LLC

Gears are turning. For the first time it feels like something could actually "happen" in terms of my videogame career. I don't want to say this is will be a sure-fire success (because chances are it will not be) but I will say that things are looking up.

 

My programmer friend Matt and I are going through with the creation an LLC to house the production of some games we've wanted to make. We currently have one game in the works and are in negotiations to develop another game related app.  Neither of which I can really speak about indepthly at this moment, but since everything is moving so quickly, I don't think it'll be long before I start posting updates relating to the two. The above render are characters from our first game! Exciting :)

The Game.minder Expo is this coming Saturday (March 16th) up in Cleveland. Matt and I will be there, walking the floor, talking with people, and learning everything we can about starting an independent game studio. A lot of the Cleveland Game Developers will be there and as of right now, admission is free, so go check it out. It should be a fun event!

A couple other things I've worked on recently include a 3D rendering of a baseball bat grip known as the BatJack. You can go to their official website and check out the video on their homepage. The video is a little long winded and my animation only shows up for a couple seconds at the 3:30 mark, but all in all it was a cool project. The Bat Jack is a nifty little invention that improves the grip on a bat. It really works too!

I also designed the logo for a local bowling team which you can see below. They are the Coconut Monkeys! That was a pretty fun project as well. This logo is actually going to be embroidered on their shirts. I'm hoping the embroidery comes out well so I can get a picture of the final shirts and post it on here.

Computer. Complete.

It's finished! My computer is finally together and I couldn't be happier. I tell ya what, this experience has been really rough. It was about 4 months ago that I started assembling the mountain of assorted parts in the corner of my room into a real, working computer. I still remember day one of the build where I estimated it taking a few hours to complete. 4 months later, it's finally done and I'm exhausted.

Now, I don't want to point any fingers, but a lot of my problems generated from the person who was supposed to help me with the project. The so called experience individual who has put together quite a few computer in his life. Granted, the original, broken motherboard was not his fault, but pretty much everything after that was. I ended up taking the new computer to work and having our amazing IT guys dismantle and then reassemble the thing in a matter of an hour or two. It is now in perfect working order and I am forever indebted to those IT guys. As they bestowed the shining, purring machine to me I asked if I was suppose to bow to them, but they told me to simply tell the world of their deeds. ::Thank you, guys::

With that hurdle behind me, I've started the arduous process of installing all of the necessary programs needed to do what I do. I've got high hopes! This new computer ended up with 32 gigs of ram and has at least 2 more cores than my last computer's processor. Zbrush should now have no problem handling what I plan on shoving into it. Skin pores? No prob! Hair follicles? Lay 'em on me!! (actually, no thanks)

In other news, my small business plans continue. My partner and I have the ground work of our IOS game running. However, our real-life jobs have been pounding us lately, so the time we have to work on our game is slim. But this game will be completed, and it will be glorious.

We are still going through a list of names for our studio, but once we pick the right one, we will be making the official Facebook, Twitter, etc. and then purchasing our business license. After that, we plan to put some cash down on an iPad for testing purposes. Once the game is in working order, we plan to fire off a kickstarter to see what (if any) money we could make in order to purchase a copy of Unity pro and then build out the game for the app store.

It's a lot to do! But we plan to have this game available in the first few months of 2013. From that point, there's no telling what will happen. The ideal situation is to make enough money to fund our next game, and then the next game, and so on and so forth. Thus the dream becomes a reality :)

Getting Shit Together

My computer is still not working. Intel is trying to tell me that the RAM I bought is not compatible with my CPU and that that is why it's not booting up. I'm not sure if I believe that or not, but we'll see what happens after I buy some new RAM.

I haven't been able to work on my 3D portfolio work either due to my current computer's failings. The graphics card has a fan that's going dead and it gets really loud when it's used intensively, so I've been keeping it pretty light and only doing 2D work in photoshop.

That's not to say I haven't been practicing my 3D however. I got thrown onto a project at work for a medical company that specializes in healing bed sores and other "non-healing" wounds. I modeled an old man who I am now carving large craters into. The reference images they gave me are horrifying and are making it hard to keep down my lunch, but modeling the actual details into this character are quite enjoyable, even if it's gross as shit.

In other, and more important, news: I am working on an IOS title with a co-worker of mine. I'll release more details about it later on, but for right now I just want to say that I'm excited. I am more confident than usual that this could turn into something successful and it's really changing my outlook on my entire career goal. My whole life I've been planning on getting good enough at my art that I could get a job at a big studio and work on some AAA game titles, but now I'm realizing that I can actually be the one laying my own path. I could literally make my own games and build up a small independent studio that creates whatever titles we want while making enough money to support ourselves! This option just feels... so much more free!

It's exhilarating to think about, and is also pretty damn scary, but it's the dream! I'm just not sure if it can really happen.

Convoluted Ideas

I wanted to write my last blog article about this, but as I started writing I forgot because I got caught off guards by Kotaku. Ironically enough, it was Kotaku again that reminded me of this point. The best videogames (or at least game stories) are made by either one person or a team of very few. I can explain why this is because of the experiences I've had going to school for my bachelors degree Game Art and Design:

I've worked with numerous design projects, game mods, what have you, and the usual outcome is not great. A bunch of people will get together, all with their own ideas of what can be good (this is especially bad if you are all trying to get together 'just to think up a winning idea') and they all go at it. One person pitches and idea, and then another person pitches something and that gets added, and then another person changes that for a new idea. It sounds reasonable, but as everything starts to morph along with every new addition, the original idea gets beaten into obscurity.

I enetered into a design club while in school and they were looking to create a really ambitious mod project. Everyone had really nice ideas at the start, but then as everyone plugged in their own ideas, it became the same old game you see 100 times on the shelf at any store. It's kind of like when the WWE reinstituted ECW for the last time. One night for ratings they had 4 of their top guys face eachother in a 4 person matchup. The problem was, all 4 guys were so egotistital that they had to hit their finishers before the match ended. So these 4 guys go out of their way to throw people around, setting them up for these moves, which they all eventually hit. The match just became a huge mess because no one wanted to let the other man come out on top in the audiences eyes. If one of those wrestlers however would have just held back, took one for the team, and got hit with a finisher and rolled off to the side to open the stage for another, the match would have flowed so much more smoothly.

The same thing occured in this design club. If we would have just took somebody's one idea and ran with it, making minor changes here and there, but sticking close to the original concept, I think it would have been a better project.

If I had a team of 6 working to create a game, and all of them had really good ideas, I would rather we take the vast amount of time to make 6 original games than spend time making one big convoluted one.

This is the same reason I feel uneasy in a game studio where the head states that every employee has a voice in the game creation process. The entire company meets in order to give their two cents in order to make the games. I think it should be the opposite. I think they deisng heads should be the only ones that put the game ideas together, and if another artist really has a good addition, so be it. But the head designers should be forced to have to change a lot of things just to fit that one artists idea into the game.

This is my opinion based on past experiences I've had. They could change once I land a job in a higher end studio, but for right now, this is how I see it.

-Matt