Artists/Animators turned Indie Game Designers - Who am I missing?

CastorPT

Hi,

I'm trying to gather a list of game developers that were Artists/Animators (on the creative side without much coding knowledge) and decided to go independent and make their own videgame, learning to code/script in the process.(As opposed to most indie developers that were coders from start).

I'm looking for projects that have at least a solid prototype and have had positive reviews/previews.

This is what I have so far:

A.N.N.E. - Moise Bretton
Dear Esther - Robert Briscoe
Lilly Looking Through - Steve Hoogendyk
Ghost of a Tale - Lionel Gallat
Dust - Dean Dodrill
Twelve Minutes - Luis Antonio

Any other games/developers I might be missing?

Muzzoid

Konjak for sure.

oXYnary

Our own blankslatejoe (Joe Mirabella), with Tower of Guns.

Xoliul

Didn't our very own Muzz do that himself too, with his Kickball game?
Don't be humble, Muzz

SanderDL

Holy Moly Dragons

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRNmPgMXJA"]Trailer - Holy Moly Dragons - iPhone Appstore - YouTube[/ame]

His user name is Bugo on PC.

bugo

Hey Thanks SanderDL, I'm not a coder tho, even tho I script, I don't do all code. All the art is mine tho, that game is our first attempt. Here's our 2nd one still in development:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEKorfMMFY0"]Epic Dragons - Gameplay Trailer - Sept 2014 - YouTube[/ame]

You can also play our beta level editor here: http://www.thinkhugegames.com/epicdragons.html


I also still have my fulltime job tho!

Zocky

Hm, if i can borrow this thread a bit, i'm moving into this direction myself, does anyone maybe has any tip for people trying this direction?

ExcessiveZero

Zocky wrote: »

Hm, if i can borrow this thread a bit, i'm moving into this direction myself, does anyone maybe has any tip for people trying this direction?

I am doing the same, best tip I can provide is don't go insane, keep lists, stay focused and on track.

some things you will think will be hard and be easy, and sometimes its the reverse of that.

my biggest worries are having to deal with legal stuff forming my company into a LTD (cause if you do a kickstarter for instance and it fails you are personally liable for it if you don't) legal contracts and how enforceable they are and then having to work with others as I expand and becomes necessary, that and not running out of money both personally and for basic business costs.

Stress and pressure is another thing, when you are banking on success and putting all your eggs in one basket its a hell of a gamble, even if there is no tension within a relationship for instance your fears can easily create a negative view of yourself that you aren't producing enough money at this point in time, if you suffer financially, can't enjoy yourself or miss a meal its one thing, but those you care about and support you to even think this could occur pains me when I know I could have a stable income, even though I know this stems from nothing but my anxiety and probably values system.

if I had kids I would not be doing this right now I can say that, its a insane undertaking I am putting near all my waking time into, I don't think its healthy, even though I do largely enjoy my work.

So maybe you are thinking well why do it why not take the safer path? its simple really I figure, no risk no reward, you have a good idea, you know you can execute it,and you know there's money at the end of that idea, I am not only serious about building a company but I am serious about securing a future for my future family.

rising house prices, cost of living and general lay offs in the CG industry and salary fixing make it unstable, other industries I have been involved with pay too low, and I would rather attempt then regret.

CastorPT

Thanks for the replies!

Just to be clear, I'm looking for artist/animators (or even someone that didn't have any coding background) and decided to create his own game and be forced to learn coding/scripting while also in charge of the Design, similar to people like Jonathan Blow, Christ Hecker or Lucas Pope.

Is this the case for Zombie Playground? Who was the lead creator on that project?
What about Tower of Guns and Holy Moly Dragons and SanderDL?

It doesn't have to be a one man project but if the original team is composed of an artist and a programmer then it doesn't really count for what I'm looking for since the artist doesn't have to learn how to program.


Hope it makes sense!

blankslatejoe

Hi Castor - I didn't have any coding experience prior to starting work on Tower of Guns. I was an environment/tech artist back at 38 Studios and prior to that worked at Ironlore Entertainment. I had to pick up Unrealscript from scratch for Tower of Guns, for which I did almost everything except music--however the game does extend a lot from base UDK classes and technology. I had tinkered with code back in middle school some 15+ years ago, but never really seriously and I'd pretty much forgotten everything except some simple word definitions like int, float, bool, etc...so it really was learning to code from scratch. I had a lot of nights of feeling very frustrated.

Stinger88

Polycount's very own Rooster.

http://www.richmakegame.com/

bugo

CastorPT wrote: »

Thanks for the replies!

Just to be clear, I'm looking for artist/animators (or even someone that didn't have any coding background) and decided to create his own game and be forced to learn coding/scripting while also in charge of the Design, similar to people like Jonathan Blow, Christ Hecker or Lucas Pope.

Is this the case for Zombie Playground? Who was the lead creator on that project?
What about Tower of Guns and Holy Moly Dragons and SanderDL?

It doesn't have to be a one man project but if the original team is composed of an artist and a programmer then it doesn't really count for what I'm looking for since the artist doesn't have to learn how to program.


Hope it makes sense!

Well then Epic Dragons and Holy Moly Dragons fit what you are looking for. We are consisted of me on all art, animation, UI, design and a programmer where he also does design. Was there any question you wanted to know?

Muzzoid

Thanks Xoliul. Though not sure i qualify as Kickball was such a small game haha :P.

But yeah i did code it myself.

Though i have a coder on the next project, i found learning to code has improved my design skills substantially, as well as understanding where i can cut corners in the art for the most impact. It was a really worthwhile thing to do in hindsight, even if i don't keep doing the one man army thing.

Might end up making a few tiny games by myself though.

spitty

I guess he's not an artist/animator, but Tom Francis was originally a writer for pcgamer with basically no programming experience and made the game Gunpoint. he credits game maker for being able to ease him into programming since you can start off using drag and drop and then start basic programming as you go. Maybe unreal blueprints are similar?

you can read about the development of the game here. its a really fun game too.

http://www.pentadact.com/2013-10-15-gunpoint-development-breakdown/

blankslatejoe

Unreal Blueprints are kiiiiinnndd of like that. I don't think they are as accessible as say, UE3's kismets were though..but they are infinitely more powerful.

As a primer for coding, many of the more abstract concepts (like object typecasting, complex object referencing, !=none checks, class vars vs. object of class vars, etc.) of scripting aren't introduced any more gracefully in Blueprints than they would be if you were just learning old unrealscript . HOWEVER, there are other concepts that I feel blueprints might be an excellent primer for: object inheritance, latent events, and the ever present Tick, namely.

slipsius

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and done a bunch of research into the matter. While UDK is definitely an artist friendly way of going about it, Construct 2, I think, is probably better for rapid prototyping. It also helps you learn the logic behind a lot of stuff, so when you do finally pick up coding, you know the basics.

https://www.scirra.com/construct2