Getting out of the comfort zone

Today I have decided to come out of my comfort zone and deal with the tools and skills that I have not a lot of proficiency with. I have been doing tutorial after tutorial for 8 bit animation and composing music for 8 bit games. I really want to convey this feeling in my game and I think I have made quite a bit of progress.

I started by taking the premade character I have been using up until as inspiration and making him more of my own.

Its not perfect but hey its essentially my first work. Even side by side with the professionally made pixel art on the left I think he doesnt do too bad. There is still a lot I can learn. I see that I have screwed up the perspective a little by giving him a throat. Also his arms are a little too long. I will fix this maybe in a later iteration. Right now I am trying myself on making and animating my first very own character. He's still very ugly so I wont share him just yet but Ill try my best to finish him up quite soon. 

I have also tried myself with some very basic animations to get a feel for Aseprite. I can now officially say I can animate a bouncing ball quite well as well as some decent smoke! 

I really think I did some progress today. Especially since I have never seen myself as someone who was gifted in arts and drawing and that kind of stuff.

I also took a dive into music theory and the manual of DefleMask. I have tried myself at making my own instrument but for the most part I stuck with the preset instruments only tweaking them a liiiittle bit using the knowledge I had acquired of playing around with my own instrument. 

I have to say I already have an acceptable baseline and a nice ambient rhythm that goes all the way through. Its not too crazy so it will not distract from the gameplay and the action but it sets the right mood for the game which is exactly what I am aiming for.