(Reposted from SleepySquids,com, read the original here)

We entered the process of story boarding know we wanted a background for the game that was funny nonsense. Something that was as much of a deliberate afterthought as the shmup games and adult games that inspired us. Not much else was clear, so the team went into a drawpile session together and started sketching ideas while frantically adding layers for each new scene. The key to our success at this stage was keeping each other in "brainstorm" mode and avoiding fixating on details or quality of sketches. This had the effect of levelling the playing field between artists of different skill levels and kept us all from running out of steam before getting a rough outline done. The first draft was something along the lines of "Old monk man tells protag bad thing happen, protag saves the universe"

An example of a panel from the first draft - fast and sloppy was the goal!

After letting that first draft languish for about 4 months we started chipping away at some of the story details. Game play features and assets were still taking up most of our time, but we did have regular casual discussions about how the background story should develop. We settled on the monk being a slacker who reads nude mags during meditation time, and the old man revealing the Ropu Barastu as the final panel. It was around this time we settled on the equally nonsense name for the project: Ropu Barastu No X.

Now that we had some sketched story panels and a basic idea of what to do with them there was only one thing left to do: Forget about it completely while we worked on level design for months. When we did finally get around to the opening cinematic we found we had some changes to make and a lot of refining to do still. The sketches had too much noise and the protagonist had been fleshed out during development of other features and had changed significantly. Notably, he wasn't bald anymore. At this point we weren't even sure who would animate the final product, but it was time to block out the shapes anyway. 

In our workflow blocking out shapes is something less experienced artists can do to lighten the workload on more experienced artists. Having some form and posing worked out in programmer art eases the transition from sketch or idea-on-paper into a final product.

An example of our magnificent programmer art.

Refining the blocked out art is the most time consuming part of the process. Some shapes needed altering, some poses needed changed. Architecture is consistently difficult for our team, since we have focused on organic subjects far more than inorganic in any medium. The image goes through a similar process at this stage as the rest of the process. A detailed sketch overlays the blocking followed by lots of switching between sketch and block and final version until the image is ready for rendering. At this point it's important to include several layers in the final frame to help with animation later. Once everything is where it should be some final multiply layers and gradients add rendering detail and the frame is complete.

Like the rest of this project this intro cinematic was an order of magnitude more complicated and time consuming that we expected. Also like the rest of the project, the way we overcame the challenge was to start with the roughest possible sketch and refine with many iterations. This is how we can climb mountains; One baby step at a time!

An example of a final frame from our intro cinematic.

All of the panels came together in a very satisfying into sequence for the game. If you want to see it yourself check it out on Itch.io or Steam!  

Thank you to all our supporters! We're all gonna make it!