Dear people of the internet!

I’m Sijbren Schenkels, a dutch character animator/designer. I’m an animation school graduate, where I made a few short films: Stay Positive, Social Fabric and my graduation film Cakewalk.

Even though I like working on short films, I can also see its limitations. In order to create an understandable short, the story cannot be too long and complicated. That’s why I’m searching for new ways of mixing animation with other media. With my new project I hope to find a new format, that enables me to tell longer stories and use animation more efficiently.

Animation and games have always worked well together. The immersive nature of games can give animation the attention it deserves. Aside from the previous reason, I want to get some practice in a lot of game related components, in both art and programming. My goal is to create an interactive animation, that has story told through the gameplay. In short, the story goes like this; a monk needs to cross a vast desert to deliver a scroll. The challenge will be to show visually the effects of dehydration and exhaustion of the monk. The final product will be a story driven interactive animation completely in pixel art, featuring a retro mode 7 like effect, including a start menu and HUD.

The story so far:

The holy book Magi Moralis is only missing one last part: “The Prologue”. But the original text is written in Babylon Code, which only one person can translate, the old monk Bob the Unique II. After the scroll was translated, it needed to be delivered to the most important church Pietra Bianca, where the supreme pontiff Santo Scultore waited for its arrival. To reach Pietra Bianca, one must cross the Keno desert. Bob the Unique II (just like the other monks) was much too old to survive Keno’s harsh climate, so they send a young scribe named Philip.

There is a reason why I want to start a devlog for this project. It will be a very long project requiring with a lot of research, design and programming. The progress might prove very interesting to follow and it motivates me to keep a steady pace with uploading new work. It’s also an opportunity to provide this project with more attention, then it would have in just one go.

Hopefully I will be able to provide an update every week. At the moment I’m working on the script and the action plan, these will give a much more detailed view on the project. I also finished some early designs for the monks, which will feature as the protagonist and non-player characters.

I’ll be posting progress on Newgrounds and Tumblr, later on Gamejolt and Itch.io when I’m further in production. So if you’re interested in seeing an interactive animation project being build up from the ground floor, please follow me. You can also check out the artwork separately on Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Thank you for your time,

Sijbren Schenkels