A short while back I was was surfing a website called Humble Bundle, when I noticed there was a sort of 'Game Makers' bundle for the low price of $15 give or take. The bundle included popular assets for the game engine Unity. After purchasing it, I started importing the prefabs into a fresh install of Unity and playing around, and found it extremely dissatisfying to make quick cookie cutter game-play. I knew I wasn't capable of completing a large scale project in 3D without using prefabs and assets, certainly not on my own, and as this was only a small back burner project, I decided to take on something more reasonable!
Inspiration
I remember playing The Oregon Trail as a kid and really hating it. Now I appreciate the harsh, bleak world of the American frontier for it's mercilessness and black comedic value.
The original Fallout games are the type of game that I dislike playing, but love watching others play. The game mechanics are, at this point, extremely outdated, but the story and lore surrounding these games has continued to inspire new releases to this day, though the story and dialogue of these new releases can't hold a candle to the originals. In addition to story depth and world building, I appreciate the art style of these games. 
Sword & Sworcery Is a game I appreciate most for its art style and serenity.
H.P. Lovecraft. The iconic horror author with an entire genre in his name. His tales of the supernatural and metaphysical are largely inspired by the fearful authors dreams.
And others...
VVVVVV
Undertale
Jules Verne
The Project
I started off by creating characters. I didn't want to work on something too big, so I chose 64 x 64 for my art board, though my character only takes up a 32 x 64 sized space. I created a palette that I wanted to use for the entire project, though I later expanded it greatly, while still keeping the green theme. This was inspired by a mix of Fallout (the earlier games tended to use a more muted and limited color palette), as well as the more vibrant title VVVVVV.
I made three templates; a male, female and child. I then created several haircuts for each and selected the male template for my main character, whom I've chosen to refer to as Elon for the time being.
I extended my palette to include colors for the clothing and it's details, then went about beginning  the process of creating a basic walking animation.
I looked up a bunch of walk cycle's on Google, and played some Sword & Sworcery, watching character movements. I created 4 different animations (up, down, horizontal, diagonal) and then mirrored the horizontal and diagonal movement so Elon could walk in all directions.
I put together a small file for character movement in Unity following a tutorial I found by a friendly Youtuber called CouchFerret. Though this was the most exciting part of this project so far, the movement is slippery and feels a little unresponsive, so later I plan on recreating this system. 
The latest step has been to create a tilemap to make a game environment. I used slightly more muted tones but kept with the same general theme of murky greens, with a little more emphasis on the murk so Elon will stand out.
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