The scope of OverGem was only meant to have 1 character. In hindsight, I probably should have prototyped with a stick man or something minimal, would have helped me stick with the scope.

But I didn't.

I used UnitedGames' Valiant Knight character (which looks excellent doesn't it) during my prototyping phase.

The design of the game, from then on, lends itself to the addition of multiple characters, and I fell for that trap. Thats one for the post mortem.

In expanding my cast of characters, I will include warriors from cultures all over the world.

One culture I wanted to include was Nordic Viking. Vikings are usually depicted as ferocious warriors. But, I have read a few sources, and seen a few shows, depicting Vikings to have quite an extensive concept of 'honour in combat'. Even having a form of dueling to settle disputes (hólmganga).

Instead of going for a male Viking though, I opted for a Shield Maiden.

Ok, so there's no shield. I ended up drawing a character wielding 2 hand axes, which I really liked, so I decided to keep that. The horned helmet was the distinguishing detail for this character to indicate a Nordic Viking culture, even though I believe this particular feature was just romanticised and not factual. Horns are nice though.

Not being much of an artist myself, I mimicked the animation of the Valiant Knight over to the Shield Maiden.

I did receive feedback that the arms in the running animation looked too "still". I agreed. Hence, I changed them to swing back and forth whilst running.

Looking better.

I also received feedback that the colour scheme was too "muddy". I initially didn't use any colour palette, just went for random colours, really showing I don't have much experience at art huh?

So, I went to look for a suitable palette. I really liked what I found!

This palette is Pear36 . Not bad, not bad at all.

I really appreciate the indie dev community on twitter for giving me all this feedback! I will likely continue to refine the colour and animation a little more.

My next challenge is to add the attack animation for this character, which hopefully will be the topic of the next post. See you then!