An indie game based on Winsor McCay's groundbreaking comic strip.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Last Day! Kitchen unlocked!
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 06:54:24 AM
Wow, it's the last day of the campaign already and we're in Stretch Goal territory! Thanks so much for spreading the word and believing in us!
Nemo's kitchen mock up (subject to change)
The first stretch goal is a biggie, and something we really wanted to include in the game. Whenever you wake up from a dream you'll be able to visit the kitchen in Nemo's house and get a snack. Each of the different snacks will give you a stat bonus of some sort. Some might make you jump higher or run faster. Some might give you some extra health. We're even planning on having 'bad' food that will make the game harder, for that 'stinky cheese' run maybe.
These images are mock-ups and subject to change, but here's what we're thinking:
Rarebit! Everyone's favorite late night snack.
We're only around $4000 away from the next goal, the In-Game museum, and this is a pretty cool addition as well. We're planning on including a fun way to collect pages of the comic (and other related works) that includes a pretty cool McCay cameo character.
Thanks for supporting the game and keep spreading the word, so we can maybe get to a couple more of the stretch goals!
- Team Nemo
Final 48 hour streams!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 02:45:14 PM
Dear backers,
Happy Tuesday! We're still so excited about reaching our funding goal last night!
To celebrate, we're going to be doing some live streams over the next two days on Twitch and in the community Discord. We'll be sending out another of our Backer Discord Access updates during the day today, so make sure you follow the link for access if you haven't gotten on the server yet.
To give a rough timeline of events for today:
1:30 - 2:30 PM ET - Chris art stream at https://www.twitch.tv/pieforbreakfaststudios
Tuesday evening (exact times TBD) - Adrian classic games stream
We'll keep you all updated in the Kickstarter Backer Discord as more times are finalized. Also please look forward to the release of our Gamedev Brainstorming podcast, coming later today for backers!
Cheers and thanks again!
Team Nemo
Thanks for making the Dream come true!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 06:16:30 AM
We did it!
Thank you so much to everyone who believed in our vision for Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends and supported us along the way. We're sincerely humbled that you've put trust in us, and we will do our best to build something we can all be proud of!
We started talking about this project in a "wouldn't it be cool if..." way almost two years ago, and started prototyping in earnest about a year ago. As things started taking shape, and though the painstaking hours of animation and programming we though we were onto something special, but we had no idea we'd see (checks campaign) over 1200(!) individuals pledge their support.
Nemo is very happy to be returning to gaming!
From the bottom of our hearts, Thank you! We'll be doing a more full end of campaign update soon (with some celebratory art!) but we wanted to make sure we thanked you all for helping us reach this milestone! We wouldn't be able to do this without all of you!
Now the hard work begins!
Dev Stream Saturday
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:51:06 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Sunday Funnies: The coloring process of Little Nemo
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:50:24 AM
Happy Sunday Dreamers!
It's time for our final Sunday Funnies of the campaign! We've really enjoyed spending time with all of you exploring Winsor McCay's original comics. There's still lots to talk about though, so we'll find a way to keep this feature going as we solidify our post-campaign update plans.
Project check-in
Today we crossed the threshold for 90% funded! With 3 days to go (the 72 hour mark is tomorrow morning at 8 AM ET), we're in a great position but we're not done yet! Being so close, it's more important than ever that the community keeps spreading the word about the campaign! With a strong final 72 hours, we could even hit some stretch goals to add other features to the game. Let's do it!
One more thing - we're planning some fun events for the final 48 hours to take place in the Backer Discord server for backers at the $5 tier and above! We'll release details in the coming days but we hope to see you there!
The coloring process of Little Nemo
Now it's time for our Sunday Funnies article on the coloring process of Little Nemo. The suggestion for this topic came from our friends at the Welcome to Slumberland social media project, which posts daily Little Nemo comic strips (in order of release) and calls for reactions and analysis on Twitter. If you haven't checked them out, please give them a look!
If you've seen the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strips, you'll know that color was a major feature of what made these comic strips so special. For the majority of Little Nemo's run in the New York Herald from 1905 to 1911, Nemo's adventures were in glorious full color.
