Last time, I reported that I had implemented clown noses and hair and was starting to work on the more complex layered make-up menus for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.
I made great progress on it and think I’ve had a surprisingly productive December so far.
Sprint 2024-7: Clown Faces
Completed:
- Create make-up option and submenu
- Create clown preview make-up cut-outs
Much of this week’s efforts felt like a bit of a struggle, and I’m not sure if it is because I felt like I couldn’t focus on the work or if it was just because it was complicated.
Picking a clown’s nose is just choosing from a set of options, but I had envisioned the make-up menu to be made up of multiple layers.
That is, you don’t just pick a single make-up option. You can layer make-up on top of make-up, allowing you to mix and match options to create a clown face the way you want it.
As you can see, there are potentially four different layers of clown make-up available. I created some sample options that include the mouth as a smile or as a frown, a teardrop on either side of the face, and buckteeth.
Here you can see a clown face with a frown and a left teardrop.
To finish up this work, I want to show the icon in the box corresponding to the layer it applies to, number the layers to make it clear which order they go in (I think bottom to top is intuitive, especially for people who use art programs like Gimp or Photoshop), and finally choosing colors.
Right now, make-up is defaulted to a blue color just so I can see it differentiated from the hair and the nose, but I want to allow the player to choose primary and secondary colors for each option. What this means is that the various sprites for the clown face will need to be split into primary and secondary versions. In the case of hair, maybe it look like streaks of color, and in the case of make-up, perhaps outlines around the mouth and teardrops and such.
With Christmas coming so soon, I doubt I’ll be as productive as I’ll be spending more time at family and social events, plus I’ll want to spend time creating my annual year in review blog post. Still, I feel like I’m ending this year having made some great progress on this new project.
Thanks for reading, and stay curious!
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