You may detect a tone slightly less ecstatic than my last post. I’m trying to figure out why that is myself. This is big! Every planned animation is done!
…so why does it not feel exciting?
Probably a large part of that is that my overall excitement about working on my game has become a lot more… complicated. I’m currently working a job with a longer commute and longer hours than my last one, which makes it tough to come home and work on my game at the end of the day. I’m still getting work done, but I’m often sitting down to work already exhausted, which doesn’t make for the best sessions. To be frank, I feel like I’m burning out on it a bit. So I’ve slowed down to try to not burn out, but then I feel like I’m not getting enough done. WHAT A CONUNDRUM.
Another part is that I just don’t think i’m that good at animation. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff I have animated is as good or better than I originally expected, but that doesn’t mean I’m particularly happy with it. With work I could get better of course, but becoming an excellent artist in addition to everything else I’m trying to become excellent at is just… ug. See above where my time and energy are already limited. So it reminds me that, if I want to really feel good about how this game looks, I’m probably going to need to seek an outside helper. So then, what was the point of this year and some change of focusing almost exclusively on doing my own art and animation? That’s a good question. It certainly helped me learn a lot about the process, helped me solidify exactly what assets I need, helped me define what kind of style I’m going for, and helped me get my game looking a bit more professional, all of which put me in a better state to try to find someone to work with, if I go that route. And you know, whatever I prefer I might need to do my own art and animation if I can’t find / afford / etc. the right person to work with, so I guess we will see what happens there.
Finally, the “planned” part of “planned animation” comes with quite a big caveat. I can already think of a lot more stuff that should probably have some animation, including my environments, which are VERY static at the moment. And of course a lot of my current animations are garbage that should be fixed. So it feels far from done.
Still, this very long period of pretty much only working on art and animation has probably come to an end for now. Next up? I guess I need to do the same thing for sound effects, which should hopefully be a much faster process.
After that? After that I’m finally getting close to that finish line.
I think?
MAYBE.
Now look at some wacky animation that I made.
