In my kitchen I have an old chalkboard where I like to write silly names for the food I cook. My family enters the room and can plainly see Bodarg-a-larg is being served this evening. After we clean up and everyone goes off to get ready for their next day, I like to draw something even sillier on the chalkboard, to be there for morning. You see, I tend to stay up late so I can do all the things that cartoonists do, so I’m not ever up in the morning. Instead I leave a funny cartoon of some sort in hopes I can lighten the morning load, give them a little warm amusing and often snarky reminder that Daddy loves them, and I still get to stay in my warm bed and sleep in. Cartooning allows me to be present like a good dad, as well as a very snug happy slug. Wiggly Loaf is one such critter that was born on that chalkboard, so it was only fitting that if I were to make a game based on the life and times of Wiggly Loaf, it should be set on a chalkboard… but how to do it?
I discovered a program called Doodly that makes infomercial style videos, you know, the kind with a hand drawing out the art or text, and the program has a chalkboard mode. I drew all my sprites using markers and a light table so they had the hand drawn quality, then I imported the ink drawings into Photoshop, exported PNG files to Doodly and simply screen captured the chalk style images. Then I had to Photoshop out the background so all I had left was the white chalk outlines as sprites for the game.
Making the sprites took me two 18 hour days, and I don’t take many breaks. I then spent the next 3 weeks learning BuildBox to create my game. I made tons of practice games, following all their tutorials step by step until I understood some of the program. BuildBox is so much fun. I enjoy making the game, so I work long hours. I’m really glad the way it came out.
Now the hardest part is hopping through all the hoops to get the game on the iOS app store. This is where our story begins. What will it take for us to get our good friend Wiggly Loaf on the iOS store? Let the crazy coding begin!
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