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leeevans6 hours ago(+1)

The game is a really great example of minimalism done right, something that's taking me a long time to learn.

I've become really interested in technical art also, so there's a lot in here I'd love to pick your brain about. First thing I noticed were the smooth gradients and some kind of noise / film grain, is that for stylized debanding? I recently learned how to use interleaved gradient noise and blue noise for debanding.

Read your comment about the sharp shapes. The silhouettes and highlights are very crisp and readable. I've been learning vector art to help me compose readable silhouettes out of simple shapes, and then some stylized lighting would be really cool to learn next. Curious what your process was here.

Anyway, I got through the first wave without missing any parries! Felt so cool. I couldn't keep up that performance and failed on the next wave, but I'll definitely play again if just to marvel at the art.

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Tory2 hours ago(+1)

My art process is kind of simple really.
Sketch (on Procreate) -> Trace it and turn to Vector (on Figma) -> Add lightmask layer (on Figma) -> Then the unity magic, the tutorial can be seen on link below.
For making sharp shapes, I highly recommend studying Samurai Jack artstyle or just search sharp artstyle on Pinterest, there's a lot of references.
You could use other tools ofc for sketch and vector.

The highlight and gradients from sprites that can change colour was inspired from this (minute 7 to be exact):

The key is lightmask.
So for sprite with the same target sorting layer as the light, they will produce that shiny light.

Then finally about stylized debanding.
I just know about debanding right now haha.
The film grain actually is just "let's try it here."
Like literally no other meaning.
I guess the film grain doesn't work, so maybe I'll remove it on future updates if the development continues.

Anyway, thanks for playing!
I'm grateful that the first wave is easy enough for you to not miss any parries.
If you're interested in this (technical) artstyle, try learn about sprite masking and lighting first with extra Post Processing.

Lastly, I'm also still a learner in technical art, so it's cool to find another who interested in it.
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leeevans1 hour ago(+1)

Ohh I see now! In 3D, I've seen the use of grayscale SDF masks to control highlights in a similar way, particularly on the modern toon-shaded anime styles.  In 2D, I've started to use black and white textures for alpha masks for particles and other mass instanced sprites, and randomize their color in the shader. 

It's so cool how normal mapping makes 2D art pop as if it was low-relief sculpture. Something I've been exploring is using software like Material Maker to generate diffuse, normal, and specular maps for use on things like walls, similar to this video. It's actually quite viable, but I'm not fluent in the node system yet.

re: film grain, I think it's OK if you like the way it looks stylistically. Some games offer an option to turn it on or off, for example Okami and Neva. I only notice because I've been studying dithering and how to use it to fix color banding, which I've had some problems with in gradients in Godot. Maybe Unity handles it better automatically?

Thanks for sharing these resources and your knowledge! 

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