Taaryn 🕹️

(Long comment sorry LOL) Normally I wouldn't comment on posts like this to avoid confirming stuff in universe or spoiling anything. HOWEVER, I think there's a really cool conversation to be had here and I'd love to talk through our reasoning. While I DO think we could be more period accurate in our art styles and keeping stuff more uniform, The Indigo Company in Indigo Park is a long existing brand that's been through many generations of animation and styles. Ideally, in future chapters or in external content, I'd like to explore that more. The player enters the park well after it's been closed down, but we soft confirm it's closure happened in the mid-late 2010s. Meaning, the park would have closed when the company was moving big into rig-based, flash-style animation while maintaining some more simplified 2D animations (as well as 3D CGI animation coming into play). The biggest thing I wanted to do for Indigo Park is make a project that feeds on MY nostalgia. What do I remember from when I was a kid and growing up? What stuff was I or my younger brother watching, playing, interacting with? Because of this, a lot of our inspiration comes from 2000s media, locations, toys, etc. So while some of my characters have been around for a long time and had many redesigns. The designs you'd see in the park most abundantly would have been presented around the late 2000s-2010s and onward. We kind of start to tap into that with the Retro Lloyd plush in Chapter 1, but some of these characters have been redesigned time and time again. Rambley in particular is a Rig-Based animation by design since the goal is for his system to actively generate his images based on what's happening around him and ideally have a more simple aesthetic to reflect that. That plus the company pushing for more 2D simplified and cheaper animation plays hand in hand with what I'm wanting for the game and world. That's just a decision we made based on how we've been writing the world and greater story. I think your take is very valid, and I agree that we could definitely do some more research into specific styles to align them with real world timelines of animation progression. But I think Rambley and his friends all give a 2000s-2010s vibe that I really wanted for this project. Of course too, sometimes it just comes down to style choices for the game overall. I love game dev (and art in general) because it's the result of a person or group's thousands or millions of decisions and discussions that creates the end product. Even if something doesn't look perfectly period accurate, a project may opt to go in that direction because they like how one of their artists interpreted it; or maybe they're setting up a different world where animation went in a different direction, etc. etc. Whatever it may be. I do my best to push our art, design, etc. etc. in the direction of 2010s even if it misses the mark a bit sometimes for the sake of me liking the end result. For Indigo Park there's a lack of 80s-90s art (so far) because it was being updated and didn't close until the 2010s. I could totally get specific and picky about how certain aspects of our characters and styles don't line up perfectly with cartoons of that time, but I don't think they're TOO far off for an indie game. There's definitely some fictionalization of it because a lot of the tech the park had was more sophisticated than theme parks are using today. Of course, no hate at all, I agree with your point in relation to Indigo, but I thought it'd be fun to type out my thoughts. Hopefully this didn't come off as rude or anything, I just get really excited talking about my game and characters. Anyway, back to my game dev dungeon to work on Chapter 2. o7