As an artist, it is difficult to maintain a vision in a project without some firm visuals to go alongside. Capturing some essence of the initial idea, the vision of the project, can help motivate and maintain a passion for the desired final result.

Since the priority for this project is to create a diverse ecosystem, I started with trees and animals. I wanted to keep to a low resolution pixel art style, capturing the charm of early games while harnessing the technology of modern computing power. I took great influence in this attitude from Dwarf Fortress, which I think doesn't get nearly enough credit for how in depth the mechanics are.

The starting species of trees are those typical to sandbox games, namely spruce, birch, and oak. I also added a willow/mangrove type tree for the swamp.

I'm not particularly happy with the colouring, or the form of the oak. I'm sure I'll iterate on these as I go but for a first round, I'm pretty happy. It's worth noting that I've chosen to do a side on view of the tree rather than a top down perspective despite this game being top down. I found you lose a lot of character and style in the trees when all you see of them is leaves. In adventure RPGs, they are often used as a way to guide the player through hand crafted levels, whereas in my game they will be a resource and a functioning part of the environment. I also much prefer the look in games like Don't Starve with the billboard approach, or Factorio where the trees are clearly a resource and do not infringe on the playable environment.

Next I went on to animals. I wasn't sure what animals I wanted to include, and am yet to create a proper food chain, so I just went with my gut to draw animals I liked the idea of. I of course started with the llama, since that was the initial inspiration for the project, and quickly moved on to cat, rabbit, fox, dog/wolf, bears, and more.

I'm definitely creating hell for myself down the line in terms of animation and behaviour trees, but this is the kind of project that will never be finished, so I may as well dive into it with everything I have!

The real artwork I need right now are tiles. I need to develop a library of tiles for different biomes, along with connecting tiles. I haven't actually decided how I'm going to approach biome transitions yet though, so I don't want to commit to a scheme yet. Plus I've always found making tiles to be exceptionally tedious, but I can only procrastinate for so long. Now I have some motivational artwork to glance at, it should be a little easier to push through the tough stuff.

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That's it for now. Until next time, take care.