Here are a bunch of close-to-final randomly generated minister portraits for Democracy 3. They are made up from a large number of layers, with a different image for each jacket, shirt, tie, eyes, glasses, hair, skin and so on… it makes for quite a complex image, but means I can vary the color of someones tie and shirt independently so I get tons and tons of variety. It really bugged me that I had such a limited choice of minister portraits for Democracy 2, because it made it really obvious how limited the game was in that area. I know it’s an indie game, but your chancellor shouldn’t use the same character sprite as you law and order minister right? :D
I know I have gone totally overboard on the complexity of this part of the game. I bet 95% of the players will assume I got 50 portraits done and picked them randomly, which may have made more sense from a code POV, and an art-asset integration POV. Coding the layering system, and splitting up and processing all the art has taken probably 2 days, and I still have 7 more varieties of male minister suits to add… Obviously that’s plus the artist time, and admin of dealing with that.
I do think they look pretty cool though, and I love randomly generated stuff, it has the rare ability to surprise the creator. The closeness to the original source artwork amuses me too. Occasionally I spot louise mench’s jawbone or george osbornes eyes here and there :D.