#0 - How ANIMIST came to be

Hello! My name is Dawson Turska, and I am the project lead for ANIMIST, and one of the 4 co-founders for Dancing Light Productions LLC. I thought I would go ahead and get into some detail about how development for ANIMIST began, up to this point.

Admittedly, it's been around two years of planning for myself, so you'll have to forgive me if I skip over some steps.

To provide some context - The idea for the game (a fallen utopia worshipping philosophy/reincarnation) started out in a weird dream I had in late 2021. At the time, I was working on my AAB in illustration, and mopping floors to pay for that. When I was bored, I would draw, read about drawing, or listen to videos about drawing. Needless to say, I love art, specifically concept art! Design, in a general sense, is one of my passions. Anyways, back to that weird dream I had. So essentially, this weird dream was of a character that could summon knives, and then throw them using a supernatural force. At it's core, not a very complicated idea! Frankly, really, it's not, but it IS what got the ball rolling for ANIMIST. I actually ended up drawing this character, too! Take a look at this - that's actually the first piece of art I did for this idea.

I called this drawing "The Knife-Throwing Summoner". At the time, coming from a strange dream, there wasn't much backing up the idea. Aspects of it were eventually separated into wholly different concepts, more of which you'll see soon!

This concept specifically sparked up ideas that split off into two of the world factions - more on that in a future devlog. However, it also particularly sent me down the path of concepting ideas, researching new things for my designs, and working on my illustration skills. This drawing, in particular, was created in Procreate, but I gradually started using Photoshop more and more over time. Overall, it is really the start of my serious journey into illustration, but more importantly, the beginning point to where we've come to now in development.

At this time in my life (2021 feels like forever ago with everything that has happened!), I was looking for a new idea to explore visually. As someone who loves games with rich lore, I wanted be part of telling a new, unique story for the players of the games I help make. One idea that interested me was mechanical soldiers partially made of real bodies - this ended up becoming the idea for the Glimmers that roam our City of Dancing Lights. (also, the namesake for our company comes from that city!) So, at this time, what I had was a player character that could summon/throw knives, and a enemy faction consisting of essentially repurposed bodies. At the time, these were simply 'The Repurposed Soldiers' of a proposed outside enemy to the then unnamed City.

First version of the "Repurposed Soldier", a design that would later go on to influence the "Glimmer" faction that roam the City of Dancing Lights.

 With the help of some wonderful friends of mine (Mason, Liam, Dominic, and Green, of who I won't disclose further information for the sake of privacy, but they will know who they are), we brainstormed the general scope of the City of Dancing Lights, the enemy faction that became the Glimmer, and the basic gameplay loop (following a first-person action style akin to games within the immersive sim genre, albeit less complex by the nature of scope). Thanks to these individuals (no, really, in a profound sense, this idea wouldn't have gotten anywhere without their early help and belief in the idea), I was able to craft a pitch that I took with me into my time at Kent State University for Animation & Game Design.

In the next devlog, I'll go over where that pitch got us, and how we took the details within the pitch and turned it into a concrete world. Thanks for your time, and I hope to catch you at the next one!

- Dawson