#Daisuke amaya undertale series

“For the character portraits, I did those at least ten times.īarone’s strategy was simple but effective. “I must have done most of the artwork three to five times over,” he said. He had to learn this skill “completely from scratch.” Getting his art skills to a commercial level wasn’t easy. Barone liked to doodle and draw, but that didn’t prepare him for the difficulty. A pixel artist must convey movement, emotion, and life from a grid of colored squares. Instead, a compelling image must be created by placing pixels, the colored dots that make up computer graphics, one at a time-painstaking and difficult work. Pixel art is not done with fluid lines or photorealistic textures. This style of art harkens back to the earlier era of video games when rendering graphics was difficult to do on slow computers. More than just a game design project, Barone’s odyssey would entail mastering each aspect of game design itself. However, that choice meant that he would need to become proficient in game programming, music composition, pixel art, sound design, and story writing.

“I like to have complete control over my own vision,” he explained, saying that it might have been “impossible to find people who were on the same page” regarding the design. Eric Barone, however, decided to work on his game entirely alone.ĭeciding to work alone came from a personal commitment to his vision and an indefatigable self-confidence that he could finish the game. Even highly talented independent game developers generally have to collaborate with a few people to span all the skills required. The breadth of skills required makes game development much harder for smaller teams than other art forms such as music, writing, or visual arts. Game development requires programming, visual art, musical composition, story writing, game design, and dozens more skills, depending on the genre and style of game developed. AAA game companies budget hundreds of millions of dollars and employ thousands of people on their top titles. “But it could have been so much better.” He knew that if he didn’t follow through with his own vision, that improved version would never be a reality.ĭeveloping a commercially successful video game isn’t easy. “I loved that game,” he said about his childhood experience with the title.

#Daisuke amaya undertale series

He wanted his game to pay homage to Harvest Moon, a charming Japanese series of games in which the player must build a successful farm: grow crops, raise animals, explore the countryside, and form relationships with other villagers. He had decided that he wanted to make his own video games and that now, before he got comfortable in a salaried programming job, was his opportunity to do something about it. 'Eric Barone had just graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma with a degree in computer science when he thought, Now’s my chance. Excerpt from the book Ultralearning by Scott Youn.