Greetings and salutations!
For this week's screenshot... well, technically it's not a screenshot. Instead, the following are excerpts from the (work-in-progress) backdrop for the first scene of the intro cutscene: a large stained-glass window portraying the two worlds of the game's setting.
Aside from a few minor bits of coding, this past week was almost entirely dedicated to work on cutscenes, primarily the introductory cutscene.
Let me describe my process:
My first step in making a cutscene (after conceptualisation) is to sketch it out. I do this in a paper notebook, thumbnails to the left of the page (with a few directorial annotations) and text on the right (for the most part). It's likely not a perfect approach, and may see refinement as I go on--for one thing, it leaves me with limited space for reworking anything that I've set down. I'm tempted to use loose pieces of paper for each scene--as I get the impression is standard in some industries--but fear that this might quickly result in a fair bit of mess...
I have a pretty-much-complete sketch for the intro cutscene--there are a few points that I'm uncertain of, but I think that I have it overall set. I also spent some time sketching out a few other cutscenes.
Next comes the main of the work: actually painting each image in GIMP.
Most of the week was spent painting the backdrop from which the above excerpts come; it's not quite done, but I hope to have it complete by the end of tomorrow.
I suspect that not all backdrops will take quite so long, however. For one thing, I think that I'm starting to learn more effective (and perhaps more efficient) methods for achieving the style that I'm going for. For another, I believe that certain parts of this backdrop--the stars and mist in particular--went more slowly than others.
Last of all (presumably) is implementation of the cutscene: bringing the images into the editor, specifying the various timings, movements, etc., and doing any other work that might be called for--for example, I intend to use a custom shader to make the glass panels glitter in the backdrop above.
On another note, I'm still considering how to go about including animated mist in my cutscenes. I'm leaning towards implementing cutscene objects that hold a particle system instead of an image, but I'm also tempted to try some sort of texture-based animation, employing layered textures and texture -offsets, -rotations, etc.
Finally, I have it in mind to use some of the cutscene-backdrops as wallpapers if they turn out sufficiently well, whether released with the game, provided as crowdfunding incentives (should I seek crowdfunding), or made available at some other point.
That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^