Introduction

Okay so this is my top down shooter and to put it simply we had a running joke about squirrels with guns after our teacher showed us one as a joke in a lesson and it just stuck to me, probably just because it was that stid that it was genius if that makes any sense. Anyways then I thought of how a squirrel with a gun could be in a top down shooter, well there are the red squirrels being overtaken by the gray squirrels, which I realized after making the squirrel gray, so I swapped it to red and made the enemies gray.

However I made these as side view not top down as we were doing pixel art on that lesson I came up with, meaning I had to redo them top down. Then finally I had a lecture on shape theory, so I made sure to give the player soft edges where it made sense and sharp ones for the enemies since round means safe and good when sharp means dangerous and bad to put it simply.

First Design – Line Art

Okay so when I was making this idea to make sure it would work and to work more on my pixel art in general, I started with a lineart which was interesting, I got the images of what I wanted, a gun and squirrel, just I needed to do the lineart for the squirrel actually holding the gun from these, resulting in:

Okay so first I got a image of both and just erased their backgrounds, then put them in the positions I wanted, making it easier to do the line art of both from it

However I realized to help focus more on the gun I should hide the squirrel until after it is done, so I hid the layer and outlines the gun fully in blue so it stood out for adding color later on

Then I put the squirrel back and put both of its layers over the gun, doing the outline in purple so I could tell the difference between the two easily with them both still standing out for coloring later on.

Color

Then of course I added color to both as one layer because they won’t be seperate as why would I just want a gun or just a squirrel when I can have both?

Making this, the difference is just removing the lines and filling in the spaces between the lines left after removing them, then to get the faded effects I just filled the gaps and used the blur tool, the gaps have to be filled first as if not it just sees it as white and ruins the mix.

However you can see this is when I realized “wait the red ones art the defending ones not the gray”, so I fixed that

Then obviously I can’t give the gray squirrels guns as one I don’t know how to do that but mostly because I wanted to mix it up abit more, so I gave the gray squirrels swords

First Design – Gray Squirrels

Okay so obviously we can’t have both with guns, so the gray are getting swords so we can have fun with guns while they have to try get in stabbing distance, so first the

Line Art

I already had a base of the gray squirrels from my mess up before, so I just added to that, like so

Obviously also removing the gun, the thing in their other hand is the scabbard as I thought it was a nice detail and thought they would look weird with it on their back or on a belt they now have.

Color

Okay so then I just needed to fill that in to make:

This, which I am quite happy with, you can also see now they have their more sharper design, with the tail stripes being triangles along with the smile even because I thought it also looks more like a smirk that gave them more character than just angry

Bullet + Crosshair

Okay so obviously if we have a top down shooter with a gun, we need to know where we are going to shoot, so a crosshair, and we need something to shoot, so bullets, they are very simple designs and so I will just give them to you as it is pretty easy to tell how I made them a a glance

I did originally make the bullet facing sideways but that messed up shooting so I just flipped it like I did here so it actually faced where it was going instead of just looking uninterested

Main Menu

Lastly for my first design I realized I need a main menu which would use side on as top down would just look weird here, therefore I made this

I literally just put the squirrels in, copied and pasted the gray squirrels and to make it more obvious I made the gray standing on brow mud that was spreading to the red’s grass, like they were ruining wherever they were going. Then because this game is literally just one big joke I added the title in my hand writing and put arrows to further this jokey feel

Second Design – Red Squirrel

Okay now is when I realized I needed the squirrel to be top down, and for this I separated the squirrel and gun and put them together later so I can focus on them individually, putting them together as one sprite once both are ready

Gun Line Art

Okay so I got an image of a gun I wanted to base this off and put it to the side as you can see, then I got the basic shape of the top, putting the details in as I go but keeping the basic shape. Then to make it look better I cut out the parts I didn’t need to give it a more believable shape, leaving it then ready for color

Gun Color

Coloring was very simple as I just had to work with grays and make them darker or lighter literally just being able to follow what it looks like on the reference, then after I removed the line and filled the gaps, getting the bottom image which I can then use, leaving the red squirrel to be next before we can put them together

Squirrel Line Art

Alright so I got another image which was top down (best I could get), removed the background with the eraser and, well I didn’t flip it as there was little point. Then put the unused side on the squirrel as another base image as I knew that is the style I wanted so I could use its colors and such when it came to that.

I then made the lineart off the finished gun so I had the dimensions right compared to it and did the line art in blue so it would not blend in with the gun and stood out more for the later coloring

Squirrel Color

I filled it in and removed the lines, filling in the gaps, also making sure to update a few things, such as them being angry since they are basically being invaded so I think we can agree they would be pretty angry.

However now that I have the player set up I need the enemies, and since I have the squirrel as a stand alone I just needed to take that and edit it abit and give it a sword instead of a gun

Second Design – Enemies

Okay so I wanted two enemies, to start with I just made a top down version of the sword ones since I wanted a basic one that would fit in with the menu I made for the game

Enemy One – Line Art

Okay so like before I got the base image of the side on squirrel I had done before for colors and overall design and got the squirrel I had already done, doing line art over it with the changes I wanted, such as sharper edges and a sword of course.

Enemy One – Color

Then I removed the lines and filled in the gaps like before, making this, which is pretty good, yes it is abit less refined than before but given I had to transfer it from side to top while trying to keep the same look, I think I did pretty good

Enemy Two

Okay so looking now the enemy two doesn’t have line art and color separated, likely because it was just the first with a bigger sword, armor and a helmet slapped onto it, these weren’t even made separately I literally just made them from scratch over the first and that was that, making this:

They also have lines on the sword as I believe I was going for more of a lance but yeah it is basically just a bigger sword at this point, also adding in the eyebrows on the helmet to keep their anger of course

Floor

Lastly obviously we need this grassley land for the player to defend and for the enemies to invade, it is very basic, which is why it has no line art and is literally just copied and pasted to cover the floor

As you can see it is literally just green with darker green in spikes over it to represent the blades of grass and to give it more texture than just green. Yes this is pretty boring for being all the floor is but not only does it let the squirrels and such stand out better but to be fair if you went into a game about a joke and expected such small things as the grass to be highly detailed then you should probably look elsewhere.

Conclusion

This game was definitely the one I did the most art for so far and it is probably because it was just so fun, I also enjoyed how much it helped me incorporate stuff I had learned into my art such as shape theory and trying top down for the first time. This has definitely been my favorite game to make the art for so far