This was a rough week for makin’ games, but not a rough week for playin’ games.
I am ashamed to admit that I got very little done this week. I’ll just blame this on the looming holidays and the panic that brings, as well as actually playing video games. And my internet was broke for awhile. And my dog was sick! And I lost my phone, so I didn’t hear when you were calling..
The time I did spend was spent adjusting some of the painting of the images and twiddling a little with the bones. I have been meaning to have a stream session and get to the bottom of the evil right arm that I have no idea what to do with, but I keep not doing that for some reason. My fault. I’m awful.
Recoloring (painting) these bones is super simple and non-destructive the way I have it set up. Very intentional design. The base nude pieces are in their own folder, “South Set” (likewise there is a “North Set” , “East Set” and “West Set”). Each set is divided up into each actual piece of the body, most making sense. Head, Neck, Body, Hip, Upper Arms, Lower Arms, etc. Some make a little less sense, like “Face”, which is comprised of all the default face pieces (eyes, mouth, nose, hair), however the base doesn’t really use face. That’s because each outfit set has it’s own face with all of those layers and attributes attached to them. This way they can be mixed and matched however the player would want without having to worry about what is underneath. Having a real “base face” would mean that all of those pieces of the face would show up all the time, which is not what we want.
Each outfit set is the same. It layers directly over the bases. The folder you see here is the Apathy Set. Each set here is divided into Head, Shirt, Shoes, Pants, and Misc. Head is like what we talked about before, with the strange exception that hair is divided into two pieces. A “Front Hair” and a “Back Hair”. Front hair appears above the Head base, and back hair appears behind it (and subsequently, behind every other base). This will allow for long hair without getting in the way of any other bone or image. The names of these folders is also super important in keeping spine organized. “Left Upper Arm” and “Left Lower Arm” are the names for the bases, but also used in the name of the outfit sets. “Apathy Left Upper Arm” and “Apathy Left Lower Arm” are used.
I use Photoshop to merge every layer in the base and outfit folders into one layer, and then export all the layers as separate images. It saves a ton of time to make Photoshop batch process all the layers for me. Photoshop names the layers funny, but I use a rename utility and keep everything consistent enough that it only takes a few seconds to have the entire set renamed properly. As soon as the new images replace the old images in their respective folders, Spine is immediately updated.
This organization is also important outside of Sai and Photoshop. The actual folders on my HDD are arranged very similar. Animations -> South -> (Base images here) -> Outfits -> Apathy. Everything being neat and in it’s place keeps me from going insane.
I like to think of each outfit group as a different Set. And adding a new set is exciting to me, like collecting something that’s part of a bigger picture that you can mix and match with your other existing sets. It’s like getting expansions for your appearance. But more than that, it makes outfits less daunting to me if I’m making different whole outfits instead of just trying to make 30 different hair styles at once.
There is more on this I want to cover but I will save it for another time when a wall of text will distract you from a lack of photos.
