Heya!

[vleize]

Hello everyone!

The name's Allaura, but that's a mouthful so you can just call me vleize. I'm 21 years old and spend most of my time playing video games or drawing. I'm a game dev student in my final year (!!!) of school. Ironically that's for 3D, though my passion primarily lies in 2D art, currently of the pixel variety. 

I'm really enamored with the idea of making my own game, but that's one really, really (really really etc) long project because I'm crazy stubborn ...driven? and don't want to share the story with anyone else, so I've got to teach myself pretty much everything (yes, including programming. And audio )? I'd really like to share my progress with the art though! I'm currently teaching myself how to sprite and animate, as I actually have very little experience with creating actual game-ready sprites. So we'll see how this goes!

I don't generally do the whole forum thing - I've been using sites like deviantart and tumblr for years instead. But I'm pretty stoked to be here - it looks like you guys have a really awesome community! 

Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope to share some of my stuff with you soon!

[puggsoy]

Welcome, vleize! That sounds like an awesome study, I'm personally doing Software Engineering but I'm also aiming towards gamedev (albeit from a more technical perspective). Also 21 but just finishing off my second year (out of 4)

You sound pretty neat and passionate which is definitely two very good attributes for gamedev! If I might give my input though, I can't say that doing everything 100% yourself is a great idea for your first project. I understand not wanting to share your story, but you could write up a contract for people who join in that basically just means they can't steal your ideas. It would take a bit of effort but I can say from experience that making a full-fledged game completely on your own is such a big task, not just technically but also mentally. Working with people on a project, especially a pretty large one (which this sounds like) makes everything easier on various levels. I would recommend doing it, even if it's just with one or two others.

That's just my $0.02 though. If you feel more comfortable doing it yourself and you're confident you can, then that's totally fine! And hey you might have experienced all of that yourself and know full well what you're doing. I just know that sometimes people can be a bit overambitious (myself included on many, many occasions) and it's good to at least know that it might not go completely smoothly.

In any case, glad to have you here! There are plenty of awesome artists here to help you if you need any tips and tricks on spriting an animation, and that kind of stuff in general. Enjoy your stay!

[Raccoon Sam]

welcome and enjoy your stay

Optimism and passion are super great things to have, hold on to them.

We're always here for you

[Petie]

Hello and welcome! You definitely seem to have the right mindset and enough desire to get things done! puggsoy is right in the sense that it might be a little daunting to try to do everything yourself but there's certainly no harm in trying.

[vleize]

Thanks very much for the welcomes, everyone!

@puggsoy, Software Engineering, eh? Sounds substantially more technical than my course, haha. I've never been particularly good at the programming side of things, but I'm determined to try and pick at least something up!

Oh man, trust me this is something I've thought a lot about. I totally get that it's going to be a lot, and I suspect that I probably won't be able to do literally everything by myself, but I've got a couple of friends I can bug if I get stuck thankfully! It's actually not the first project I've worked on, though it will be the first one that I attempt on my own. Funnily enough, I'm not really super concerned about people actually stealing my ideas? It's more about having the creative freedom to do.. well I mean literally whatever I want, at that point. And that's mostly what I'm interested in.

Perhaps it'll only ever be an exercise in what not to do, but that still sounds like a pretty good experience to me - I definitely think that there's a certain benefit to just trying something for yourself, you know? I've already watched and contributed to one studio putting together a game first hand, and it's what actually made me start to think more seriously about this idea, haha. While I'm not entirely confident I'll be able to finish a full game on my first try, I'm certainly confident that I can learn and grow from it!

Hoo boy, sorry, I tend to just keep talking once I get started, lol. Thank you very much for the advice! It's always awesome to know that there's a community here that actively encourages growth and... well, mutual learning, I guess?

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@Raccoon Sam, thank you! Hopefully I'll be able to contribute some of the things I've picked up to the little community that you guys have here! It's really awesome to see the criticism and whatnot that many of you participate in - I find that's a pretty rare thing in most online art communities!

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@Petie, Thank you! About putting together my own game, that's exactly how I feel, haha. Even if it takes years and years, or I never finish it at all, I'd have at least learned some new skills that I never would have found out if I didn't try, you know?