Good illustration is important for me.

That's one of the things that I told myself – right from the beginning – that I won't “cut off”.

That, and a story.

I know, I know, it's just my first game and it doesn't really matter if it's shit or not because the first game is supposed to be part of the absolute-beginner-learning-phase. But without these two things, I don't get motivated enough. And when I realized this, I figured I'm just gonna follow the path of least resistance and do what I really want. This might mean that my initial plan of a quick 5-minute (might have been even less), completely random and useless game would suddenly become a bit longer, a little more complicated. But this is my game, goddamit! I get the advice of just making a small game and I think it's still really important. I don't really know how hard it would be to build a story-rich 2D game so maybe I'm talking nonsense right now. But the plan is, I would still cut as much as I could, without sacrificing art style and story.

So, let's talk about art.

I gave myself 3 hours yesterday to explore different ways that I could draw my main character: Sam.

Yep, players will play as a dog. (10/10 best game ever lol)

And another 3 hours figuring out how to use Unity's 2D Animation package. I'm not sure if I'll end up using this package or if I should try a sprite sheet. For some reason, I associate sprite sheets only for pixel art games. But I can still use it for non-pixel art, right?? The problem I have with the Animation package is that I don't want to see the paint breaking off when the limbs rotate. It might just be an issue with how I made the sprite and I'm tempted to try again, now that I've also spent a little bit of time watching animation tutorials and slow motion animation of how dogs walk, trot, gallop, etc. It was very entertaining ?

The biggest advantage with the sprite sheet is that I can paint Sam's movement and it will be smooth and there would be no need for rigging. I think it would take longer though. And I'll probably need to look for an alternative software because Affinity Photo doesn't have the Timeline feature like Photoshop does…

So anyway, here's an art exploration for Sam. I posted the same photo in other places and the majority prefers “No Idea Sam”. What you think?