Children of Silentown
Children of Silentown Live Stream!
Please join us on Saturday 20th, at 9:00 pm CEST (7:00 PM GMT; 12:00 PM PT) for 1 hour of fun!
We will play our game demo, share some development secrets, have a live drawing session and some Q&A!
Special guests:
Fraffrog -> our YouTuber friend that made the art style for Children of Silentown <3
Elf Games team -> yes, that’s us! :)
That’s all - see you there!
Elfs
Children of Silentown Discord Chat!
Please join us on Saturday 20th, at 10:00 pm CEST (8:00 PM GMT; 1:00 PM PT) to chat with us! This second event will take place right after the Children of Silentown Live Stream!
Do you have any kind of questions for us? This is the chance to ask them!
The event will take place in our Discord: https://discord.gg/elfgames
Chat with you there!
Elfs
Digital Dragons Indie Celebration + FIRST DEMO LIVE NOW FOR LIMITED TIME
Hope you are doing well, even more so in this difficult period 😊
Children of Silentown is one of the 50 finalists of the Digital Dragons Indie Celebration, ROAR!🐲
As the full caps title implies, we are showcasing our FIRST ONLINE DEMO for the duration of this event (available until the end of the weekend), for those that want to try it.
The demo guides you through the very first steps intro to the game, so you can consider it “major spoilers free” – just in case you wanted to know and want to give it a try.
Here’s a link to the event page where you can get the demo from and check other games as well:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/digitaldragons
Also, for the 3 days of the event (May 13th to 15th - yes, the demo will be available for two more days) a Community Vote is held during which viewers and Steam users can vote for their favorite game.
The vote is online and is available here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8BJ67VM.
Stay safe and be well!
Elfs
Children of Silentown - Nomination for Best Game Art!!
Salutations from Shenzhen, China!
Children of Silentown was just nominated for Best Game Art by Indie Prize, yay!
We came to the conference with a small, playable demo and we received a lot of interesting feedback from players and fellow developers alike... super-nice!
A big thank you to all our supporters at the conference AND to all our voters... your treats are (almost) on the way!!
(J-just let us catch our breath... only for a few days... wheeze... to recover XD )
Bye-bye!
Elfs
IT’S CONTEST TIME!
Hi all,
The first challenge of Indie Prize is upon us!!
There’s an online contest to vote for your preferred game at the event (Children of Silentown, of course) but, alas, the whole registration & voting process is described in 中文 !
Will you take up the challenge and give us your support?
Voting requires to install WeChat (which you can delete the second after) and following these “few” steps:
>> INSTRUCTIONS HERE <<
The procedure is a bit… convoluted, so to all the almighty heroes that will follow the whole ordeal we’d love to send our thanks!
Just email us at hello+indieprize@elfgames.com to receive plenty of love and a secret surprise!
Only remember: DEADLINE for submission is 6:00 am CET (Europe) on the 6th of November (yep, a bit more than 2 days!)
Thanks a bunch!
Elfs
IT’S CONTEST TIME!
Hi all,
The first challenge of Indie Prize is upon us!!
There’s an online contest to vote for your preferred game at the event (Children of Silentown, of course) but, alas, the whole registration & voting process is described in 中文 !
Will you take up the challenge and give us your support?
Voting requires to install WeChat (which you can delete the second after) and following these “few” steps:
>> INSTRUCTIONS HERE <<
The procedure is a bit… convoluted, so to all the almighty heroes that will follow the whole ordeal we’d love to send our thanks!
Just email us at hello+indieprize@elfgames.com to receive plenty of love and a secret surprise!
Only remember: DEADLINE for submission is 6:00 am CET (Europe) on the 6th of November (yep, a bit more than 2 days!)
Thanks a bunch!
Elfs
BOMB-NEWS!! CHILDREN OF SILENTOWN INDIE PRIZE FINALIST
Hi all,
Children of Silentown was chosen as finalist for Indie Prize China!! http://www.indieprize.org/asia2019/index.html#entry-22
Which means that… well, we are flying to Shenzhen next week!
We are very excited about this opportunity to show our works on the other side of the world. :3
If you are going to attend Indie Prize come say nǐ hǎo!
See you next time!
Devlog #1 – 10K views and our “secret” to animations!
🎉 Woohoo, the reveal trailer for Children of Silentown hits 10K views on YouTube! 🎉
Thank you all for all the interest, the support and the love!
If you haven’t already, give it a look, smash that “like” button and… WISHLIST NOW!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1108000/Children_of_Silentown/
Also, it’s time for a small update!
We are currently working on the animations and the expressiveness of our cute female protagonist.
To animate the characters of Children of Silentown (CoS for friends) we use an animation technique called “bone animation”, consisting of associating our characters’ graphics to a skeleton, and then moving it. This technique allows us to obtain incredibly smooth and fluid animations, opening up to many possibilities.
For our 2D animations, we use a program called Spine, which we had a chance to try out before and is now working very well for us in CoS.
But how does it work?
To create a character and it’s animations, we first split the character’s body into several parts – such as head, arms, legs, and torso – and save them as separate images. Each piece is then associated with one or more bones and, possibly, a mesh. The bones are used to move the pieces of graphics and they are influenced by the other bones. Just like a wooden puppet.
The mesh, on the other hand, makes it possible to deform the graphics. It can be tightened, crumpled or stretched. This, in particular, is very useful to prevent the pieces of the body from appearing disjointed from one another. Basically, the wooden puppet from before has now a spandex suit on it (a bit kinky, I know).
Once this part is finished, we have our character back in one piece and in Setup Pose.
Then we move into the animation itself. This is the point where we move further away from traditional, “puppet” animation. The keyword is: interpolation.
Assigning to every bone a “starting point” and an “arrival point”, Spine will complete and “fill in the gaps” of the animation for us. Since the software connects starting and arrival points with a straight line, the first iterations will probably look very rough and unnatural – but that’s only the start! With a little bit of patience, by adding more and more details the animation will improve immensely.
As mentioned before, this is a very different approach from the one of traditional animation, but once you get the hang of the program and of how to make it work, the experience with classic animation will be fundamental to make the characters come alive.
At the end of the whole process, the animations are then imported into the game. Here’s how they look once everything’s ready:
Once we’ve set up all the main, basic animations, we focus on trying to express the character feelings and mood through small gestures and expressions. Given the game’s peculiar style, a big part of the personality and behavior of the characters is defined through body language alone, so this is definitely something we want to focus on to give life to our characters and, ultimately, to our story.
This technique is helping us a lot give depth to our characters and fully take advantage of the creepy design style of our little adventure.
That’s all for now, stay tuned for the next blog post!
Cheers,
Elfs
A Brand New Game - Children of Silentown Reveal Trailer
Children of Silentown - Reveal Trailer
Hi all,
we are very glad to announce you our new title, Children of Silentown!!
Please give a look at the wonderful trailer made in collaboration with the guys at Luna2 Studio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlaA7hbTynU
We are so glad to finally be able to share our new work with all of you… the wait was unbearable! ;D
Please WISHLIST the game to support us, and to keep up to date with all of the game’s news!
Also… to celebrate this occasion, Little Briar Rose is at a whippin’ 63% off for this week only!
Quickly, let the whole forest know!
Cheers,
Elfs
Children of Silentown Official Website
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