I have commissioned the incomparable Bruce Glidewell to do some creature concepts for me. I am decent at sprite art, but never was great at detailed characters, especially humanoids. It’s great to have a pro handle this. In fact, this is the only aspect of the game I’ve outsourced yet, and the lion’s share of the game’s budget. I foresee buying a bunch of friends pizza for a beta testing party, and then there’s the fee to join the XNA Creators Club to test on XBOX, but really, that’s about it.
Given the limited budget, I asked only for monochrome sketches of the four heroes and four of the monsters. Bruce went way beyond the call of duty to create an awesome set of hero sprites. Here’s the knight (tank summon):
And here he is reduced to the game’s 16×16 tile constraint:
Current progress: I’ve done all the spriting and animation for the main character, three summons, and two of the four monster types. Very soon, the placeholder art will be gone and the game will have a look all its own. It’s gonna be bad ass.