Today was the first out of our three exams. I initially thought it would be the hardest exam, which it probably was, yet one of the questions was basically primary school algebra with some complicated words around it to make it look difficult. This question was also about Minecraft, which I find very amusing.
I’m not sure how I feel about this exam, but I think it went generally well. Then again, when you are expected to write code on paper without any means to use a compiler to check for errors and debug it, it’s very hard to know.
I decided to take the rest of the day off and work on Miku RPG (despite my next exam being in 1 week). I haven’t really made that much progress, seeing how the exam finished at 2:30 and I had to sort out a couple of household things as well (mainly killing ants, which seems to have stopped being against my morals now that these creatures are trying to invade my kitchen).
There’s a certain feeling that comes with pixel art, a feeling I would define as being rather close to magic. It’s amazing how sometimes something with such a low resolution can look so much better than something with a higher resolution. There’s a feeling of nostalgia behind it, but it’s also due to our own imagination. If we have less detail, our brain seems to have a tendency to fill things in, I have come to realize. And that means that everyone sees pixel art a little bit differently, making every pixellated world feel so much more personal.
But there’s something else to pixel art, that can only be seen by the people creating it (or by the people who look at it very very closely). It’s the factor of story and narrative. With every little pixel piece I draw, my mind has a tendency to wander off to the regions of the pixellated world, where this story can be found. Of course, this feeling is much stronger with some pixel art than with other, and the experience of drawing a bush doesn’t quite compare with the experience of drawing a graveyard.
Saying that, I have been working on a graveyard today. And in the mean time, so much story has happened in my brain, I don’t think I will be able to fit all of it into the game. But that just makes Miku RPG even more personal. I want every pixel to be oozing with story, I want there to be a backstory to every character, every tree, every creature, every stone (okay maybe not every stone). I want to create a wonderful world full of story, and if some of the story manifests itself only in my brain, I think that’s okay. And maybe if this story is happening in my brain, it can happen in the player’s brain too, making it a different experience for everyone. Giving you exactly the story you were dying to hear.
Have a wonderful day.
-Marta
Dragon Egg Games 