Hello! This week my focus has mainly been on making a “steampunk-esque house on wheels”. My group chose to go with an art style of pixel art with a top down view. This unfortunately put a lot of limitations and restrictions on what I could do. I found it extremely difficult to try and get the steampunk-esque house on wheels (which I will refer to as a truck from now on to save the reader from repetition), aspect of the drawing across on such a little space. I had 32 times 64 pixels to work with. I did manage to draw a truck which I was very pleased with, but unfortunately the style of the truck didn’t fit in with the style of our game, and it was dropped.
After my first truck didn’t make it through the auditions and didn’t receive a golden ticket, my pace really slowed down. I put at least 20+ hours into trying to make a truck which worked with the style of our game, and didn’t look horrendous. Ladbon showed me vehicles from Grand Theft Auto II, since GTA2 also had top down view. It was pretty interesting looking to see what they had done to get the effect that they were going for. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot which I could take away from it to use on the truck that I was working on. The truck was supposed to be well, less like a truck and more like a house of wheels. If I drew a roof it would just look like a house, and it wasn’t supposed to look like a truck either.
I managed to draw a few trucks to show off.(Most trucks were abandoned halfway through or even earlier.) The feedback I got wasn’t exactly helpful. “It looks like shit” was the go-to criticism, which I already knew, so unfortunately it didn’t help much. Everyone in the group did try to help me which I’m thankful for, but not to much avail. In the end I think the group came to a unanimous conclusion: That yes, it was hard to draw the truck.
I spent waaaay too much time trying to make a truck that was decent, or at least not visually offensive to anyone above the age of 5. (Unfortunately I only half way succeeded with this.)
I did all my work in Photoshop CS5, I think it works really well for most things, even pixel art. What I think is especially good about making pixel art in Photoshop is that there is a toggle able pixel frame which makes placing pixels easier.
Here is a picture of the truck that we used.
Here is the picture of the first truck that I made. 
Seamus Newman's Blog 
I strongly suggest that you try to revise the way your group communicates if “it’s shit” is as far as the feedback goes. Even if it isn’t such terms should not be encouraged at all or else you risk creating a toxic work environment. Don’t hesitate to turn to your teacher and/or SCRUM master for advice!
With that out of the way, your text is well structured and coherent. Your working process and hardships are clearly read and further complimented by the pictures demonstrating how difficult it is to find a balance of aesthetics between so different objects such as a house and a truck-like vehicle enabling the player to understand what he’s looking at. I can see why this is a tricky endeavor. Your presentation of the problems faced helped me a great deal to understand your situation without difficulty.
However, if you feel that you can’t make it work there’s nothing wrong with trying something else. As you said yourself, a top-down view does limit the perspective and so we must compromise at times. Maybe it needs to be more truck-like in appearance in order for the player to understand its mobile nature more clearly. Without your text explaining I wouldn’t have had the faintest clue as to what the picture to the left tried to portray. Once explained I saw the roof and chimneys, but information should be relayed with words as little as possible in the actual game.
While you have a great vocabulary, it’s not always necessary write metaphors and figures of speech, especially when writing a text that depends on clarity. By all means don’t be rigidly formal or lifeless in your writing, but always try to minimize the risk of confusion when conveying information.
You’re doing great so far, keep it up!
Björn Erik Berndtsson. Graphics and Game Design.