June 1, 2015
Hello! I'm the creator of Freedan Studios, and lead (Well, sole) artist for Maven. I'll be contributing to the blog for a while, as Solovid's founder and lead blogger (He would prefer to remain anonymous, so I'll just call him "The Designer") is busy with an internship this summer. So basically there will be more graphics - related posts for the next few weeks.
One of the most exciting events graphics - wise is the development of the first fully customized map for Maven! The Designer wrote a browser - based level creator which has made level design quite a bit more straightforward than it would otherwise have been. One of the best things about using the level creator is that I can see how all of the visuals in the game will work together as I'm placing them on the map. Until recently everything has been isolated ... tents were separated into their own individual sprite sheets, backgrounds were just single images, etc. Now they are all coming together to form a whole image, be it an outpost or a merchant's camp. Here's a small taste of the first map. I will be making changes to the doorway (E.g. the grass should cover the bottom of it) and adding additional props to make the scene more interesting, but I think this will give you an idea of what levels will be like visually.
Hope you like it!
~Freedan
P.S. I will post an update later this week showing an improved version of this scene.