Today’s project is directly related to a new side experiment. I’ve entered into my first ever Game Jam, as hosted by the Brackey’s Discord community. Seven days to make a functional game around the theme of light, without using any premade assets or code. It should be an interesting learning experience.
I haven’t decided yet exactly what my game is going to entail. I know it will have to be exceedingly simple, since I’m a single dev with next to no actual experience and a very short deadline. My first thought with the theme, though, was that I should try to incorporate a phoenix into the game. Because it would cover multiple interpretations of the theme of light. Being on fire, it automatically covers physical illumination. Being a mythical creature, and often considered wise, we have allusions to metaphysical illumination. And by virtue of being a bird, it is naturally light in the sense of not being terribly heavy. I may not stick with it if the eventual game design doesn’t have room for one, but for the time being it seems ok. And it gave me a subject for tonight’s modeling session.
I’m not at all happy with the way the material came out, and I’ve still got a lot to learn about rigging and posing to prevent the bone roll from going all over the place, but I was pretty impressed that I managed to actually pull off a recognizable bird shape with basic low-poly modeling.