No More Relics!

Gonna be completely honest: I’m freaking out right now.

The semester is winding down, and it’s go-time for Fortune Hunter.  My team has been working for weeks on refreshing this old game for the OLPC  laptops.  I’m the artist, which is a welcome change of pace and an awesome way to increase my game designer well-roundedness, but I’ve come to a horrible realization.

You see, when you write code, you may have your own style.  However, code is code.  You don’t perceive it in the same way as art.  If it works, it works.

Art is different.  Style is hard to imitate.  You can get close, but the point is that it’s difficult.  I would hate to leave this overhaul incomplete.  It would be a tremendous disservice to whoever decides to pick the project up in the future.  In fact, it would be worse than doing nothing at all.  It’s discouraging.  It’s taunting.  I hate finding art relics, and I refuse to perpetuate this nonsense.  It’s the least I can do.

So, tl’dr: I’m going to finish this art overhaul even if it kills me.

Feel free to peruse the repo too.  Some of my stuff is already up. 😀

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Solarus: Open Source Re-Arting Without Pissing People Off

Open source software is great.  Well, great for programmers.  As a new artist (I volunteered to do art for my current FOSS project with my team), I’ve found the environment to be strange for artists.  Are patches really welcome?  Isn’t that like ambushing someone and giving their child a makeover?  Isn’t that insulting?

Well, I’m gonna give it a shot.  Meet Solarus.  It’s an open source Zelda game.  I’m gonna re-skin the thing, and more importantly, I’ll document the experience to help future open source artists.   There’s gotta be some methodology for creating “texture packs” or re-imagining a project in your own eyes..