Tag: indie game

Industrious Illustrating #25 – A Year of Progress

Robin Leave a comment

This month I’ve been working a lot on “Flamechaser” behind the scenes as the team develops the 0.6 demo build that we hope to post on Itch (https://jarojakd.itch.io/flamechaser) early this year. It’s been nearly a year since I joined the team, and as a result of foraying into game art and mecha design for the project, I’ve developed a lot of new techniques and built upon old ones.

I drew the new illustration of the Penguin and the Phoenix Heart clashing in hand-to-hand combat this year on the 11th, while I drew the old illustration of the 3rd of February last year. When I put these two images side by side, I’m pretty satisfied with how much progress I’ve made over the past year! I’m motivated to keep working on my art to see what new heights I can reach artistically in the future.

If you’re an artist, I encourage you to try redrawing an old piece of art that’s a year old or older and compare them side by side to see all the places where you’ve improved and where you can still continue to improve. I promise it’s a good exercise and also motivational!

Industrious Illustrating #15 – Flamechaser

Robin Leave a comment

Hello again! It’s almost November already, and yet I still haven’t finished posting about what I made over the summer.

Starting from earlier this year, I’ve been working alongside a team of other UMich students to make an anime-style visual novel called “Flamechaser” about lesbians piloting giant robots in space and uncovering a deeper conspiracy lurking in the shadows. We released a demo of our minimum viable product earlier this month on itch.io, and we’re planning on releasing the full game on both itch.io and Steam in the spring of 2023!

I hand-drew all of the mech and character sprites, as well as designing the logo and painting all of the background art. There’s another artist on the project helping with cleanup/flat colors/graphic design/some of the character designs, but otherwise the majority of the art can be credited to me. I feel extremely lucky that I’m getting the opportunity to work on this project alongside some really talented people, and I’m going to put in my best effort to make this visual novel a brief yet enjoyable experience for its readers!

Here is the current main title page featuring all of the main characters:

Here is a promotional poster design I drew to celebrate the release of the Minimum Viable Product earlier this month:

Here’s a few select screenshots from the game’s most recent build:

If you’re interested in following along with the game’s development, be sure to check out our newest builds and updates on our itch page and our Twitter:
https://jarojakd.itch.io/flamechaser

Now it’s time for me to get back to working on making new prints and managing my inventory before Youmacon happens in two weeks… See you guys next week for the next post!