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November 5th, 2009
10:28 am - Oh, Hi LiveJournal!
Nice to see you all, it's been a while. What have I been up to?
I just found out I'm a finalist in a game design contest I entered back in June. The contest was to create a video game that would promote a healthy lifestyle. I apparently made it through two semi-finalist rounds but had totally forgotten about the contest until I went through old e-mails and found my entry. I'd never heard anything back, so I went to the website and there I am. Winners should be announced this month.
http://www.humanagames.com/#/insert_coin/
A new video demonstrating Puzzle Bots has been released. It's sort of an adventure game/casual game that I'm doing background art and other visual assets for. You can watch that here:
The main project I'd been working on for my day job for what feels like a very long time has finished. It was a zombie-themed narrative created for Sony's virtual world PlayStation Home. You can pretty much see everything we created here: http://undeadyourself.com/ I wrote most of the blog posts, came up with a bunch of the fake zombie ads, designed the "zombie hunt" game, and co-wrote and storyboarded the promo video below:
Speaking of video games and zombies, I released a new version of my zombie game, Nearly Departed. The game is still not finished, but mostly just because the engine used to create it has a few bugs that make the game go a little screwy here and there. An updated version of the engine that fixes these problems has just become available, but the drawback is it doesn't really have a import function, so I'll have to rebuild most of my game in it. That said, this release of the game is about 70% complete, so you can play a good 50% more of the entire game than just in the original demo. This version also can be played in a browser or via Flash Player, which can be acquired for free if you don't already have it installed. Here's a link to download the game:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/lzot1gnqm4z/ND_demo.zip
I've also been converting some Disney Channel cartoons into comic books for Disney, not sure when those will be published, and some graphic novels Marion and I helped First Second out with should hit bookshelves in the not too distant future.
And now back to work...
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July 26th, 2009
12:29 pm - Internet woes
The cable modem in our apartment is dying or something because it keeps crashing every ten minutes or so. Whenever we go away for a week or more, we always come back and find our internet and cable out. Usually this is resolved real quick (call provider, they send a signal to the modem, all's well) but the modem seems to be having trouble. When it conks out, it doesn't want to reboot either. We just have to wait for the signal to return.
Anyway, it'll be three days until they send a tech, so I expect to have very sporadic service until then.
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July 13th, 2009
09:50 pm - Puzzle Bots!
Another computer game I've been doing artwork for has finally been announced: Puzzle Bots!
Here's a link to the screenshots page.
This game is very different than the Emerald City Confidential game, though it's produced by the same company. Still an adventure game, but more in the vein of Gobliiins. In addition to the backgrounds and minor animations, I did the GUI and the poster.
There's also video:
Puzzle Bots trailer
Don't know what the release date is, but I still have plenty of work left to do on it.
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June 30th, 2009
June 22nd, 2009
11:58 am - Last Airbender footage
Not much, but here's some quick Last Airbender movie footage from an Entertainment Tonight promo (after "Beastly" promo):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqMKRSTHFzc&fmt=22
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June 1st, 2009
12:57 pm - Holy Crap, New Monkey Island???
http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland/
Wonder if they were already cooking this up last summer when I visited their office...
In related news, LucasArts is remaking the first Monkey Island game for XBox:
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/
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May 14th, 2009
April 11th, 2009
01:04 pm - Time is the fire in which we burn...
I am very bad at updating here and on my website. When I'm busy, I have no time to update, when I'm not busy I have nothing too update.
Anyway, I do have a little announcement, and that's another game I'm doing digital background painting for. There's a teaser site, with a link to the game's prequel (which I didn't work on), but not of the backgrounds are online yet:
http://www.lassieproductions.com/games/stitch/
I've also been making some progress on Nearly Departed here and there. Not much to report, really, just that I'm still working on it.
And coolest news of all is appearing on this year's MoCCA Art Fest poster, along with the rest of the Comics Bakery crew:
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March 20th, 2009
07:40 am - Snow on my Birthday!
Don't know what the weather's doing where YOU are, but here it's snowing.
Yesterday it reached 60 degrees. Today, snow.
Woo!
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March 17th, 2009
10:35 am - TV Show I did work for airing now...
