It has only been a day since I have started crafted Folo Hearts but I have already learnt many new and awesome stuff! To craft Folo Hearts, first let's jump right to how on this day I went about deciding the game's look and feel.
To begin with, first I went back to my pencil and sketchbook. It's always better to draw or sketch your ideas out before actually creating or designing them. It is faster and you can experiment with many different ideas rapidly. It is basically one of the benefits of low fidelity prototyping.
After having done so, this is what was finally decided on what you might first see when the game starts.
Notice that I have the animation tab opened at the bottom of the screenshot? While I used to create animations through typing code manually, today I found a faster way to do so.
Using Unity, I can work in a flash-like manner and insert keyframes for the sprite that I wish to animate. It was literally done within about five clicks and some dragging for the "Tap To Evade" moving animation.
On a side note, after having done the sketching to determine the game's layout and scenes, I arrived at the decision that Folo Hearts only needs a single scene. This means that the game's size will be relatively small. So thumbs up for a faster download and smaller memory footprint!
By now you might have noticed that the game seems empty. That's because the majority of the game's graphics aren't done yet. To do that, it is time to decide on the game's art style.
Okay I just lied. I have actually decided on the art style days before. If you notice carefully, the screenshot above shows the game's name in a rather easily identifiable font. Do you know what it is?
It's pixel art! Pixel art has been and is something that I have always wanted to try. Folo Hearts is definitely an opportunity for that! And as such, I went on the internet and searched for tutorials to practice on pixel art.
Another benefit of pixel art is that it scales up really well! Using photoshop, I am able to scale the original version to x2, x4 and even x8 if I wanted to, while still maintaining the same image quality.
So how does Folo Hearts look like now if I add a single pixel cloud?
Definitely much better! Now I just have to make more clouds to fill up that sky!
