This is a mandatory restatement of opening sentences present in most of my other blog posts that BFD is, in fact, still being worked on. However, there's a twist this time: progress isn't slow, it's just that I don't think it's worth sharing all of it on here. I've mostly been focused on art, including background art, an example of which being the above image. I have two other versions of this BG for evening and nighttime (as well as a secret third thing that will be present at the end of Chapter 1):
I'm not going to pretend there are no issues with these pieces or that I didn't use a specialized grass texture brush to paint the grass, but I do think they work well enough as BGs. At this point I'm fully committed to the idea of "settling" for flawed art just to get the game done---hence, progress isn't slow.
In terms of the actual "game" aspect of this project, I've also started putting the script together in Renpy, and I currently have all of Chapter 1's text with choices implemented. I have a few custom text boxes (may be subject to minor changes) and logos done as well (one of which is on the right side of this site).
Now with the obligatory status update out of the way, I'd like to expand on some of the points I made in my previous post regarding lines and squiggles. Since I've been focusing on art assets, the technical and perceptual aspects mentioned therein have been haunting me. There was no need for me to use the grass brush in those BGs; I should've been able to draw the blades manually. I (allegedly) know how to draw them. I know how to paint them in theory, but as it turns out, knowing and doing are two different things. It's like how people learn physics in high school but don't apply it to the world beyond. Putting the top of a pickle jar you can't open in hot water for a minute and sprinkling water onto your food before re-heating it in the microwave seem like creative and novel ideas until you remember how thermal energy works. Then the realization makes you want to hit yourself on the head for being so stupid...it was so obvious, but you somehow completely missed it.
How could this happen?
There is a strange divide between theory and praxis at play here. Theory can provide a framework for praxis to work around: heat increases the movement of atoms--->heating up an object can cause it to expand--->you can make a pickle jar easier to open by heating up the lid. However, most people approach such problems in the opposite direction: I can't open this pickle jar--->I look up ways to make jar lids easier to remove--->I discover the heat technique, which can be explained with basic physics facts. Both of these trains of thought are linear, so their starting points determine how the situation is conceptualized (you either learn some theory and later come up with a practical use for it or you encounter a problem and discover why a particular solution works in theory afterwards).
A nonlinear version might look something like this: I can't open this pickle jar--->I wonder why pickle jar lids are so tight and hard to remove--->I consider how jars are constructed, which could include going over the properties of the materials used in them--->using my knowledge of materials science and thermodynamics, I realize heating up the lid might make it easier to remove. This thought process might seem more convoluted than the first two, and it's probably less common as a result.
I approached the problem of painting the grass blades in a linear way: I need grass in this BG, how do I paint grass--->I look through my list of brushes and find one for grass textures--->after playing around with the brush and finishing up the BG, I notice how grass blades can be represented by long, thin strokes with lighter and darker-colored blades arranged in a certain pattern that creates the illusion of depth. While mulling over this, I realized something: most of my thought processes in learning art have been linearly-structured (I wanted to draw something but couldn't get it to look right, so I sought out solutions and discovered why these solutions worked as a posteriori knowledge. I suspect a lot of beginner (and even some intermediate) artists fall into this process. A lot of online "art tutorial" content preys on this; for example, if a fledgling artist is struggling to draw hands, they might search up "how to draw hands" on YouTube and watch several videos on how to construct hands from basic shapes like boxes and cylinders, only to be reminded that breaking things down into simpler shapes is a pretty standard technique that most beginner artists learn early on.
Now, this fledgling artist might be a little better at drawing hands after watching those videos and practicing for a bit, but have they gotten better at drawing in general? If they internalized the shape technique and figured they can apply it to pretty much anything they want to draw, then yes. The thing is, many beginners don't internalize basic techniques, and many more probably don't even seek them out, preferring to watch several videos about other body parts and blindly copying them without fully digesting the theory they're built on. The issues with linear thought trains should be apparent here; more often than not, they're constructed around finding immediate solutions to short-term problems, only taking things in at a surface level. Recall how the human brain is built around energy optimization first and foremost, and you should have a decent idea of how deep this problem goes.
What matters more: how things are, or how they appear?
I'm not a good artist by any means, but if there's one thing I've gleaned from my experience thus far, it's that looking at something and seeing something are not the same. Shapes and lines are helpful for simplifying the artistic process both intuitively and mechanically, but they aren't real (at least not in a tangible sense). They are illusions, in a sense. In the tangible world, or the world governed by the laws of physics, the only visually-perceived thing that "exists" is light. For all intents and purposes, shadow is an extension of light. To understand and master art, you must internalize the idea that everything you see is an effect of light and shadow.
There are a lot of ways to put this idea into practice. One way is to completely forgo the sketching and lineart steps, instead creating everything from the ground up with splotches of color (gray is technically a color, so grayscale work is compatible with this). If you really must use lines or shapes, you could start off with the colors and using your knowledge of light and shadow to craft "edges", or you could add lineart at the very end by drawing over your color blocks. Again, I am not a good artist so you may want to take my words with a grain of salt, but I think these observations could be useful for people who feel "stuck" in terms of their art progress. It's certainly helped me, at least.
