Grappa Pixel Tea
Crabescent Dithering
Twenty Five Things
Jan 30th
So everyone seems to be doing this for whatever reason. I kind of hate facebook so I’ll do it on my own turf.
1. When I get angry and yell at someone I feel very faint, and often almost pass out. As a result, I have a really hard time yelling at people.
2. I used to play the clarinet. I want to do it again, it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
3. When changing the volume on a stereo with a numeric display, I feel uncomfortable if the volume isn’t a multiple of 2 or 5.
4. I really hate having my hair cut, so usually I don’t.
5. I’m making a video game with a friend.
6. I used to be an amazing athlete… a long time ago.
7. My favourite book is “The Snow Goose” by Paul Gallico. You should read it, because it’s beautiful and it only takes about an hour.
8. I almost completely lost my big toe in a cycling accident, but it completely healed.
9. A doctor had determined that my mother was incapable of having another child due to previous birth complications before I was born. HA!
10. Playing video games with other people is my favourite thing. Ever.
11. I have saved someone’s life.
12. When I was young I stole a pack of Transformers cards from a local deli. I still feel guilty about it, I mean, it even had a stick of gum!
13. I only wear dress socks, no matter what the occasion.
14. My secret dream professions are: fashion designer, pixel artist for video games, children’s book illustrator, teacher, UI designer for an OS.
15. Apple juice is my favourite non alcoholic drink, Baileys (on the rocks) is my favourite alcoholic drink.
16. I am infatuated with cetaceans.
17. At primary school, I had a book about learning black magic confiscated from me. Really!
18. I love coats… and windmills.
19. It’s far too hard to decide on what my favourite movie is since I love so many, but my favoruite TV series is “Twin Peaks”.
20. I’ve been fired, once. I didn’t deserve it.
21. I wish I could live closer to my brother again.
22. I find it hard to eat pasta. Once I got a stomach infection from some pasta which put me in hospital. It was the most painful experience I’ve ever had.
23. Eucalyptus oil is my favourite smell, although I also love the smell of sawdust and band-aids (unused).
24. I once competed in, and won a Judo tournament.
25. Grappa.
Gallagher the FAIL.
Jan 27th
So! My SoRR sprite-smithing venture didn’t work out. Well, it did and it didn’t. Technically, I learnt new techniques and made some great sprites, but unfortunately that’s not an end of it. No-one in the community seemed to like my artwork and the general tone of the members was inappreciably snippy. I don’t know what I expected, after all it is the internet and—even worse—they are forum dwellers. It isn’t all bad though. Afterwards, the experience left me feeling somewhat sour but also made me think about Paraplu again.
Resultantly, I pretty much just sat down and drew 20 items right off the bat. Then I updated Grubby Metal Statue (to look more “goofy”, at the request of my cohort). Last time I attempted to make item-sprites for the game it was a major brick wall for me; finding an appropriate tonal angle was frustrating me intensely and ultimately it was likely what halted my last creative streak. I honestly think drawing Gallagher was what gave me the perspective to bring me to my feet again, studying the original early-90s SEGA art taught me some really useful things about animating sprites, namely:
- You can do it with even fewer colours than you think you need
- Fewer colours makes animation easier
- You can do it with fewer frames of animation than you think you need
- No-one will notice if you copy and paste parts during animation
- Motion blurring is easy and can save you from fully drawing tons of original frames
Animating a sprite that was about 5 times bigger than anything I’d ever attempted before seemed very daunting; but when I look back at some of the best sprite art I’ve ever seen I realised just how cheap they were about creating these things. It doesn’t have to be hard, you just have to be clever. Even that’s not specifically true… it’s not really about cutting corners, it’s about knowing which areas to concentrate your efforts on.
Something that I’m bad at, apparently.
-LEARNING POWER -
WE CAN ALL LEARNING.
LEARNING WILL GET THE MOUSE TO THE CHEESE PLATE.
Gallagher the punk
Jan 19th
Gallagher WIP
Here’s the progress so far on the SoRR punk. Mine’s the one on the right, and the guy on the left is a standard common enemy from the game. Now I look at it, the colours are really weird out of Photoshop. Anyway, pleased by the progress so far!
The renascence of phantasm: 2009!
Jan 16th
I just realised this hideous design is not only cluttered, but also quite dreary. Furthermore I don’t even NEED or use the sidebar and I totally have to redesign it lest the magnitude of my insanity reach new heights. What kind of a fool-man made this damn theme? Not one I’d choose to associate with, that, my dear friends, is a sure thing. Thus, I’m preparing a crisp, clean one wrought with the twin powers of whimsy and elegance, a single-column layout to bedazzle even the most jaded of globular oculars.
