DEVBLOG II

From yours truly, the project director, Andrew:

Coming to you during Steam Next Fest June 2023, no less! Odyssey has been my project from the very start. When I sought out to create the project, I wanted to unmistakable at a glance. My greatest vision was to put MY mark on the world, good or bad -- I like to think it's turning out good. If you wanted to make a video game that is based purely off your vision, and not following any type of graphical trends, look no further than here.

Step I: Medium

One of, if not the most, unique asset of Odyssey is that all of its sprites are hand drawn on paper with a no. 2 pencil. That's it.

Concept art of Daciana, one of our main cast members.

Once concepting a character, it's time start working on how the character will work in animation -- and this is really important step. You need to be conscious of how someone looks, as you'll be working with that design a lot. If you overcomplicate your design, you may find it impossible to animate, or animate in a precise timeframe (even with this limitation, Odyssey still decides to ignore that rule).

This is an early frame from Odyssey's original animation style. Characters were distilled into general shapes, and then made more detailed from there. Breaking characters into shapes aids the animation process, and also helps distinguish different characters from one another.

Later down the line, Odyssey's sprites would take on a far more detailed approach, while still maintaining great base shapes in their design.

Step II: Choose Your Inspiration

Step I and Step II here can kinda blend a bit, but not necessarily. Originally, Odyssey was inspired by far eastern European looks. Characters all use Romanian names, and so on. Initial concept art shows a lot of big castles, and the like. Before long, though, I got bored with this aesthetic, and design pivoted towards a more "Bronze Age" look. The Ruins of Dy'red are heavily Greek inspired, while the magical city of Bastion was largely inspired by old Babylonian architecture.

Initial concept art of "Bea'rla's Castle"

Original concept of "Old Bastion", based heavily on more medieval European aesthetic.

New concept for Old Bastion, now an acropolis based heavily from ancient Greece.

What I'm really trying to say here is: do not take your initial setting entirely as gospel, and experiment until you find something that feels unique to you. You will eventually need to settle on a design, of course, but being fluid in your inspiration will help you mould and craft something that feels more special, and ultimately, more creative in the end. In the case of the city of Bastion above, we believe the acropolis version is not only more unique, but also lends itself to a better possible myriad of design choices for designing the level.

Step III: Iterate

Once again, these steps sort of bleed into one another, but allow me to explain.

I thought I had grown a lot as an artist when I began my quest to make a true title relying (at first) only on myself for art. This was a very foolish sentiment to have, as my artistic journey had merely only started when I set out to make Odyssey. As such, as you improve, you'll naturally want to remake many of your older ideas. For Odyssey, I was fairly confident in the initial design of many characters, and never had an idea to perform any massive reworks, especially by the time their sprite work had already been implemented. I'm far more in favour of "revamping" existing ideas, rather than throwing things away. I've been told that the art industry calls for you to often scrap complete works and start from scratch where needed, but what independent creators like myself also need to keep in mind is that I have a very limited amount of time to develop this game. If you run an indie dev like myself, you know it isn't easy to keep the lights on throughout the dev process, and you need to be savvy about your resources to make it through the other side of the development process. Recycle where you can, and leave out the rest.

Here are two example of "revamped" assets, two character portraits for two party members drawn a little over a 13-15 months apart. It's very easy to tell that preservation of the initial designs are heavily kept in mind, but the new portraits are definitely a big improvement.

Iteration can take as many small steps as you please, until you are finally pleased with the final result. If you're like me, however, you will eventually grow to challenge any previous milestone you made at any point in the past. This brings me to my next step...

Step IV: Budgeting Time

Inevitably, time will tick on, and you will need to decide what needs your attention the most. Sooner or later, you will have to settle on a single design, and cement it as much as possible, however, that does not mean you need to throw out unused ideas/designs. Part of having few resources means you need to learn how to use all your available tools to your advantage, and as such, Odyssey has several examples of outdated assets that have still found their way into the game currently.

Below, we can see how Alta's design went through quite a few changes, but her unemployed design (on the right of the concept artwork) was recycled to be used as a generic NPC in the game.

With all of this in mind, now you too, can spend years handcrafting your game over hours and hours of slaving on a [hot] desk! Doesn't that sound great??? It IS! Do it today!

Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who has been wishlisting our game, watching our streams, and playing the demo!