Hello, week 3 blog coming through! This week started out a little weird. We ended up going for the truck that I made first, which got denied at the start. I turned up late for our Monday meeting, and apparently in my absence the group decided to go with my first truck, for some reason they thought that I had copied the truck from GTA2 and that is why it didn’t get approved right away. Laban made it clear that I hadn’t copied it from anywhere to the group, and now we are going to use it.
I am really happy that we went for my original truck, but I’m not exactly thrilled over the fact that I spent two twenty hour weeks trying to work out a new truck design.
This week I started out by touching up my original truck. I added a chimney because Ladbon wanted one to try and get more of a steampunk-esque feel to it. I started out making a chimney that was very similar to the chimneys on the terrible looking truck that I showed last week, it didn’t look right. Ladbon suggested trying to create a chimney that looked more of an upside down L shape. I did and it turned out good, at least in my eyes.
Next up I decided to make an animation so that smoke would come out of the chimney. I got a help from Ludwig L and Simon S to show me how to create an animation, so a shout out to them! Next up I wanted to create an animation to make the truck look like it was moving. I did this by making the truck move up and down by 1 pixel. The idea was to make look like the uneven ground that the truck is driving on made the chassis bounce around. I think it turned out OK, but I think that I will work on it a bit more before wanting to have it implemented into the game.
My next job was to make a sprite of a more armored truck for the level two truck sprite. I added a new layer over the already existing truck sprite. I added details to it such as a front bumper, and metal plating on the roof and sides of the truck.
I’m almost done with everything this week; all I have left is to make a drawing of the truck for the upgrade menu.
Thanks for reading!
Seamus Newman's Blog 
Hello Seamus, how’s it going?
I really like your old/first truck way more. The one you had on your alpha was pretty weird. It didn’t really look like a truck at all. It was nicely drawn and so but I was like “¿what?” on the design. It looked like a container from outer space or something, kind of as far away from a truck you can get. x)
Too bad on spending a lot of hours doing work you didn’t need to do if your group wouldn’t thought your drawing was copied from GTA2. Try to plan and work together in your group and discuss every part all together. This project is all of the member’s, not just only one person with a stronger opinion. Defend your work and motivate it and you will not spend countless hours doing unnecessary work.
Your upgrades on your truck really makes it look way better. It’s way more interesting looking at now, both in design and quality aspects. Nice work on the animation as well. Even if Simon and I helped you with how animations work and how to think when creating them I think you will get real good at it with a little more practice. For this being your first animation it’s fantastic, really great work!
About the truck shaking around when moving, maybe it would be nicer looking to program it using paths as you can both randomize the direction of the movement and not move it as much as a pixel-art-pixel as it turns out almost to vibrating for looking good.
Thank’s for the reading, take care!
-Ludwig Lindstål