My son asked me to make a spaceship for his lizard toys. This is it.
Lizard persons not depicted.
Dec. 19, 2021
The other day I released Doodle CSS. It's a simple hand drawn HTML/CSS theme. You can use it make a web page look like a hand drawn mockup.
Since then it has garnered an astonishing ~500 GitHub stars, blowing past all of my other open source project repos. It made it to the front page on Hacker News and friends tell me it got featured in multiple tech newsletters.
It only took me a couple of days to put together Doodle CSS. The idea is one I've had for a long time though. The right combination of knowledge and motivation finally arrived last week and spurred me into action to implement it.
What a strange world it is building in public. Imagine spending your whole life as an open source developer with low-key popular niche repos, and then a literal scribble that took two days to make is what everyone latches on to.
It's useful feedback though, and that is the value in building in public. It seems like I've hit upon some deep seated doodle desire with this release. I feel like there is something bigger here I should develop. I will think about this some more.
For now I am happy with this as an open source project that other people are enjoying, and I'll admit the brief glow of popularity is very enjoyable.
Nov. 26, 2021
Hello reader! I'm excited to announce the release of the Doodle Rogue tileset. It's a free hand drawn tileset containing tiles and sprites that I used in my game Smallest Quest.
I thought it would be fun to set the graphics free and see what other people do with them. Let me know if you make something using Doodle Rogue!
Jan. 30, 2021
I've been working on a free hand-doodled roguelike graphics tileset called Doodle Rogue. It's an alternative to the standard console and pixel roguelike graphics tilesets out there.
I'm relatively new to drawing. It's taken a couple of years of drawing badly to get to the point where I am comfortable enough for a tileset. This post is to show you some betas of the tileset I'm working on, and also the art that has inspired this work.
Doodle Rogue work-in-progress sketches
Here are the tileset beta sketches.
Doodle Rogue scenery sketches
Doodle Rogue item sketches
Doodle Rogue character sketches
Doodle Rogue mockup sketch
There is a ton of work still to do on these. I need to redraw them as vectors and clean them up, and finsh drawing the remainder of the tiles.
Research & references
I used Pinterest to explore different reference styles for the tileset. Here are some of the artists I am using for inspiration and referencing. There are actually a lot more references than this but these are some anchor points that have stood out.
You can find my game-draw reference pinterest feed here if you care to follow along.
Dom 2d
Dom2d has been a big inspiration for my drawing in general. I love the balance he strikes between quick-draw simplicity whilst still looking good.
Slowquest (Bodie H)
I love the gritty detail in Bodie's drawings of items and dungeons. Studying his work has taught me a lot about texturing with lines.
Timecowboy
Timecowboy is a web comic artist.
Varguy
Varguy has the rare skill of the ligne claire artists, combining seemingly simple shapes and lines into images that really come to life.
Mike Yamada
I found Mike Yamada's work when reading The Noisy Garage to my kids. I love his animal characters.
Moebius
That's everything for today. I hope you've enjoyed these images.
