This is a coffee cup
This is a coffee cup.
This is a table.
This is me listening to a podcast about Wind of change.
These are the bits of pixel art I made this last week. They represent a very small fraction of the amount of pixel art I’d need to draw to make this game works.
Let’s imagine what it would take to add a tomato to the game. First I’d need to draw a tomato. Then I’d need to draw tomato seeds, a tomato seedling, a mostly grown tomato plant and a tomato plant with tomatoes on it. That is 5 drawings to add growing tomatoes to the game. If I have 20 plants that is 100 images. Then I need the art for all the things those plants can be used to make such as tomato juice and pasta sauce, pizza and tomato soup. The more detailed I make the options of what can be created the more rich the game will feel and the more art work that will be needed. My rough guess is that I’d need at minimum 200 images to just cover the plants and buildings. This ignores other aspects of the game such as mining and manufacturing. It ignores all the art for the UI. It ignores a lot.
It took me 3 hours to draw the coffee cup above. If we assume all I need is 200 images and all images take 3 hours (the coffee cup was pretty simple), we are talking about six hundred hours to draw this game. Six hundred hours. When I set out to make croissants people thought I was crazy and that was 3 hours a week. If I worked on pixel art for 3 hours a week I’d be done the art work in about 4 years. If I tried to get it done in a year, I’d need to spend 12 hours a week drawing. And remember, I’m assuming the least amount of art possible. I really need more.
So… yea… I think this project as it is currently conceived is done. I liked the idea of making a game. I didn’t have a real clue of what that meant. Now I know better and while I may take this knowledge and approach the problem, I’m going to need to take a break from this to do that. So… game over. See you next week when I talk about something else.