Method: Spent the day swapping out the storyboards in my prototypes with polished artwork. Tried to use colour, lighting, etc. to add a bit of life to the world, and as I was plugging in the graphics I also spent some time fixing up a few visual glitches. (Namely the fading issues with the freezer door.)
Outcome: Didn't manage to get through every storyboard today, but I did at least manage to fully finish drawing the interactive scenes! Drawing things out had a couple of effects:
- I noticed that interactible elements were blending in with the more painterly backgrounds, so I decided to leave the lineart visible for things you can click on. (The PC's thick lineart also helps to differentiate them from the scenery, which means I can have them lean out of the panel and still be clearly visible if I want to.)
- Adding in a lights on, lights off variant for the shelf background was both more fun and a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I wonder if I can add similar lighting effects to other places? Even if it's small, optional stuff like the player character making shadow puppets on a wall...
- God wouldn't it be nice if I had some particle effects? Maybe some dust motes when the player turns the torch on... no time for that this week, but maybe some day.
- Also, drawing all these panels made me realise just how damn long my art takes. This will definitely come in handy with scheduling when I go into full production.