atomic monster

So I got a little side tracked the last few days and missed my original date for releasing my two week game.  The time was not spent on the game but with general life and family stuff so I'm not going to worry too much about it.  So without further ado I posted the game I have been working for my two week game project to itch.io you can see the link below.  I will do another post when I have more time as kind of a short postmortem about the experience because I found it really interesting.

Mockups of a Sci-Fi Adventure Game Idea Landing Party Lost, is an idea I have been slowly kicking around.  I was watching the latest Star Trek movie and loved the look of the set where the first Klingon encounter takes place.  Then it got me thinking about Another World, also known as Out of this World.  I loved that game and have always wanted to do a game similar to it. So sat down and quickly did a rough sketch and started to build out from there.  I wanted to combine the visuals from Pitfall on the Atari but use modern per-pixel lighting.  So I brought all of the spites and 2D images into Blender 3D and started to piece a few scenes together.  From there player movement was wired up with logic bricks and a couple of python scripts to handle room transitions and sprite animation. I don't know if I will keep building upon this idea mostly because I just don't have a clear enough idea of how the game will play.  It did get me thinking about ...

Another collection of design/mockup sheets for a personal project.  The game was a very simple 2D platformer in the vain of Super Mario.  I got pretty far with the game but ended up getting busy with some contract work and the project feel into the ever growing abyss of personal projects.  When I get some more free time I'd like to try and re-visit it. The visuals were really fun to work on.  Inkscape was used to flesh out my initial sketches.  Each character was broken up into pieces like a paper puppet.  After Saving the pieces out at high resolution they would then be put back together in Blender 3D where they would be animated.

A few years ago a friend and I wanted to increase our productivity on our personal projects.  We liked the idea of game jams.  There some really good ones around now, but at the time needed to keep it a little more laid back and flexible with our work schedule. The  first and sadly only game to come out of this was a very small, very short climbing game.  The rules were simple.  We had one week to make a game that used only 1 button.  This made us really change our focus from our normal comfort zones of game design.  In the game the climber would spin a climbing hook around in a circle and when the player hit the space bar he would throw it in the direction it was currently facing.  The goal was to hit a floating platform and swing up to it.  Once on the platform it began to crumble away so you had to keep moving.  The higher you got the faster the platforms would crumble.  I made the game with Game Maker, I think it was...

Well I think I finished the illustration of my wild man son with the family dog.  I tried to keep the detailing light and did everything inside of Inkscape.  Going to sit on this for a little bit before getting it printed.  I figure in a day or two something is going to jumping out at me that needs to get fixed or added.  Any ideas or suggestions? Let me know!

Sketching In Inkscape Is Always Fun Did this one just for fun.  Let the mind wander to see where it ended up.  Apparently I was thinking about pirates and lots of green.

Started this #inkscape #illustration of my son & the family dog last Friday with the goal of getting it printed for his room.  I need to get the dog looking like a dog and not a strange dog-squirrel hybrid.

Shopping in the zombie apocalypse, this is a concept piece I did about a year ago now.  Like many people out there I also enjoy the idea of a good old fashioned zombie apocalyptic world.  It would be utterly horrifying to be faced with the idea of being eaten alive by a pack of rotting blood thirsty living dead.  But, who wouldn't want to explore the world after people?  With all the places to explore it would feel like being on a different planet.  For me it goes into that child hood fantasy of wanting to spend the night in the mall with all of the stores open and you, just for one night can do whatever you wanted too!  That would be AWESOME!  Maybe that is one of the reason I love working on environments so much.  It becomes very easy to get lost in the idea and emotions of what you are trying to have the viewer feel.

A throw back to old arcade games Fat Kids Love Cake is a very simple dodge/collect game.  Dodge the healthy food while chowing down on the junk food to bulk up your gut as well as your score!

Here is another painting I did based on an idea I had of a little bunny that found his way to the dark edge of the woods.  This one was really fun to work on from start to finish.  I started with a black and white block out of the main shapes really only thinking about composition.  Next I drew over that on a new layer with a brush that looked like pencil work, this helped me detail out the shapes more.  After that I went over the entire image with an airbrush, still only working in black and white to soften some of the ares and blend the values a bit more.  Once that was done I made a new layer and went over the image with the airbrush again this time adding big patches of color.  Once I was happy with that I made yet another new layer and got a nice hard edged brush and started to work the shapes more.  I went back and forth this way until I ended up with the image above.