EmbRoidery, apply directly to the roid...

Some embroidery designs I did for a mysterious person on the interwebs. Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to show soon.

Ms Crabnasty's Castle in the Sky.

're looking for a programmer to help us out with Edward Usher (if you know someone talented in C++ do tell!) and in the mean time Richard and I decided to go ahead and start a much smaller, simpler game.

This is a bit of concept art for one of the levels in this other game, Ms Crabnasty and the Banished Ball, about a kid who loses her ball in her neighbours yard, her neighbour unfortunately, is Ms Crabnasty. Ol' Ms Crabnasty decides to punish the wee lass by, you guessed it, banishing her ball.

You take control of said ball and attempt to make your way across several story book themed worlds to get back to your little girl.

Portfolio submitted to MCA

The stuff of nightmares.

I'm plowing away at Jonah and I just got the layout for page 3 done . I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. You'll have to wait a few days for the finished version, but I've included a frame from the full page layout below. In it, our titular hero regards a rather large and seemingly bemused gastropod with a mixture of curiosity and just a tinge of terror.

The layout for page 3 took a lot longer than I expected as I'm quickly realising this book is probably going to have images that are a lot more detailed than I'd expected. There's also the fact that since I'm essentially starting the story about halfway through my original draft of the script, I'm having to do some narrative re-jigging (technical term) and I'm basically making up new scenes and dialogue on the fly to stitch things together. I hope this turns out okay.

Back to Jonah for a spell

Page 1 was done and dusted in just over a day, but after struggling a tad trying to figure out how I was going to approach Page 2 of Jupiter Jonah vol.1 - wherein our heroes find themselves hurtling toward earth at an alarming rate - I finally decided to scrap my initial sketch layout and start over. You can see below how closely page 1 mirrors my initial idea, and how much page 2 totally does the exact opposite.

You'll notice that these images are pretty small, this is because I figured it might not be the best idea to upload hi-res images of Jonah to the web just yet. That said, I think it's safe to post a few images in "you-can-barely-see-em-o'-vision".


Page 1, as you can see closely resembles the original idea I had for the layout, I wanted something reminiscent of those great Kirby space-vistas,, where space is a hundred different subtle colors, and the title card and text pretty much jump off the page and scream at you. however...
... this original layout for page 2 just didn't work. I felt it was somewhat indulgent to have another large, almost full page panel so soon after the first page, which was also a large full page panel. It really didn't help get the story moving at all. In fact, the only reason I felt drawn to this (nyuk! nyuk!) was because I was eager to draw all kinds of 50's style dials, levers, knobs and whatch-ma-bobbits for the interior of the crashing space ship. I also didn't really like the panel break being diagonal, it's dynamic sure, but JJ isn't really meant to be a dynamic book in that sense.

So I went for this. It's pretty different. They layout is a lot simpler and this "four rectangles a page" layout is one I'm likely to stick to for most of the book with only the occasional deviation. The reason being that I'd like Jonah to be easily adaptable to portable media devices like the Kindle, iPod, Smartphones and PSP, which all have widescreen aspect ratios. I'm also targeting delivery via outlets like the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, so I try to make sure the comic looks good and is legible on an HD screen.

Here's a detail of my favorite panel from page 2.

Anyway, I'm off to start work on page 3, wish me luck!

Jonah is SO yesterday...

Taking a break from Jonah to work on my videogame project. I got stuck on Page 2 you see and only just figured out what I want to do to make it work.

Still, Edward Usher (the working title of the videogame) is coming along quite well. As you can see in the video below we've managed to get the basics of the first level working. That is to say, you can run around, jump, and climb up conveniently placed nooses.

The little orange fella you see is just a stand in, we're still working on the animation frames for our titular character.

Jonah's a star!

Just wanted to say thanks to Shof and Shane, who both went ahead and conjured up their very own interpretations of Jupiter Jonah. I must say I'm rather honored and quite chuffed, makes me excited about getting the comic proper done.

I would take this opportunity to post the unfinished first page of Jupiter Jonah vol. 1, but methinks I should actually start finishing work before posting it.

Another Jonah character!

Here's what I just got done. It's the design for the character of Funlola in Jupiter Jonah and the Eye of Oduduwa. Jonah runs into Funlola while a captive on board Rex Stein's space-pirateship and the two form a grudging friendship.

I was going for something kind of Buck Rogers-like for her.

Heeeeer'es Jonah!

Of course it isn't entirely finished, otherwise it wouldn't be an original "Shobo". His left hand is still missing since I have no idea how to draw it, but this was a lot of fun to finally put down on paper.

Hey!

... can you guess what this is?


Surely you must know Shof!

