Etiam

 Etiam is a prototype space shoot-em-up game that was to have a focus on telling a story while also providing fast-paced arcade styled gameplay, bringing modern design practices to the genre.

 You escape your planet just before it is destroyed by an evil force known as the Accin. You set out to fight back in order to avenge the rest of humanity. Shoot and maneuver your way through crowds of aliens, all in the name of revenge.

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 My role in the development of Etiam was primarily as an artist, though before the project was cancelled, I was also working on a script based off of an outline I created for a basic story spanning 21 levels. Due to this being a hobby project and the programmer needing to focus on school, the final working build of the game ended up not including even close to all the art I did for the project, and only includes 1 basic level, as well as the story's first test draft for that level.

 The programmer and I have talked about reviving this project in a few different forms a couple times since, but who knows if it will ever truly be finished.

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The Player Spaceship

 The sprite for the spaceship, being the main thing the player sees, naturally went over plenty of variations. Given this was the first game I'd ever done work on (that wasn't on Scratch), it was full of mistakes as well at first. My very first go... was not that great.

 Generally, this ship... is mostly fine for a first go at it. My co-developer and I ultimately decided we wanted something that looked cooler though, so it wouldn't be long before the next iteration came in...

 This iteration was definitely an improvement, but it felt like it had too many outlines and was glaringly too big. I didn't actually measure the aspect ratio of the screen yet, and so was working blind and had no sense of scale. Oops... lesson learned. I liked the general direction the ship was going though so I tried making a lower resolution version of the same design.

 This ship was close, and is what is actually seen in the current build of the game. To me, it still needed a final touch though...

 It didn't feel right if a ship with cool wings like this couldn't turn. Even if it's in space where air doesn't exist, sci-fi spaceships don't exist either so I didn't care! It was cool and felt great. This would be the final revision done to the Etiam ship, even if it wasn't implemented. The only pain points here were the fact that this was my first time working with a 3D perspective, and I was still very new to animating. So new that I didn't yet understand that animatable pixel art (and really pixel art in general oftentimes) should have very little noise... and the ship I was animating had a bit much. To help with this, I opted to remove the 'E' logo from the ship as well.

 If I'm recalling correctly I believe it took a month or two from the first ship sprite to the last animation. Ultimately, this is something I'm really proud of as between the ship, and hundreds of other sprites I did in the months spent on this project, I learned a ton about pixel art and animation. This would serve as the foundation for my art in the future.

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