Slow boat

Some background character kids for Meggie's class at the Grand Library. Well, they're supposed to be background characters, but I can already see them having their own adventures. I think I'll end up threading a big adventure for them as a background thing for attentive players.

I'm designing a bunch of background character sprites to fill out crowds in the background. The plan is to do one character pose each day. So far, so good.

New model sheet for our girl, Greeley in her summer outfit. Now with her fancy-looking dragonhead barge pole.

I'm designing a bunch of background character sprites to fill out crowds in the background. The plan is to do one character pose each day. So far, so good.

Trying out a different ink and color style for cutscenes.

I'd been wanting to do some sort of motion graphic for the current Gunwale logo for a few weeks now. I had some time last night to throw something together. It's nothing complicated but I think it's a nice starting point.

Here we find the fossil remains of a Kynigo Drakos, the hunter dragon. These legendary beasts once roamed freely across the land of Kanali until they were wiped out. BONUS: the tapestry relic that tells the story of the fall of the Dragons of Astre.

Working through the critters, this time, a small Doch. If you have anything to say about his tail, he's all ears.

Aerojelly - a gas-filled jellyfish that floats through the air. Luckily, they don't have stingers because that would make them nightmare fuel.

Working on some new art.

Cut Crawler - a gentle giant that wades in the shallow waterways and filters small krill-like animals through their baleen filter mouth.

Some current WIP locations from Gunwale.

Here be dragons!

It's just not a game if there aren't some cute birds, like these Crimson Wiggletails.

It's Monday here, so enjoy this cute Greeley I did just for fun yesterday.

Big Critter Energy.

Free post over on my Patreon talking about the map screen work I did this week.

Free post over on my Patreon talking about the map screen work I did this week.

New Greeley head art.

First (official) day back on Gunwale for 2026. Today I thought I'd take another look at the map and how I could maybe incorporate my kinky hex into it. Took a long time to get it working with my potato level mathematics but I persist and results are achieved. Here's the first pass I just finished.

New Year, New Art!

I'm supposed to be off for another couple of weeks but I really wanted to do some work on Gunwale. So I've been doing a 2nd pass on some of the dialog portrait art. Here are 2 that I did today. I guess I can take a nap now.

It's been a challenging year working on Gunwale, in a good way. This old dog has been learning heaps of new tricks and things are progressing along nicely. I'm super keen to start introducing you to this cast over the next year. Which characters below intrigue you the most?

Here's a new character reveal: Rapier Whitt, a childhood friend of Greeley's who goes off to the capital to study.

The gates of Black Nest Castle.

Spooky night.

Dropping the layers for the new room I'm working on into the game to see what needs to change. After checking it out, I decided that the big boat needs more parallax. So that means splitting out the layers even more and filling in the missing bits.

Trust the process. Today I painted some rocks and tree layer elements, as well as coloring in the boat layers.

Took a break from the detailed background stuff today to take yet another crack at the interiors. Previous version was isometric and just felt very technical drawing vs the more cosy feel I was after. Experimenting with some simple 3D shapes and sprite stacks. I like the new feel, so far.

My weekend of Gunwale boating lineart.

WIP line art for a new room for Gunwale. I'm trying to make sure that each location has lots of detail for you to look at since that's a pretty major point of the game. I actually can't wait to color the layers and put them in the engine to see them in parallax. That's the best bit.

Here are a few more characters - this group hails from the Forlatt region of Astre.

Some new character bits I did last week.

Some of the residents of the Black Nest Castle in Gunwale. There are only really two that you'll interact with but I like to create whole worlds for them to live in, because that's heaps of fun to do - the best bit, even.

Some new character bits I did last week.

I'm experimenting with various layout designs for my dialogs. My current fave is this one which uses the cute little Greley head for the cursor. I'm thinking of having various heads to use as emojis to represent the text. It'll look super cute.

Experimenting with adding animation to Greeley at the tiller that responds to player controls.

Experimenting with adding animation to Greeley at the tiller that responds to player controls.

I'm experimenting with various layout designs for my dialogs. My current fave is this one which uses the cute little Greley head for the cursor. I'm thinking of having various heads to use as emojis to represent the text. It'll look super cute.

Been a little quiet here because I've had my head down the last few weeks working on some code for the dialog system. Took me a while to get into it, but I'm firing on all cylinders now and hope to get it finished in a few more weeks. In the meantime, here's some background Groats I forgot to post.

Just a slight change to Greeley's basic costume that's a little more summer-y.

Working on a farm down by the water today.

Pretty pleased with how Gunwale is looking at the moment.

I was looking back through the videos of Gunwale that I exported over the years since I first started playing around with the idea back in August 22. It's come a long way even though there's still a long way to go.

I wasn't super happy with the Gunwale universe version of Kit I designed a few months back, so I took another stab at it. Much happier with this variant.

Gunwale Critter of the Month Club: May 2025 A Doch.

You and some of the boaters you'll meet in the waterways of Kanali. Greeley Stonehammer (you) and the Gunwale Regis