Additionally, I feel like I want to revivify my right-hemi and get back into some artistic projects. Paraplu particularly, but I think I need to get there by way of a few more bite-sized aperitifs.
Idea the first: Redesign this blog
- Less cluttered, single-column approach,
- No external links,
- RSS button,
- A lighter theme,
- Incorporate some new piece of artwork, however minor.
Idea the second: Enemy sprite for BomberGames Streets of Rage Remake project
If any of you happen by some wild chance to be fans of SEGA‘s 90′ masterpieces the Streets of Rage series you should definitely check out Street of Rage Remake: an ambitious but very successful project to make a sort of meta-game out of all three games in the series, whilst also upgrading many of the game systems and adding new features. They currently have an excellent playable version of the progress that’s really worth checking out!
Anyway.
Since adding in new enemies to the already decent cast is on the cards, it would be an excellent mini-project to design an enemy character for the project and try to get it into the game. This is good for a few reasons:
- Small, finishable project
- Good warmup for Paraplu art
- Contribution to a project that I would love to help with
- A good challenge for my level of skill
- Emphasis on use of minimal colour palettes, a key spriting skill
- Good exercise in large sprite animations
Everyone who knows me should endeavour to bug me into doing this until my ears are bleeding with regret for having mentioned it.
“One of the symptoms of approaching a nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” – Bertrand Russel
Best Video Games of 2008: The Juu Picks
Jan 6th
Here’s a list of some good games from this year.
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Played So Much It Isn’t Even Funny, Seriously. Award: Rock Band 2
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Runner Up(s): Saint’s Row II, Boom Blox
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Was Up Until Four In The Morning Without Noticing Award: Metal Gear Solid 4
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Best Excuse To Shoot Zombies With Your Wife Award: Left 4 Dead
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Knew It Was Good Just From The Screenshots Award: Valkyria Chronices
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“Runner” Up: Mirror’s Edge
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Best Game Involving Cryptozoology Photography: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
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Awesome Indie Game That People Actually Bought Award: Braid
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Runner Up(s): World of Goo, Aquaria, Castle Crashers
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Best Game That Shishka Is Better Than Me At: Geometry Wars 2
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Most Immersive Malaria Simulator: Far Cry 2
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Most Goodest Writing: Grand Theft Auto 4
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Runner Up: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
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Please God Let Us Play It Award: Diablo 3
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Runner Up: Fez
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Stupidest Game That Is Actually Awesome: Saint’s Row II
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Runner Up: Metal Gear Solid 4
Additionally, here are some games that might be on this list if I’d properly played them, but didn’t have the chance: Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet (anyone want to multi?), Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, The World Ends With You, Chrono Trigger DS, Bioshock, Persona 4, Prince of Persia, Etrian Odessy.
Here are some bad ones!
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Catastrophically, Pathetically Hilarious Award: Playstation Home
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Worst Everything Ever Oh God My Brain Hurts Award: Obscure: The Aftermath
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Runner Up: Playstation Home
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Highest Number Of Stupid Plot Twists: Metal Gear Solid 4
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Best Popular Game That Looks Like Crap Award: Super Street Fighter II HD Remix
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Worst Splitscreen Multiplayer: Resistance 2
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Most Annoying Online Play: Soulcalibur IV
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Runner Up: Playstation Home
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Brutal AI Of Death Award: Spore
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Runner Up: Left 4 Dead
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Nice Try, But Not Quite Award: Guitar Hero World Tour
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Runner Up: Patapon
It was a pretty good year for games, I guess! Now, maybe this year I’ll have time to play half of them…
Thanksgiving Weekend
Dec 1st
We are pretty well settled in our house. See: here’s Anny looking confused in the kitchen! Why am I taking a picture of her? Even I don’t know. Crazy!
Thanksgiving at Xian’s was really awesome (not pictured). He and Miyuki did an awesome job of hosting and everyone had a really wonderful time. Thanks so much, guys! It’s fun to be part of a new tradition.
Yesterday I did a bit to help Nathaniel move in. It was very foggy. Very foggy. Look! This is what it was like outside my back door:
I know! Looks like it could be a shot from a next-gen Silent Hill game. Driving along in it by myself was one of the best moments of the weekend, actually.