And another piece...

For my exhibition at the end of the year. There's still quite a bit of work to be done on this to make the details look nice, but the overall image is in place methinks.

I HATE US!

Is almost an anagram for "HIATUS", which is what I've been on... blogging-wise anyway. All this time off has given me the opportunity to get some work done... on my videogame.

I've set up a website, we've recruited an animator and a programmer, and been busy little elves tackling the numerous problems associated with developing a videogame while coordinating things from halfway across the globe. If you get a chance please check the website out, I'm sorta proud of of the logo which I designed, there's not a lotta content up just yet, but it will be updated periodically as development progresses.

In other news, I just (like yesterday) started work on my exhibition (and MCA grad school portfolio) pieces. Here's the first WIP image. It's almost done but I'm putting it aside to work on a second piece, get some distance and then come back to.

Oh yeah, this piece is 30x36 or thereabouts. My original plan was to have the fellow on the wall speaking in a comic book style speech bubble, when I come back to it I'll see if I can make that work, I wasn't pleased with the initial results.

How games are made.

Awright perhaps the title is a bit misleading. It should read "how this game is being made", since the actual process for developing a videogame these days is monumentally complex and not quite as straight to the point as the process I'm outlining below:

STEP 1: Planning.

The story and gameplay (how the game er... plays) are hashed out at this stage. Everyone gets a foot in and it's a fun time filled with boundless optimism and wacky outside the box ideas.

STEP 2: Design.

The game designer gets to work, plotting out the overall flow of the entire game into a signle all encompassing flow chart. I can't show it to you here since it'd pretty much show you what you need to do to beat the game. Suffice to say it's pretty complex.

STEP 3: Design Part Deux.

Here the game designer starts designing each individual level one at a time. They look a bit like very simple blueprints. I've included an image below that should give you an idea...

Once the game designer is done he sends this image over to me for me to make it pretty...



The game's art is produced with HD 1080p resolution in mind, so some of the maps are relatively high resolution, the one above for instance is actually over 4,000 pixels wide. It's a "hub map" which leads to other levels, levels that will eventually be between 10 and 20 times as large.

STEP 4: Well we haven't technically started step 4 just yet, but it involves music and animation. We're currently looking for an animator, but we've got some music (you can have a listen here).

STEP 5: Make lotsa munny. Well not really, but it'd be great no?

Level 2 Artwork

Okay, so remember that Usher game I'm working on? Well here's an update. This is level 2, it follows the prologue level I linked to earlier and it's something of a "Hub" level rather than an actual gameplay level. It serves as a sort of landing point when you first start the game, and leads to a bunch of other levels. I'm still working on it, primarily detail work and some shadows left, but for the most part it's intact. I'm considering adding some hunting trophies :)

Yet more mural stuff

The building is still being constructed, but each one of these four panels is meant to fit on one of the main walls of the building. Once again they'll be done using ceramic tiles.

More mural stuff

This is another design for my dad to use. It's going to end up as a mosaic (ceramic tiles) on a wall in some sports facility.

STUFF!!

Working on some sketches at the moment, I'd like to have an exhibition at the end of the year so I'd best get crackin'. It's early days yet and I'm just doing compositional studies, but I'm happy so far.

Noah's Ark

Welp, here's one of the things I'm working on at the moment. It's a layout for a project my dad's got going, it'll going to end up being a mural on a wall in some school somewhere. It's been kinda fun, though the animals have been proving tedious and more time consuming than I imagined, in retrospect I also wish I'd been a bit more daring with the composition and subject matter. Will update with more stuff in a few days I hope.

Day 15 TGBE

Day 15 of The Great Beard Experiment, in which I attempt to leave my beard to grow long and luxurious, unfettered and untouched by blade of flame. I'm curious to see how full it'll get, or if my regular "leave it for two weeks" length is the maximum achievable sproutage.

In other news, I'll post some art in a wee bit. Just working on a layout for me dad that's proving a little tough at the final stages. It's a Noah's ark "painting" which was fun until I started to draw the animals. TOO MANY OF THEM! Noah really should have just put them in U-Haul's instead.

Welp. It's done.

Prologue level art is done!

And that's a wrap for the prologue level! Gameplay-wise it's very simple, it's just an introductory level aimed at getting the player used to movement and jumping. Still, it was an absolute blast to work on, learned lots of stuff to apply to the next level, which takes place inside that half submerged house on the end.

Shof, I swear I tried some yellow in moon, but then the background got too bright, which made focusing on the main character hard. Actually the hardest part of this whole thing was making the background look interesting but ensuring it doesn't distract you while you play.

I've included a few detail images:


TTFN!