Working with other humans is very very difficult. With the artist I just worked with to get these tiles, things went great - we worked out what he would do (whittled it way way down to meet my budget), then he showed me samples that were really cool, and turned out really great work in just a few days. Unfortunately, none of it is usable in the game. So I spent the past 7 hours or so working with it to try to squeeze something out of it. I think I'm getting somewhere, but it's an uphill battle, and it really makes me feel like I just wasted a lot of money.
On the upside, seeing his work helped me with developing a style to the game, and got me into doing art myself. In today's sneak peek, I actually made a bunch of the tiles in there myself, in addition to massive touchups all around. I won't say which ones I made, in the hopes that they look as good as his and you can't tell! But it inspired me to work more with vector graphics in Paintshop Pro, which is a really cool way to do art, and one that I can almost do right!
Doing my own art is a great feeling. I think I enjoy it more than the other aspects of development (except for design, which is just plain playing around). The only reason I went to an artist is that I know my work isn't up to current standards, especially my tile work. Looks like I'm going to have to deal with that for yet another game anyway, though. Especially since I could only afford to have a small bit of the graphics done by him anyway, it would still have looked very Hamumu all around. And you know, I don't mind. It's a ton more work, and it's very hard to do right, but I
like having my games be "me". I just wish I had the musical skill to do that part too, and then the credits to my games could just say "Everything By Mike". Well, except for all the testing and free content I always squeeze out of you guys. I'm pretty smart like that.
Nature note: we saw a group of coyotes crossing the road. They're so cute and fuzzy! I think I will invite them inside to play with the kitties.
