Sprite DLight Kickstarter Preview Page

Kickstarter draft is now open for feedback

With less than five days left until Sprite DLight's Kickstarter launch, I have decided to publish the preview link to show what can be expected from the tool and to use the chance to gather final feedback for last-minute adjustments.

I highly appreciate any kind of feedback on the page, the video, the rewards and all other aspects.
Feedback can be given directly on the Kickstarter page or in a comment to this post.
Launch time of the campaign is 4:00pm CST, next Tuesday, November 11.
After launch, the link will turn into the project link, so it will still be valid and can be bookmarked now.

Sprite DLight Kickstarter Preview Link

As Kickstarter works with an all-or-nothing model, the project only gets off the ground if the funding goal is reached within the duration of the campaign.
If you plan to back Sprite DLight, it would be amazing if you could do that within the first 48 hours after launch, because it will be a race for visibility where only campaigns with a good start stay on top.
For the best chances of success, it is important to reach as much people as possible, so I would like to ask everybody to share the project in any imaginable way.

To be kept up to date, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Sprite DLight Kickstarter launch date announced!

Instant normal maps for 2D sprites - Kickstarter launching Tuesday, November 11!

Things are getting more and more exciting and it is time to start spreading the word about the upcoming Kickstarter of Sprite DLight.
The campaign will be launched Tuesday, November 11 at 4:00pm CST.

I will post reminders and more previews regularly on Facebook and on Twitter.
To keep people aware of the project, the first day of the campaign will be critical, so it would be awesome to have some early backers right from the start.

To help you pass the time until next tuesday, here are some delightful happy little trees of mine, normal mapped by Sprite DLight, preview recorded in the Sprite Lamp shader:

Sprite DLight Title Art Revealed

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is the time of sprites and other creepy creatures, so I am very happy to present the title sprite of Sprite DLight today.
Very special thanks to the amazing artist AlbertoV from DYA Games who created the beautiful pixel art the title image is based on, specifically for the tool.

The original sprite has been processed with Sprite DLight, resulting in a normal map which has been used together with the original art in a shader to achieve the atmospherical lighting effect.

"Sprite DLight", ©2014 AlbertoV

In the following animated preview, the sprite turns out very nicely with the normal map and dynamic lighting applied in the shader preview of Sprite Lamp:

I am planning to introduce the project on Prefundia within the next few days and the kickstarter will hopefully launch in about 2-3 weeks.
Updates will be posted here, on Facebook and on Twitter.
If you are a game developer, interested in using dynamic lighting on 2D sprites, please leave me a comment, use the contact form or contact me via email!

First screenshot and preview of Sprite DLight

Dynamic lighting on 2D Graphics - preview and screenshot

As it is #screenshotsaturday, the time is right for the first screenshot of Sprite DLight, depicting the core feature of the tool: The normal map generation tab with all its fine-tuning options.

The normal map seen on the screenshot was automatically generated from this beautiful piece of pixel art, made by AlbertoV from DYA Games:

"Mechanic", ©2012-2014 AlbertoV

In the video of the upcoming kickstarter, I will go more into detail, the screenshot just serves as a quick overview of the user interface's current state and the various adjustment options.

To show how the sprite turns out with dynamic lighting based on the normal map of Sprite DLight, I have uploaded a short preview clip, recorded in the shader preview of Sprite Lamp:

I will post more previews soon here and on Facebook and Twitter.
If you would like to see your game art with dynamic lighting in a preview here, please leave me a comment with a link to your sprites, use the contact form or send me some of your art via email!

Dynamic Lighting for 2D games

A tool that automatically generates normal maps from sprites

While working on InDee Toons, I have discovered a way to create dynamic lighting information for 2D images.
After some pretty promising tests with Image Magick, the first prototype of Sprite DLight was born.
What initially started as a research on how to provide normal maps for my game characters, turned into an independent project that seems to be of interest to a lot of people.
2D games and pixel art combined with dynamic lighting appears to be an explosive mixture, because you can achieve wonderful atmospheric effects while maintaining the individual 2D art style.

I am developing the tool for Windows and Linux platforms and hope to show it on kickstarter soon.
The core feature of Sprite DLight is the generation of a normal map from one single sprite file as the input image.

While existing normal map generation tools need at least two additionally drawn lightmaps to produce a normal map (which can be painful when you want to use it with animated characters), Sprite DLight can be fed with already existing sprites and sprite sheets, reducing the effort needed to create the 3D information, to a few clicks.

An example of an input sprite from the game "Boot Hill Heroes" by Experimental Gamer, which is released on Steam today, and the resulting normal map, depth map, ambient occlusion map and specularity map generated by Sprite DLight:

Annotation: "Boot Hill Heroes" does not feature dynamic lighting (this should not prevent you from checking it out), but the artist kindly allowed me to use the sprites.

I am now looking for more nice art of different styles, depicting game characters, objects, trees and more, to demonstrate the effect of dynamic lighting and the quality of the automatically generated maps.
If you are interested in making a 2D game featuring normal mapped sprites, or if you would like to see your art with dynamic lighting - probably featured in my kickstarter video/page (of course with a reference to you and your copyright), please leave me a comment, use the contact form or email me.

Also be sure not to miss the updates here, on Facebook and on Twitter.

InDee Toons Kickstarter cancelled & preparing for relaunch

Reasons for the stop and upcoming changes

With one week left of the funding duration, the Kickstarter of InDee Toons has been cancelled for various reasons:

• Due to the changes of the concept within the first days of the campaign from stock characters to customizable characters, the rewards had to be changed. 
• The old rewards that already had pledges, could not be removed, which caused some confusion.
• Apparently, most people interested in InDee Toons want to have the whole package as the main reward (of course at an affordable price).

Since day one, many things have changed and the direction I am now going with the customization package doesn't fit the concept of separate characters anymore.

The good news is: I learned a lot and I plan to relaunch the project with the whole package of customizable toons as the main focus, containing various theme packs like the pirate pack introduced with the most recent update.
If you haven't seen it yet, you can take a look at the preview of the pirate theme pack here:
Update #3: Introducing the pirate theme pack of customizable toons!

Thanks again to all backers and everybody who supported InDee Toons in Forums, Facebook and on Twitter.

Of course I appreciate any feedback on the campaign, the toons, the new concept and everything else that could help to make the project more attractive and useful.
Happy easter everyone!
I'm looking forward to the relaunch, hopefully together with you.

Introducing the pirate theme pack of customizable toons!

A detailed preview of customizable pirate game characters!

The Kickstarter of InDee Toons has been updated with a preview clip of the new pirate theme pack.

In this clip, you can see some randomly chosen pirate toons with custom heads, skin color, different body shapes and clothes varying in shape, pattern and color.
There are six hats to choose from and two different weapons so far with unique animations.

The custom head generator has evolved into an unstoppable custom character creator with ear rings, eye patches, monocles, blind eyes, a belt, different legs, chests and arms and a simpler way of creating the blinking and talking view of the head: you can now simply change the skin to export them, which allows you to create every frame with a single click, even for heads you have completely customized yourself.

Enjoy the video clip of customizable pirate characters!

We have only 9 days left to make the Kickstarter of InDee Toons a success, so please keep spreading the good word.
You can share and like us Facebook and spread the good news on Twitter.