I used to draw a lot as a kid. I used to want to be an artist! Not so much anymore. In fact, I had lost hope for a while. My manual dexterity is not what it used to be, and picking up a pencil and paper just ends in frustration for me these days.
... and then I found Inkscape!
I have been trying to learn how to make my own visuals for games I may want to make in the future, just so there's something to look at aside from colored boxes. Vector art is a good format for games since they can be scaled infinitely without any nasty blurring like other image types. So without any prior knowledge of what software to use I set out to learn. After following this tutorial and making my own circular creature, I thought to myself, "this is a lot of fun!" and I wanted to keep going. I wanted to challenge myself so I tried to make a person:
Not too shabby, I think! After only a day of work I had something that looked like a game character! This was exciting. I was having more fun doing this than any of the programming work I'd ever done before, so naturally I wanted to keep going.
This time I was going all out. I wanted to make something really cool! After a couple more days of hard work, I made this!
This is a character I have been sitting on for a long time now, and she turned out fantastic. I'm so happy! I just had to share. I have new found hope that I can make great pictures again, and it's the best feeling in the world. I want to keep making pictures and showing my progress as I do, so I think I'll periodically post more about it. It's a long road ahead!