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.

Game Jam 2013

This past weekend I attended my first Global Game Jam up in Cleveland. There were a lot of really incredible and talented people up there who I really enjoyed meeting. I also loved seeing some awesome little games emerge from the amongst chaos. 

My one regret is that I wish I had introduced myself to “more” people because I only really talked to a small handful of individuals. If I attend next year’s event, my goal will be to work freelance style and help out a number of different teams instead of working solidly with one individual group. This way I can interact with more people and get more involved. 

In terms of my own game, I was rather disappointed with the outcome. I worked with two individuals who didn’t seem to really have their “eye on the prize” throughout the weekend. An overactive scope mixed with a lot of distractions lead to the game not being playable at all. The final product was nothing more than an animated intro cutscene (a shitty one, at that) followed by some broken gameplay that had no end. I give my teammate the benefit of the doubt however because he totaled his car on the way up to the Jam and was in the hospital for 2 weeks prior to the event. I’m absolutely certain these events factored into the group’s overall energy as we worked.

Personally, I felt like I accomplished a decent amount of work.  I modeled, unwrapped, rigged, and animated 2 entire characters as well as couple of other props. The models aren’t by any means “top notch”, but considering our time restrictions, I’m happy with what I ended up with.

I’m looking forward to getting back to work on my own projects where I will actually have a decent amount of time to make the art look good :)

Cinco de MAYo

New demo reel is in the works. My gun from before will be a part (a prop for another character) but right now I'm finishing up this character:

He will be part of a 2 character set which will also include a dog (my first quadriped....) so I'm hoping that will work out well. My focus with these two is mostly animation. I want to have some nice facial expressions and fluid movement. This being my first venture into quadriped animation however, I'm not exactly sure how it's going to turn out.

All of my other projects have been side-lined for a bit. I realized a new demo reel is top priority since my current one is at least two years old.

FLCL vs AT

So I jumped off the Power Rangers painting for about a week so I could take a break. Here is what I have so far.

I'm still not liking the proportions of his human form. I think his arms might be too short. Idk! I'll figure it out!

What I've been working on instead is some fan art that pits Naota and Canti from FLCL against Finn and Jake from Adventure Time. This took a lot longer than I had expected (about a week) but it's done now and I can move on with some kind of accomplished feeling.

I've got a lot of projects I'm working on or starting to work on. I've got my videogame project (which will remain under wraps for the time being), there's my demo reel which I've decided to scrap all of my previous ideas and think up some all new stuff. It's like a breath of fresh air! I will be using my gun too, so I know I have at least once piece already finished.

I would also like to start to do a web comic. I've had this idea for a while now but there is just never enough time to put it together. I want to draw a comic cover for the first issue just so I can get my feet wet. It's called the Budget League! It's a group of odd super heroes. Kind of cliche, but it will be fun! There's also a web series I want to start with a friend of mine. It's a comedy series following around Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai as he attempts to create the new Smash Brothers game for the WiiU.

How many of this projects will come to fruition? Hell if I know.

Steam Crunk

I finished my gun finally! I just got done adding it onto the site: HERE

That above render was rendered out in Marmoset Toolbag, which I finally got to work!! I'm so glad too because it looks really nice. Much better than inside 3Ds Max.

I'm moving on to other projects. I've got a few characters already started that need finishing. Namely the Vampire Bat Boy and the Vumpire which will fill out the more "cartoony" characters in my new reel. I started a model of Awesome Kong a while back and I'd really like to finish that because I want to attempt to use some physics on her hair braids and the leather straps hanging from her waist. We'll see if that actually happens though :D And I am determined to make a character that is depicted as "Steam-Crunk" which is basally like Steam-punk except it's with blinged out, gangster rappers. So, envision Lil Wayne with a steam powered grill! EH!?

I'm also currently working on a top secret game project with a friend. It's going through some changes at the moment but it was originally going to be a 2D, side-scrolling platformer possibly made in Flash. But now we're rethinking and we may attempt to do it all in 3D. Unity might be the ticket if we go that route. Either way, the idea is pretty cool and I think it will be pretty fun if it ever gets made. We're shooting for a free to play release so, that's something to look forward to I guess, but don't get your hopes up LOL

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