How to Pamplemousse: Sets!

I’ve been blogging considerably less about Dominique Pamplemousse since last month, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. On the contrary, you’ll all be pleased to know that I’ve been hard at work on the very game itself and enjoying it muchly. That said, I promised continued updates throughout development, and who am I to break my promises? So, since I just finished building a new set, I thought it was about time for another episode of “How to Pamplemousse” on — you guessed it — set design!

For this set, I’ll be building the outside of a house, with a small flower bed out front.

First, I cut out some pieces of cardboard for the ground and the side of the house, fold them into their appropriate shapes, and duct tape them together.

Then, I glue some origami paper onto the house portion of the cardboard. I also cut out a hole for a window.

After that, I use an exacto knife to cut out shapes in smaller pieces of cardboard: a picket fence, a window frame, and a flower bed with some plants.

To give the flower bed and plants a more organic look, I cover them in un-baked Sculpey clay. I also add a few flower-esque blobs of colour.

Then, I glue everything in place. (You may notice that the window has a backdrop now.)

All that’s left to do now is add some felt to the ground to use as grass. Then, I can place the set on my makeshift stage.

After capturing the image, desaturating and sharpening it, and adding a sky to the background, here’s what the final product looks like:

And voila! Now, I have a background image on which I can place and move character sprites, the creation of which I showed off in a previous how-to. Hooray!