Creating Lozz

I've started the long journey today. I downloaded the tools that I'll need to make Legend of Lozz come to life, did a few tutorials to learn about the tools, and I'm now in the process of designing the main character.

Let me just say that the hardest part for me, by far, is going to be character and level art. I am not an artist. At all. That's part of the reason that all of the characters are going to be "8-bit" style. It's a kind of art form that I am more familiar with, and I can manage to create characters that don't look ridiculous.

I've come up with a concept drawing for Lozz himself. Maybe I'll post it when I'm happy with the design completely. It's really surprising to me that facial expression can carry over to 8-bit. My thoughts about Lozz: I want him to be a bit strange. You look at him and he has a smile... Yet he looks angry. I really want the player to not trust their own character.

The next difficulty? Animation. He needs a walking sequence and a jumping sequence. Thanks to the internet, there are many tutorials for this style of animation... But I have a long road ahead of me. The whole thing seems a bit daunting. Just thinking about all of the characters I have to make, all of the animations that those characters need, level design/art...

I'm actually looking forward to the rest of the game design. Dealing with events and collisions. For some reason, I find that stuff enthralling.

So that's my progress so far today. I'll post a concept of Lozz soon.