In gaming news, Left 4 Dead is awesome and I really hope that I get more of a chance to play with friends. It’s super fun! The only other thing I really had time for other than HOURS of Rock Band has been that new Castlevania thing on the DS. I’m actually really enjoying it — it retains the open-world feel and interesting technique alchemy of the previous DS titles with the spirit of some of the more sequential, insular level sets of earlier games. As usual, the pixel art is absolutely divine and incredibly inspiring. On inspiration — maybe I will have a chance to work on Paraplu this weekend! I hope I have enough time.
Progress!
It’s hard to think of something nicer…
Oct 29th
…than sitting down to a nice, quiet, after-work coffee in the afternoon with your wife. Ah.
I want to write some more content here soon about games, but I have a problem—there’s too many games to play at the moment! I’m mainly getting into Rock Band 2, which I don’t particularly want to write about because we all know it’s really good and fun and like, OMG the parties and Duran Duran etc. I think I’d rather write about something that’s a little more interesting than that. Dead Space I can guarantee I will write about, however I’ve promised Anny and Nathaniel that I won’t play it until we can all play it together the proper way; late at night in the basement with the volume cranked. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is also wonderful and fun, but I don’t want to write about it until I’ve played more of it. Then there is Far Cry 2, which reminds me a lot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and we all know how much I loved that. Little Big Planet, Guitar Hero World Tour, Saint’s Row 2 and the Resistance 2 Beta all cap it off, but that’s only until next month when Mirror’s Edge comes out and yaaarghhh! Ahem. Needless to say, I’ll be writing more again soon.
Deep Crow
Oct 24th
Looks like we get to go to Escrow today and buy a house. Gulp. Let’s hope this time there are no hiccups!
Desk
Oct 21st
For all of you who were never curious, here is my desk. I self-consciously thought about cleaning it before snapping this but quickly decided against it. That’s right, my dear readers, this is pure, B&W filtered realism!
Going from left to right you may spot some of the following items, amongst the eight PCs pictured, all of which I am currently working on:
- - Comfy old faux-leather chair that sometimes springs backwards unexpectedly.
- - Old CRT that I use for KVM, with a sticker: “Barry the Monitor”
- - WD 1TB External HDD, which doesn’t work some of the time, ugh
- - “Coat rack”
- - My work PC (on the far right), custom built small form factor dood with performance RAID and all that jazz. Fun!
Close up from where I sit. Contents listed below.
- - Notepad and pen, the most useful tools I have at work
- - One pair of Green Panasonic RP-HTX7s, the best pair of headphones I have ever owned
- - Mug with face, for drinking copious amounts of tea
- - Apple Wired Keyboard, the best keyboard I’ve ever used
- - Logitech MX Nano Wireless Mouse, which I bought for my EeePC, but turned out to be so damned good that I use it full time
- - Lacie External HDD, which you can’t see in this photo very clearly, but has a lovely little retractable USB cable and is designed by Sam Hecht; meaning it is a rectangular prism
NOW YOU KNOW.
The Mall
Oct 20th
I think this photo illustrates more clearly what I’m on about when I say I work “in a shopping mall” than any other I’ve taken. This is the lobby area of the building I work in, the Seattle Design Center. SDC is primarily home to very high-end interior design showrooms, some of which are so exclusive they won’t even allow mere plebes access to their wares—you must first be a sufficiently elitist interior designer of no small Masonic rank. Even then they have stringent requirements about the pronunciation of espresso and biscotti (both of which are colours, I’ll have you know!), as well as implements for measuring the extreme angle of one’s upturned nose. Often I see Prada-clad women, almost in tears; trepidaciously teetering on the thresholds of these boutiques, hoping, against hope that the Shopkeeper may deign to let them browse.
The building has a kind of strange physically inverted hierarchy; the most opulent stores are at ground level, selling chairs that will run you somewhere in the order of eight thousand “clams” and coffee-tables in the shape of curled scrolls. As you move up the floors the showrooms can rely less on the designer name to justify the price-tags; becoming less lackadaisical and more conscientiously elitist: a spotty, alien looking lamp for four thousand; a green backlit basin so expensive it doesn’t bear a price-tag; dress mirrors with inset Blu-ray players.
The top floor (as I understand it, I’ve never been) is all office-space; and accordingly is sealed off from public access—presumably so that the upper-crust clientele don’t have to needlessly mingle with the unwashed worker masses. Curiously, our company’s space is fairly high-up on this chain, sharing the same realm on the third floor as the lighting and carpet studios. I’m not sure if this is a reflection on our professional image or some kind of horrid mistake, either way I am positive we are the only room in this building that has a foosball table.
