Baby monsters' design, and how they change and grow

Concept sketches of some baby monsters from The Legend of Red Dragon Ranch

In The Legend of Red Dragon Ranch, all monsters will start as a baby (naturally!) This baby form, as I've stated before in this blog, grows and develops based on the way you raise it.

This is part of the focus on care in RDR. If you look at the illustration in this post, you'll notice at the top there are three dog-pup monsters and at the bottom there are four strange blob-like monsters.

These are not all different monsters--they are different appearances of the same monsters! The top row depicts Fen, a monstrous pup based on the legend of Fenrir. The bottom row is illustration of the slime monster Vitel, who resembles a cracked egg (the name Vitel comes from the Spanish 'vitelo').

When you first get a baby Fen, it will look like the Fen on the left. However, as you raise it, the way it looks will change. The way it changes depends on the way you take care of it. Since Fen is an active monster, the type of training it excels at will show in its appearance. The center image shows a Fen with a more muscular build, good at wrestling and sparring. If you spend a lot of time taking Fen to the gym, you might end up with a look like that. The image of Fen on the right, however, is a much more elegant Fen. If you spend a lot of time in the zen garden contemplating the meaning of life, for example, your Fen may look prettier, and its mind seed on its forehead will start to bud into a flower. All of these are still Fen, of course, just Fen looks a little different depending on how it is raised. It will not change in stat or nature or anything when these appearance changes take place.

Vitelo, on the other hand, is a more sensitive monster. Its appearance will change not based on what kind of training it practices or what facilities it uses. Its appearance is based on something else entirely. Can you guess what may cause these changes in its appearance?

The way your monster looks can also be a hint of what kind of adult it will grow up to be. While the looks of an adolescent Fen do not differ too wildly from a newborn Fen, and the same with Vitel, the adult forms will be quite different. An adult form of a monster is a completely different look, an evolution of sorts. Each monster has three different adult forms, and while the look of a monster can change many times while it's an adolescent, once it reaches adulthood it stays the same. So you can use the appearance of your adolescent as a guide to whether or not you are raising your monster properly, if you are shooting for a certain adult.

Of course, if you just want to play the game without aiming for certain kinds of training and just take care of the monsters however you feel like, you can do that, too! And you can enjoy seeing a variety of looks for the same monster as you raise it on your ranch.

A big part of The Legend of Red Dragon Ranch is that every player will have a unique experience, even though it will always take place at the same ranch. The way you build up your ranch, the monsters you raise there, how you take care of those monsters, what kinds of activities you focus on, and how you end up solving the mystery of the legend of the Red Dragon is all up to your personal playstyle. Having many different looks for a single monster helps with this 'unique experience' and allows you to experiment with the way you want to play the game.

Character Portraits!

Skitter is coming along well, guys! Recently I've been working on the art for the game, as the programming is mostly done. The game is really ugly... most screens have a solid color as the background, and most images of things are just colored boxes. It would be a big load off my back if someone else could do the art, though... It is definitely the hardest part for me, and the most time-consuming. It took me two days of constant work to finish these things:

Characters with no portrait drawn yet are just green boxes.

* Normal and sad portrait for two characters
* Eating animation for Skitter (the monster)
* Terrible half-finished "jumping" animation for Skitter (that looks really bad and he changes shape/size constantly between frames... no matter how many times I redrew them, I can't get it down...)
* Half-finished background for when you are on the ranch (facility selection screen).

Anyway, I thought I would talk a little about the characters you will encounter in Skitter. Skitter is planned to have a bit of a story, though I haven't worked out all the minor details yet. The focus will be on the pet monsters and raising them, so the story will be somewhat minimal, but it will still be there, and hopefully make the ending of the game very exciting.

Armand runs the cafeteria in town where you can buy food.

The characters are less a part of the story and more a part of the environment, however. The shops each have their own unique shopkeeper that will talk to you with their own personality. A tentative feature that may or may not be added to the final game is a friendship system that allows you to get discounts, gifts, or advice by visiting shops often and talking to the shopkeepers during their off-time (by going to a town square are where you may encounter them).

An example is the chef Armand who owns the food shop (Cafet d'Armand) in town where you can buy food for your monsters. He is very talkative and friendly, but a little confident in himself. I am trying to make the designs somewhat interesting and fantastical. He has a chef's outfit that resembles armor (the top is like chest armor and spaulders) and he has an "ammo belt" with spices and utensils on it that he uses for cooking.

Your sister will be the face of the user, as you'll never see yourself.

Another "strange" design I created was for the player's sister, who will be the source of most information for the player (she will describe features, inform you of when something has happened such as a pet illness or you've depleted your inventory, etc.) The player themselves will have no real "character." You will give yourself a name, but there's no avatar for the player in the game--the player character is actually you, the player!

Anyway, as for the sister, I am still unsure about her name. I may let the player name her, or use of the names I have picked out. But I wanted her to look kind of interesting, but not steal the show from the monsters or the player themselves. So I gave her kind of "dull-colored" clothes (brown and a mint green, with a sort of light brown/dirty blonde hair color). I wanted her to look mature, since she plays a mother-like role to the player, so I gave her a vest and tie, eyeglasses, and large bows on her clothes that were inspired by hanbok (Korean traditional dress), to make her look older and serious. However, she is still young, and even though she is 'in charge,' she is still a kid. So I gave her a cute round face, a more youthful-looking hairstyle, and some bright earrings that don't match her clothes. I think she turned out quite adorable.

So far, only Armand and the sis have portraits drawn, but there are other characters that have been designed, and a couple places where characters are needed and there's no real design for them.

I have to do some big work fixing a bug with the inventory (if you're on your last item, the 'next item' button still appears, and crashes the game if you click it... I realize the error in how I created it, but I have to do a bit of work to undo this and kind of redesign its creation...)

Oh, the eating sprite for Skitter is cute too :) I wish I could share it with you guys, but I'd have to make a video, or an animated GIF (and those are a pain to make... so maybe later?)

If you know anyone who is very talented at drawing and loves to draw 2D character portraits or paint landscapes/backgrounds who would be willing to lend a hand, feel free to send them my way! You can comment on this blog or anywhere you can find me. I can't offer any kind of compensation, but you'll get credit, and if I ever do get the game off the ground, I certainly would pay for the service!

At the moment, this is what is actually needed for the game:

About 20-25 character portraits
About 40-50 landscapes/backgrounds
About 20395820395823 frames of monster animations -________-
About 20 item pictures
Etc etc etc

So there is a lot of artwork to be done... This could easily take me like an entire year to complete on my own...! And I'm not the best of artists... Let's hope that if the game gets off the ground, I can get a kickstarter going and hire a better artist :D Or better yet, someone will offer to do it for free :DDD (I'd still end up paying them if I did get the ability to... I have about $2 to my name right now, though...)