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Going big-game hunting

I've been experimenting with doing scratchy looking vfx for things like status effects and big impacts

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Small update: added rain sounds, new graphics for rain + rain splashes + grass, and made grass sway in the wind. Video featuring a lone scavenger getting soaked.

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I was fortunate enough to have some fanart I did of the game Cogmind featured in its annual review: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2024/12/year-11-of-the-cogmind/

It's a great game and I'd recommend it to anyone who's a fan of tough traditional roguelikes

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Rifle animation in progress

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Killing machine

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Working on some gloomy city environments

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Forming a grappling hook.

Previously the player's abilities were displayed in the HUD, but I figured it'd be more fun if the player actually creates and holds them in their hands.

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The Duelist

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Encountering a Dreadhorse.

Half humanoid, half machine-gun-horse, these creatures usually lead parties of scavengers and sergeants into battle.

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Showing off the new Sergeant enemy

Staying close helps avoid the spread of his projectiles, but puts you at risk of a walloping melee attack

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dudeeee your clay models are sick! How long do you usually take working on one? :0

Thank you! It varies greatly depending on the character design, but I'd say usually around 2-3 hours to make a humanoid model.

The process of posing the model for each frame of animation + photographing each pose from 5 different angles takes much longer though, probably around 7 hours on average.

[A snippet from my phone's camera roll to give an idea of how many photos I end up taking]

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Working on a new enemy: the Sergeant

Here's a behind-the-scenes peek at his clay model:

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Working on some item sprites. There's already some silly synergies between the current working items, I'll show them off soon.

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Testing abilities against a few foes

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A bit of extreme carpentry

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I've had a few questions asking if the game's graphics were made with actual clay or just digital models with a clay filter/texture.

All graphics in the game come from photos of actual clay models! Then I process them in Aseprite to make the in-game sprites:

All animations for a standard enemy like this guy usually need around 70 photos total

A more thorough explanation of the full process will come in a later post.

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A vicious street fight with some ghouls

They may be fragile, but they make up for it by travelling in packs