right now I plan on bringing you updates on the new art in the game, the reasons why things look and sound the way they do, and show how I do some of the things that I do among other things.

On a side note, Escape Industries and Fingeance are going to be at Glitch Con 2015! If you are a going there or want to meet up with us make sure to come this weekend, we will be roaming the conference on Saturday and Exhibiting on Sunday. Be sure to check us out and check all of the other awesome game developers!