Battles BC, a show I did storyboards for last summer, is finally airing on the History Channel right now. I only know this because I was flipping around and came across it.
I recognized a few shots I boarded in the last 3 minutes of the Hannibal episode, so that's cool!
EDIT: Updated with a shot of my name in the credits! Woo!
Though you can barely read it with that sun bloom...
New episodes air Monday at 9, I worked on about 4 of the episodes.
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March 4th, 2009
10:15 am - I've got another game out...
I'm using the term "game" loosely here, but an iPhone game I did character art for came out this week. It's the creatively titled humor application "Jewish Mother". Now you too can have a Jewish mother in your pocket who will dole out nags and anecdotes and yiddish catchphrases! Provided you have an iPhone, anyway. The game was developed by Gotham Wave Games and written by comedian Steve Hofstetter, who's made the rounds on most of the late night talk shows.
More info and reviews can be found at these links, and you can buy it for a buck from the iTunes store.
http://www.apptism.com/apps/jewish-mother
http://www.whatsoniphone.com/blogs/new-app-store-jewish-mother
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February 19th, 2009
10:09 am - My game is out!*
Emerald City Confidential is now available for Mac and PC. You can download a demo or buy it here:
Playfirst (publisher)
or here:
Wadjet Eye Games (developer)
*Well, the game I did backgrounds for last summer, anyway. It's not exactly "my" game. Sorry to those who were expecting it to be Nearly Departed.
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January 17th, 2009
07:19 pm - Adobe Illustrator CS2 acting funky...
Since my computer's death and new life and multiple app installations, Illustrator has been acting weird. Specifically, crashing when copying & pasting things. Not from Illustrator to another app, within itself. And not just from one document to another, but even within the same document.
It's not crashing every time I copy & paste something, but it does it consistently for individual things I try to copy and paste. I'm doing some lettering work and I have a specific style of balloons for this project, so I've got a file with a hundred or so balloons. They're all just a simple shape with a tail, nothing complex. I can copy and paste some balloons, but then others, when I try to paste them, crash the program. And the same balloon will crash it every time. There's nothing special about them. Trying to drag them to another file crashes as well. It's like Illustrator has decided arbitrarily that it doesn't like certain balloons. All I can do right now is try to remember which ones crash it and which don't, but it's a very bizarre problem. I'd do a reinstall of the software, but I don't have the discs with me in Oregon.
If this was happening anytime I wanted to copy and paste then it would make sense to me. That'd be a bigger problem, but what it's doing now just baffles.
Anyone encounter anything like this?
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January 5th, 2009
11:09 am - The Woes Continue...
So Saturday I got my laptop back. Just in time after a trip to Boston for New Year's. A nice little bonus was that the new HD they installed had 20 more gigs than my old one, which certainly makes up for the little bit of data I lost.
So the rest of the weekend was spent clean-installing OSX (since they installed Garage Band and about 15 gigs of other apps I never use), then installing all my apps, prefs, e-mail, and so on and so forth.
But last night I make a discovery. I've been using my old eMac as basically extra storage space. So it's got about 30 gigs of stuff that I copied to it when my laptop first started acting funny. Most of that is projects that just need archiving, so I only copied back to the laptop the stuff I need right away. With the eMac mounted as an external HD I figured I could just start backing stuff up to DVD.
So I start up Toast, pop in a DVD, and start burning the first 4 gigs of data. About 10 minutes in it spits out a coaster with an Illegal Format error. Now, when I first got my laptop it had problems with some DVDs (-R or +R, can't remember), but the firmware had been updated since then it it could burn to anything. And these were the same DVDs I've used before. I figured maybe my firewire cable was iffy, so I copied the data to my laptop first and then tried to burn. Same deal. So I opened a new pack of a different brand of DVD and tried burning from the Finder instead of Toast. This time it didn't ruin the disc, it just wouldn't burn to it. I booted up the eMac and figured I'd check the disc. The eMac can burn to them fine, but this still leaves me the problem of making backups of future data right off my laptop. So I try to burn a CD on the laptop. Toast had no problem with that. Next thing I try is downloading some other third-party burning software. One reacting like the Finder: it just spit out the disc saying it was an illegal format. Another, a German program called Brennen, WORKED. It took forever (first it copies the data to the disc, then it burns the disc, for a total of almost 2 hours for 4.2 gigs). The disc works, the data is there, so my drive works but my software is having a problem with it. But why? Everything is up to date...
