Dev Blog 1: It started on a “Big Night”…

*A shot from the music video for Anyway Gang’s ‘Big Night’, player character Sam enters level 1, Queen St, by riding a TTC streetcar on the roof dodging obstacles.*

Back in 2019, on Saturday, July 27th at around 8:30pm, I got an email from someone who found my game “Tram-Panic” on itch.io. He was looking for game assets he could use to create a fake video game for a music video he’s producing. He offered to either pay for some existing assets I had, or if I could help create a Super Mario type overworld screen set in Toronto.

I was ecstatic, and always wanted to do something like this! So I took a few days to really go over the idea, drawing up some influences and references to begin the work, especially these two works. I just really liked the idea of an open-world city as a map you can travel around, especially whenever I myself am using the TTC and looking at the map. Hell, years later in 2023 I went to FanExpo and found an overworld map of Toronto done in the style of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past! I’ve never bought something so fast at an artist alley vendor since.

So I stayed in touch, set a schedule per day for my work, and gave deliverables weekly to report my progress. I didn’t think I’d be able to keep motivated or have enough time as I also worked full-time as an Animator, but the idea was interesting enough that I pulled through and did a lot of correspondence making sure we were on the same track. Looking back frankly, I wrote way too much, but I was clearly excited to make this work, and had a layout done without much information to initially go off.

I wasn’t sure whether there was going to be a path the player characters would follow, and only a few landmarks to include such as Horseshoe Tavern, Lee’s Palace, and of course the CN Tower. It needed to make sense mapwise, knowing I have to cram Queen St, Bloor St, and Spadina Avenue in one map, and to suspend my disbelief with how far apart those streets really are. I also started with the landmark buildings, working off of old tree sprites I made some time ago into Trinity Bellwoods Park, and trying to recreate Lee’s Palace. Personally never been to Lee’s, but I walked through Trinity Bellwoods everyday for work, and honestly Lee’s looks too big and Trinity looks too small! But I digress…

I continued to make progress within the next few days, creating the Horseshoe Tavern, the CN Tower with the Rogers Centre (Skydome) next to it, and a few little building sprites I can spread around. I was admittedly working with tilesets for the first time, and still alloted myself some exceptions with placements and even color. But I also tried to stay with the NES Palette and keep the retro video-game look consistent to the untrained pixel artist eye. Besides, the end result had a CRT filter, so it worked out enough for the video!

At this point I supposedly clocked in 10+ hours of work, and asked for further payment to finish the rest of the piece, meaning working on the waterfront area, filling out the rest of the urban landscape, and working towards making a day and night version of the map depending on what was going to be used. I realized that it didn’t work great trying to randomly place things, and so I instead stuck to the grid and tried to create buildings that stayed either within one or two tiles vertically depending on urban density. I was pleasantly surprised how these 16x16 tiles were shaping up into this mock videogame city map, losing all sense of time and delivering much of my work past midnight admittedly.

More than halfway through August, I filled out more than halfway the map! I was told a bit earlier that since its based on an old videogame, the map should try and reflect older aspects of the city. Of course though, I wasn’t even yet in Toronto during the 80s, but I tried to do my due diligence in looking into how Toronto looked. While I got Sam the Record Man in there, an iconic music store that no longer exists, I ended up drawing current day Dundas Square, which is more brighter and commercial than what Dundas Square used to look like. In the end though it didn’t make too much of a difference, and didn’t detract at all from the original goal.

I lastly played around with a night-time version of the map, keeping a few of the city lights on and of course matching the “Big Night” theme of a night in the town, or city in this case. As a result, the night time version was the one used in the final edit. I tried to make the pathway the players would travel along standout, and throw in a streetcar in there that can travel across the city.

The last few things I needed to do was to now bring more attention to the buildings, and essentially make them ‘bounce’. I liked this idea, especially since the locations were commonly for events, so the bouncy nature gave way to that theme. Lee’s Palace and Horseshoe Tavern bounced because people were partying there! I animated the 4 main landmarks, gave them in .png sequences and sent the rest of the main assets onwards to be edited together.

It felt too soon starting the project that I could see it’s end on the horizon. I would’ve loved to do more for the music video in retrospect, but I did my part and accomplished the type of work I wish I could do more often. I’m also just happy that I was able to remain active and communicative through the whole ordeal, though I might as well have written a short novel with the lengths of my emails.

After sending everything off and getting my pay, I carried on with my life. I didn’t really know much else about the song played in the video or the band, and I wasn’t sure where the video would be premiered/posted/published. It wasn’t until the 13th of September when the video was premiered on Brooklyn Vegan, a music blog which posted an article about the debut LP from the new Canadian indie rock band, Anyway Gang.

What a fun video! Seeing the map I made shown at 0:53, 1:16, 1:40, and 2:08, it was neat seeing how the characters navigated it and transitioned to the other levels. I also really liked the CRT filter over it all, it really gives it a more authentic look. Even with the streetcar and ferry moving a bit in the scenes it helped give the city more life! But aside from my work involved, the whole video and the rest of the pixel art done really tied everything together and made it all feel like a very cool indie package of tunes and nostalgia. It wasn’t long after watching the video that I’d have the song on Spotify, and even reminiscing on my childhood playing games, snacking on food, and ultimately passing out.

After the video premiered, that was it for my involvement. The video right now has more than 90k views as of me writing this, people seemed excited for this new band and the video! But how peculiar, as I wouldn’t have even known of this band and their music if I haven’t been given this opportunity. But more importantly, how making my prior game lead to this all happening. It might’ve not been further game experience, but even for a fake game for a music video, that’s close enough for me! As an animator I take delight in bringing graphics to life, it just so happens I enjoy doing it even more to emulate videogames.

From here, and through the pandemic, I’ve since taken some of this past map work, and spent time working on my own projects exploring Toronto as a videogame overworld map. I’ve looked back at this experience, where I started learning tilesets and working more within small scale pixel sprites. I surprised even myself with how communicative, organized, and quick I was able to go about the project, and manage my time in getting it done in less than a month. It didn’t need to be a massive gig, but one that was memorable for me, respected my work with pay, and ended in a genuine and exciting result for all involved.

Thanks for reading my story!

Sean Browning

Dev Blog 1: It started on a “Big Night”…

Dev Blog 2: Turning the Valve…

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