Elfi
Far more difficult to me was a different drawing technique. Painting small elements like grass or flowers as a tilesheet that could be repeated infinitely without showing recognizable patterns.
Our program of choice was Pyxel Edit and it required several tutorials and practice-tiles. But a great technique to build large -several screens large- landscapes.
drawin small parts and put them together
Later I also learned to animate tiles with it, especially water be it in a trough, creek, lake, waterfall as well as falling stones or crumbling platforms.
step by step pictures in Pyxel Edit
Result:
breaking rock!
After long drawing sessions came the sounds or rather the search for sounds. Sheep bleat, Water rushes. But who could have thought that there are so many more sounds needed to convey atmosphere and movement. Vera wrote me a looong list with requirements for each game.
recomanded sounds
For the sheep sounds I visited the local hobby shepherd. With a small digital recorder that had to be equipped with a windbreaker after several failed attempts I recorded single and groups of sheep while bleating. Also while eating and slurping. Oftentimes I wandered around in the forest and along the creek. Last but not least a lot of household items had to be employed as musical instruments.
Digital recorder with windbreaker
As background music I composed one melody myself. The others are Scottish traditionals that I arranged with help of the Ludwig3 software. All new to me but I made it!
To be continued…