Sketching buoys today. I think this one will have to become a painting very soon...

In my last guest blog post I showed you how Jen and I are developing the graphics for a sky in our upcoming 2D side scrolling action game. I showed you some of the clouds she had made, and how by layering them we can create a rich looking sky. This time, she has been working on a moon. She's painted the moon at a resolution of 2048 pixels by 2048 pixels:

With the game being set in a fantasy environment, we thought our sky should also have a planet as well, smaller than the moon, at 768x768:
So now that we have our planet, moon, high wispy cloud, and puffy clouds, let’s arrange them onto our sky:
Our clouds on the blue sky look great, but our moon and planets don't look right. This is because when we look at our real moon in the daytime, we are seeing a colour distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere. The dark elements of our moon appear transparent in the daytime, while at night, without the atmospheric distortion, we see the moon as it truly looks.

To correct this, I add an atmosphere to all of our sky elements, the result is quite dramatic:
This looks great, but it's still not complete. In next week's blog I will show you the final result - a combination of atmospheric elements, colour, and glow.
-Demetrios

Today I've been working on a moon for our game. When I came up with something I liked, I put it in an appropriate environment to get a sense of what it will look like. Wednesday, Demetrios will be blogging, and will show my moon in a slightly different, more game-specific environment. Exciting!

And now you're back to me blogging :) .
This was a fast drawing of Angels with Bagpipes on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, while visions of clouds and moons and planets dance in my head...

My name is Demetrios Georgeadis and I'm guest blogging for Jennifer today. I'm also her husband and cofounder of our game development company, Walking Hibernation.
In my guest posts I hope to bring some insight into the development of our first, as yet unnamed side-scrolling action game. I want to show you how I, as programmer, take Jennifer's graphics and weave them into a beautiful experience.
Today I'll show you the development of the graphic elements of the sky. For this game we decided to use a painted look for the graphics, which is something of a departure from the styles we've used in the past.
Graphics in a 2D game are drawn with what's called the 'Painter's Algorythm'. Simply put, when drawing onto the screen, you draw objects from furthest to closest. This is how oil painting works, thus the name.

Jennifer created two wispy clouds for the high clouds in the sky:

She then created two puffy clouds for the lower cloud formations:

These clouds were created in Corel Painter 12 with transparent backgrounds.


To build the sky, I first draw a simple mathematical sky gradient that I create in the game engine:


Then, I draw the wispy clouds on top of that:


To finish it off I draw the puffy clouds next, however, I draw many copies of them, at different sizes and heights on the screen. This creates the look of depth. The final game will use many more cloud graphics, and with layering it should be difficult to notice the clouds repeating.

I'm thrilled with the results so far, and can't wait to add the additional clouds.
In my next guest blog, I hope to show off the finished sky, complete with a moon, a planet and atmospheric colouring.
-Demetrios

I tried to sketch a few objects on my desk using as few lines as possible to capture the shape, and in some cases, I successfully used only one line. This was a challenge meant to force me to be as economical as possible with line, while also being as accurate as I could:

Studying wispy clouds today:

Hm. I did warn that this might happen...

This was one of the many mountains we photographed on the trip to the Columbia Icefields. I realize that some of the same challenges apply when sketching mountains as when sketching rocks. Establishing the correct tonal values is essential in describing the angles present in the object.

This was the very beautiful, serene view of Patricia Lake we enjoyed over the weekend. We took one of the rowboats out onto the lake one morning and enjoyed the quiet surroundings and still water.