I’m working on a small game called Goblin Dungeon. The environment will be 3D with 2D billboarded sprites, like Paper Mario.

Here is the Lich. Overworked during his life, he takes it easy in the afterlife.

I have a sort of nice pipeline to draw my assets:

  • I drew it using Clip Studio Paint. On a vector layer, I draw the outline with a pen brush. Here’s a link to the brush I use, but you probably can use any brush to your liking.

  • I usually paint a quick mask in a light color. This will serve me later by delimiting the area and it gives the general tone of the picture.

A simple skeleton with flat colors.
  • I then color this using another layer and “Clip to layer below”. This ensures that you can’t draw outside the area you drew below. I use a watercolor brush to paint and I try to use soft colors (here, some muted grey with deep purple and blue). It’s the most fun part, you just put colors around and blend them if the transition is too jarring.
A simple skeleton with watercolors mixed in together.
  • Finally, I give it a bit more papery texture. I use the built-in texture from Clip. However, I am wondering if I should try to vary the texture and use something more natural like this. I then use the border option on the layer to put borders.
A simple skeleton textured.

To have an animation in Godot, I simply imported the head, the body, and the sleep bubble as separate sprites and animated them independently using an AnimationPlayer. I also added a light to the staff, to emulate magic energy!

Godot setup for skelly.