The June 17, 1906 episode of Little Nemo in Slumberland issue is just one example of how Winsor McCay made inventive use of color in his strips. (Image source: Comic Strip Library)
For the last few weeks of Nemo's run at the Herald, the comic was relegated to being printed in single color and was no longer the leading feature of the comics supplement. Likewise, Nemo's subsequent run in William Randolph Hearst's New York American (where McCay was employed after he left the Herald) was produced with an inferior coloring process that was not able to produce as many colors as the equipment at the Herald.
The April 30, 1911 Little Nemo in Slumberland strip. This was one of the final strips of Nemo's first run at the New York Herald, where the paper's management (in a dispute with McCay over his Vaudeville act) relegated the comic to be printed in only 1 color. Regardless, this particular strip still shows a wonderful adventure. (Image source: Comic Strip Library)
What made the Herald's comics so special (and why color was used as a bargaining chip) was its use of the Ben Day Lithographic process. In this process subtle hues are created by manually laying down small dots, lines, or fields of color that can be blended to create subtle shifts in hue. These fields of color go onto plates that are then applied to the page to create an image. The blog Legion of Andy has an exhaustive breakdown of the history of Ben Day dots in newspaper printing, which details how newspapers went from mostly black-and-white engraving-style illustrations to the work-intensive Ben Day process, and eventually to the more mechanical Halftone process that inspired Roy Lichtenstein's famous pop art (though the artist still called the dots "benday dots.")
Various images from early comics, showing the dots that are a hallmark of the Ben Day coloring process. Image source: https://legionofandy.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/intro-triptych.jpg
The Herald's color department was particularly renowned. A key member of the team was Alfred Benjamin Hunt, who Winsor McCay worked closely with on the colors of the Nemo comics.
An article in the New York Herald from 1914 that outlined the coloring process used at the paper. Alfred Benjamin Hunt is in the upper right corner. Image source: http://animatedeye.johncanemaker.com/blog/alfred-benjamin-hunt-color-comic-strip-pioneer/
McCay would write extensive notes to Hunt on his original comic pages, which were all done in black and white with ink. McCay's notes detailed how parts of the drawings should be colored, creating a synthesis of McCay's great imagination and Hunt's amazing skill with the labor-intensive color process. On his blog, McCay Biographer John Canemaker details one such note:
Mr. Hunt, This is a snow forest. All the trees and foliage are snow. Plenty of purple and blue tones. The only bright color will be in the costume of the figures. An orange sky. The rest all pale blues, pinks and purples. Creme colored [indecipherable] with cold blue shadows.
Mc.
The strip in question in McCay's note above is the January 21, 1906 strip, in which Nemo enters an ice forest and is chased by polar bears. McCay asked that the scenery, which would normally be printed with black outlines, be printed with blue outlines to give the impression of ice and snow.(image source: Comic Strip Library)
As in the example above, McCay would call for experimental uses of the printing process, including printing outer lines, often done solely in black, with other colors, such as blue to indicate ice or Slumberland fading away as the sun came up.
The way that McCay specified colors to be applied is something that we're taking into account in the color scheme of Nightmare Fiends, such as in scenes like Jack Frost's Ice Palace.
In the production of Nightmare Fiends, we're working to create the impression of these colors and this process to create a look that Ben has described as "the comic plus" - we're sourcing colors straight from the McCay comics themselves to create the look of the different characters and background objects. You may notice, for example, that Nemo's pajamas or Flip's shirt have a slightly yellow tone and are not fully white - this creates the "warmth" you see in scans of the aged newspaper comics. We are also using a half-tone filter to create the impression of newspaper strips. At the same time, we're making use of modern tools to judiciously add effects like glowing particles, dynamic lighting, and other things that McCay would not have been able to use.
The halftone filter we're currently using is visually apparent on characters like Bosco or on the clouds in the background of this image.
While not perfectly 1:1, our intention is to continue experimenting with colors and filters to make the game feel like a living comic strip and pay homage to both McCay and Hunt's artistry, which made Little Nemo so spectacular.
That's all for this edition of the Sunday Funnies. Again, we have only a few days left, so please help us out by sharing the game with your friends! We appreciate your confidence in us and will do our best to make this game something really special.