Since my laptop just came back from Apple, I was able to request they call me in the morning (which they did, on the dot.) Unfortunately, after about 45 mins of trying different things, the only solution they have: format the drive and reinstall everything, then try burnding a DVD before doing anything else.
Oy vey. Of course, there's no guarantee that will work. The only thing I am guaranteed is that I'll lose another day and half to reinstalling everything.
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December 26th, 2008
12:09 am - Dead again...
Well, it lasted a mere two weeks, but my computer is dead again. Since it had been just completely reformatted and was working fine I was hoping it would last me till March, but looks like no such luck.
Hopefully I can get the Apple Store people to recover the two weeks of work I've done off of it.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/green/grumpy_sg.gif) grumpy
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December 16th, 2008
01:18 pm - It's not snowing in brooklyn right now...
...it's GIANT CHUNKS OF SNOW FALLING FROM THE SKY!
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December 12th, 2008
09:30 am - Why, computer, WHY?! UPDATE
Why is it my computers always die around Christmas time?
Why is it it has to die thirteen days after my warranty coverage has ended?
Why does it always happen when I'm in the middle of half a dozen projects?
Gah!
Sadly, this time it's a hardware issue so there's little I can do from home. So I'll soon be off to the Apple store to see if it's worth salvaging or if I have to plop down a few grand so I can get back to work...
UPDATE
Back from the dead! As it turns out, the computer only thought it was a hardware problem. My only option was to reformat the drive, but the snag there was the install disk wouldn't recognize the hard drive. With some finagling, it was convinced there was a partitioned drive mounted, and after formatting that (twice) I was able to reinstall OS.
So now I'm in the process of reinstalling all my apps and stuff. Thankfully only about a day's worth of e-mail was lost, along with some Illustrator and InDesign templates which apparently weren't saved in the template folders I backed up. But those are easy enough to recreate.
I realize my zombie computer may succumb to the same issues that plagued it before, but this should at least get me by until I can afford a new one.
Now back to work...
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November 29th, 2008
11:49 am - Off we go!
Marion and I are going to Mexico for a week starting tomorrow, finally taking our honeymoon.
If anyone needs us... too bad! ;)
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November 23rd, 2008
11:53 am - So I need a new business card or postcard...
I'm just about out of my last postcard and it's time I made a new one for conventions and hob knobbing.
I always have difficulty coming up with a business card or postcard that represents me and what I do. It's hard enough explaining all the things I do in words (writing, illustration, comic art, book design, magazine production, character design, game art, lettering, etc.) that trying to come up with an image or two that communicates those abilities is nigh impossible.
Sure, I could make a card that represents just one thing I do. This makes a clear, focused card, and I can tailor it specifically to what work I want to be doing more of. But then I think I'm going to be stuck with 2000 of these things, and don't want to end up with a card that might be too specific to a particular style or industry.
What do people recommend when you don't want to be known for just one thing, but also have a fairly simple card that's not cluttered and verbose?
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November 3rd, 2008
10:57 am - EMERALD CITY CONFIDENTIAL
I can finally start talking about that confidential video game project I've been working on almost all year!
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Emerald City Confidential is a point-and-click adventure game (much like most of the games I work on). It was developed by Wadjet Eye Games and is being published by PlayFirst. It's a noirish tale of mystery and magic in the land of Oz, and will be released in January of 2009.
The game features over 40 hand-drawn 2D backgrounds, more than 6,500 lines of spoken dialog for 35 characters, and a story that takes place over 5 chapters.
I did all the artwork for backgrounds in the game (plus some background animation here and there.) Click the image to the left to be taken to the game's info page, or check out some of the backgrounds by clicking the thumbnails below.
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The game will be available for download and very likely for purchase in real brick and mortar stores. If it does well enough, I imagine there might be versions that make it to the DS and other console systems.
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