So... where to begin? The project, it actually started soon 2 years ago. When the "mabisaur" came to life. This thing!
Yes that's right, this is what seems to be a hybrid dinosaur. But I do not call them that, they're more mammalian creatures than reptilian. She, whom I call Narda, has taken so many shapes and forms that I've lost count right now.
When I look back at it, all I did was trying to figure out how to draw her. The idea to have her in a game already existed during that very moment. But I was too troubled to find that one perfect shape that I didn't get to work on other elements that would be part of the game, such as additional characters, maps and story. It is quite embarrassing, honestly said.
After going much back and forth between art concepts, a fellow fan/friend drew me some fantastic fanart of the mabisaur that I couldn't help but do something with.
So there it was! I had always preferred to do the concepts myself, but this one was too valuable to pass up on as it fit the vision near perfectly. After an agreement of use of this peculiar fanart piece, she sent me a few linearts. I've been doing lots of 2D pixel art by this time, that I thought, hey I can shrink this one down. And here it is, in its pixel form.
But that was only the beginning, of course. Before this showed up I was trying to make a 2D pixel sprite of the mabisaur concept that I already had at hand. I had settled on the game being 2D platform. However, there was a new alternative to that. Voxels. For the bunch that doesn't know, its 3D pixels or blocks (like Minecraft) which is a pretty fun way to go on about it. So I started to use MagicaVoxel and became accustomed to the sometimes awkward controls.
They actually call it a Beginner's Blender aka a kiddy version of the usual 3D editor program called Blender. I was fine with that though, as the aesthetics fit what I was looking for. Unlike most voxel editors out there, MagicaVoxel has its own shader and render engine. It's also possible to directly import images into it, which is why I settled on remaking my fans fanart into a pixelized one.
Here's a first step of it. A "bald" one.
Four days after, I was finally done with it. Here's a full picture view of it.
I'm very pleased with it if I'd say so myself. There's some sharper edges near the tail base but those might be fixed at a later point. I wasn't sure on how to go on about it, so I did each part separately. In total, the model is made up of 32 parts. Which is... a lot.
All the coloring is placeholder, in fact I'm working on a recolor of it that will look so much better. I will likely switch the cubic appearance to a shape called MC too, it looks much better at that which I will show you in a later article when I'm done with it.
For how much this thing might kill performance... that is the question yet. I'm having a few plans up my sleeve in case one another doesn't work. It's also subject to change quite dramatically as I don't know yet if I will keep it voxels or keep it polygons. I have exported and imported the file to Blender and rather successfully put together the model there which is also looking fairly nice.
So right now I cannot decide which one of them would be for the better. Blender allow me to remesh the model into a voxel-like style as well, so here's a slight preview of that.
While it can look cool and interesting, the use of normal polygons makes things so much more detailed than what voxels can ever do on their own. There's also the troubling fact that these mabisaurs also grow fur, and how do you best represent fur in voxels? Probably not that easy to do.
So while the models might see a more 3D way of appearance rather than blocky, I've still decided that the world may at least consist of voxels. There's always something you have to compromise with as a developer, isn't it?
But that's how I pack up today's first update on the game The Mabisaurian Universe (TMU). I understand most of this comes rather sudden without the reader knowing what the game is about in the first place.
But a quick glimpse is that the game will be a horror story survival game, where you would play as the mabisaur and learn about the world and its questions.
I will talk more about that later in the week, and possibly an update on the recolored voxel mabisaur model too!
I'll see ya soon, peeps!