First ever blog post for the game, yeah! For this one I figured I should start with Noel himself. He's the core of the game, so why not talk a little about what's involved with bringing him to the screen? Plus a look at the evolution of Noel (and my art skills) from first draft to now.

So first off, who Is Noel?

Noel is a 12-year-old boy being plagued with terrible dreams. Noel is bright and kind, but also reserved. As the player, you'll guide Noel through his dark dreamscapes and discover the reason for Noel's Nightmares. Yay, alliteration!

Noel (specifically the front-facing version) is made up of 34 individual character sprites. Some of them are obvious (like arms and legs), some of them less so (his hair is a different sprite, even though it doesn't generally move, to allow his eyebrows to move under it), and some of them barely visible, if at all, most of the time -- like the tiny glares of light in Noel's eyes.

Watch the GIF for a literal breakdown:

And again that's just the front view. The side and back views have their own collections of sprites, with the back having less since he, you know...doesn't have a face in the back of his head.

Noel has also grown a lot from my very early, very rough drafts of his design. Not that I think I'm a particularly talented artist now either, but...I think there's at least some difference. God, I hope so. See below and...well, see below.

See, even Noel feels a little cringe. Okay, so that design might have worked in a different game. Maybe. But I wanted to go a different way in terms of art design. Not having quite such a giant head, for one. Still stylized but a little more realistic. Even now I'm still fine-tuning certain details of the design, so for all I know one day there will be another Noel standing next to those, looking at them awkwardly with a face made up of 128 distinct sprites...

Then again, it's probably best not to get too carried away. Gotta release at some point!

-Kappa

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