Empty Labs and Crime Police

It's very late and I'm at uni and all the computer labs are empty. There are 2 reasons I am here right now. 1. I need to produce a spaz amount of art for a pre production pack due on Friday. 2. I am interviewing Jason Rohrer over Skype at 3:30 am for my Pixel doco and need to kill time.
Hey look! Spike and Mudley turn arounds! I always have so much trouble with the side views and I was going crazy singing total eclipse of the heart the whole time I was drawing.


Mouth shapes and EVERYTHING! (You may notice I cheated with the mouth shapes... CTRL+C(ity)... YEAH SO WHAT!? I TOOK A SHORTCUT! LITERALLY!)

I did a buncha other boring art. But it is... boring.

FINISHED - Rule

Woo! done. Here is my experimental animation made completely in Jason Rohrer's Sleep is Death.



youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czf4nvI-jTQ

How to do it

Ok! All systems go with this new animation, I have one week to do this thing and I'm generally excited to give it a shot.

As of now this is how I plan on creating it:
The animation style is going to be SUPER limited, if any movement at all. I will do some experimentation if I can get some actual animated character movement in, but at the moment it might be as simple as static shots.

So how can I make an animation using the indy game Sleep is Death? Within it I can:

• Create stylised pixel characters and backgrounds
  
• Music with a very simple editor
  
• Some degree of character movement and text

I will create sprite sets and characters that I can arrange shots and scenes with. The convenience is I can easily reuse and recycle them, like lego.
Here is a shot of the editor. I plan to use it to make much more visually interesting scenes than this...


It will probably make more sense when I start showing some of experimentation.
I've got a narrative idea, which is partly inspired by Jason Rohrer's Passage (he is also the creator of Sleep is death!) This is a play through of it:


And SuperBrother's Design Reboot HD (I'm a huge fan of his pixel style)


It will be a simple story chronicling the life and death of a King. I've always been interested in the concept of a nobody becoming King (ala Conan) and the weight of it. The actual themes present will be of attempting to achieve something in your life time, and ultimately how the overriding factor and importance (even being king) is living and dying. Here is a drawing of mine on the very subject! Click it for full resolution.


So imagine this but in an exciting stylized pixel form!