It’s FEBRUARY. We are two months into 2022. It is cold and windy. I have been hiding inside with hot water bottles and scary films. This month I can share with you: 3D Models! COSMO! A 7-minute talk about how horror is good for you!
The realm of 3D Art called to me once more…one night I spontaneously started working on a 3D model of GHOST based on a sketch from last year. I figured it would be good practice and I could just throw it away in the morning, but to my surprise it actually turned out pretty good. So I kept working on it.
Despite doing a decent job of translating my 2D style into 3D with 2021’s DAFT PUNK MODELS I was hesitant to believe it was anything more than a fluke, especially since I had avoided the challenge of modelling faces or hair. One of GHOST’S defining traits, to me anyway, is that their hair doesn’t really make much sense. How the hell do you draw it from alternative angles? Usually I don’t overthink it – it’s 2D art! You can just make it up! 3D on the other hand…not so much. I was terrified and fully convinced that this is where this little project ended, but after several evenings of meticulous modelling and modifications I landed on something that was almost perfect.
I was so happy with the result that I decided to commit to finishing up the rest of the model, including rigging, so that I could have both a digital GHOST action figure and a cool new VRChat avatar.
It’s still unfinished – a few textures need replacing and I’m waiting on VRChat’s shiny new dynamic bone tools to leave beta before finishing up the cape, so for now it’s on the backburner, existing purely as a fun little local avatar for spontaneous VR selfies. It’s good.
🎃🎃🎃
Welcome back to this project! I started work on COSMO again at the start of this year – I talked about it in my 2021 roundup but I put this aside due to lacking confidence in my pixel abilities, which in turn halted progress on areas of the game in need of more immediate attention. Those enemies aren’t going to animate themselves after all…!
I don’t have a lot to show off right now because other things have taken my time but here’s what I’ve been working on since the start of the year:
First, a quick edit to character sprites! I’m stubbornly committed to the greyscale aesthetic but when combined with the lantern mechanic it can be hard for certain things to pop as much as they need to. So now I’m testing outlines for characters (and maybe for important props?). I’m still deciding what does or does not need an outline because consistency and readability is super important, but I’m enjoying how it looks so far.
Next on the list was to see how I fared with enemy implementation – I’ve tasked myself with making a miniboss of sorts and so far it’s going great and has been super useful for debugging my combat system. Once I’ve figured out more of its moveset I can clean up the animation and move on to some level design, but for now here’s a little peek:
slide whistle.wav
Lastly, I am planning to port the game over to a new engine [sound of every developer in the world crying and screaming at me] ok I hear you but it’s not going to be too terrible, I’m just procrastinating on it. COSMO is built using Otter2D, an SFML-based framework, which has served me well for many years, but COSMO has outgrown that fun little engine and I’m getting sick of some of SFML’s more annoying quirks. My good friend Emmy has been working on a spiritual successor, LUTRA, for her own projects, and it’s super cool and good and fixes those aforementioned annoyances, so I want to move over to that relatively soon. All I need to do is get over the fear of porting my entire game…lmao.
This month I was invited to talk at PECHAKUCHA NIGHTS – a regular celebration of Dundee’s local creative community. As it was LGBT+ History month, all the speakers were a part of the LGBT+ community and could choose to talk about anything they liked as long as it fit within the ‘PechaKucha’ format (which you can read more about here).
I spent a while trying to come up with talk ideas – what could I talk about that is personal and a celebration of my identity? Well as I usually do, I ended up at Halloween – “Ghosts and skeletons and tacky plastic decorations” as I described it. It began as a more general exploration of horror and Halloween before I condensed it down to a snapshot of some recent thoughts that’d been rattling around in my head.
As someone who had previously written off a lot of horror due to being a bit of a coward, I wanted to share my love and appreciation for what the genre has to offer, especially since it’s been doing wonders for my anxiety these past few years. If it sounds nonsensical for me to say “scary things help me sleep at night” or “survival horror games are a great group activity” then feel free to stop by and listen to me explain myself:
CLICK ON GHOSTFACE TO ACCESS THE RECORDED PECHAKUCHA TALKS!
I’ve been replaying DEVIL MAY CRY 3. I played through most of the switch version when it first came out but had to stop as handheld mode was giving me unbelievably bad hand cramping. (As a teenager I used to play a terrible PC port using a rubbish little laptop keyboard so it’s funny that playing on an actual game controller caused me injury.) Anyway, I’m a huge fan of the quality of life changes brought to the switch version and I had an itch for it’s corny and overdramatic presentation so I got An Actual Ergonomic Controller and set up the switch dock so as to not burden my poor hands too much.
To add insult to injury I’m pretty sure my skill level was higher with a keyboard too, but that won’t stop me enjoying myself. I’ve run through the game on ‘normal’ and am currently undecided on whether to tackle the higher difficulties straight away or whether to jump into Vergil’s side of things. Or perhaps I will take a break to replay DMC5. Who knows.
I struggle to decide which is my favourite DEVIL MAY CRY game – both 3 and 5 are near-perfect for completely different reasons, and when something is lacking in one game the other tends to make up for it. But as I’m currently playing DMC3 I will praise it’s cool occult architecture, melancholy ending and the presence of the best supporting character in the universe, Jester.
damn bro me too!!
Anyway, that’s all for now!! See you all next month…?
Caspar 👻
