Lemons from Life

Still looking for a job, still stuck in Israel, still living with my parents. Things haven't been too hot. Gotta keep working despite that and hope for good news.

I though I would update with 3D work, but that has been going super slow. I blame the book I am trying to follow along with, but the instructions aren't clear enough for my liking.
Working on unwrapping the floor buffer I modeled:



 Still doing the occasional study:

 



Some concepts for Europa: First Probe a game I hope to make someday.
I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but it's an idea I had while brainstorming ideas for a game jam with some friends in the bay area. Simple enough concept iterating on an old game idea: fall down a tunnel and avoid the walls for as long as possible. Fingers control a light, tilt controls the angle of descent.



No reason to stop doing daily speed paints, but now I have 3 pages on deviant art to pick from and post here.

Board Game 1 - A New Project

My cousin had me play Settlers of Catan for the first time about half a year ago. I was instantly hooked, and have been delving deeper into the hobby ever since, first in the Bay Area, and now home to Haifa. I've found a group to play with on Monday, and we pull out Catan whenever my brother and SIL come to visit. I listen to blogs about it and watch videos on youtube. I figured I would try my hand at it, if only as an excuse to design some art. Here's what I have so far, some rough layouts and ideas. Prettier thing are soon to follow.

I couldn't start this project without first finishing the monster studies collage, so here it is in it's final form.

And a few more of the podcast paintings:

Wooga Style

I talked with a Wooga representative during GDC Europe, and I told him I would do something in their style, to increase my chances. Here it is, a demoness based on something I did when I was 17 or 18 and had on my door since.

In other news, there's no news about employment, whether it's from game studios or the few local places I contacted. Been messing around more in Photoshop, made use of my GDC Vault access, started reading a book about making games in Unity, and installed 3DS Max to add to my skills.

Skrejgib fashion

Concepts for Skrejgib costumes, and my final decision on the look of these fox like alien antagonists.

Skrejgib anatomy

Having finally hit a direction I'm happy with, I expanded the bust into full body studies of Skrejgib anatomy. Before I did the bodies, I tried a quick color test, concluding that I need to do more of those, and tried out the "fool the Captain into doing our bidding" expression.

I also did some concept art for Scrappy over the past week, experimenting with terraforming as per our new background story.

Monument Valley

Pushed the concept I thought fit best to the point I felt I was just noodling with the details of the rocks, which had little effect on the overall impact. Also felt I had lost clarity in the direction of lighting. Next one I do will be better, right? ;)

I think I have less than 10 hours total on it. I don't see how I could put as many hours as I do with traditional media, but I know some people do. I think I'll go back to the Blastola Cola Blaster next. Finish as much as possible before I fly off to Toronto and later Germany. I've been approved as CA for GDC Europe. It's going to be great. :D

CC: Surface Color Studies

Getting back to working on Captain Comic. Now that I've actually seen the complete (sort of) walkthrough of the game, I learned that it ended with the Skrejgib stealing the Captain's space cruiser and the treasures onboard, living him stuck on a planet without space faring technology. They do have the time machine the Captain built, and he uses it to travel 1000 years into the future, hoping the technology has advanced far enough to let him leave. No one else who tried going through returned, which makes us suspects something's up. Accordingly, I have changed the name of the project to "Stranded on Chronia" and have to consider this back story in future work, which isn't a huge stretch really. On to the art: Picked my favorite bits and pieces from the value thumbnails, and tried some color studies out. Color picking always seems to work better than trying to come up with my own palette, just like using any other kind of reference in that regard, but less awkward. ;)

CC: Plant Enemies

Taking a break from the environments so I can look at them later with fresh eyes, I shifted towards drawing thumbnail silhouettes of walking plants, inspired by the first enemies you see in Captain Comic 2. The first 3 are based on the in-game sprites. For the rest I have been thinking about the plant life cycle and how it might play if combined with animal locomotion. I was also thinking about jungle life, to fit with my initial environment studies.

Captain Comic: Planet Nrober

I'm redesigning Captain Comic (using the sequel as my primary source of inspiration.) If you aren't familiar with it, it is a classic 90's PC platformer. I started with gun silhouettes, trying to solve the problem of why Blasto Cola make the good captain shoot fireballs, and trying out some comical proportions (pun intended.) Rendered out some of my favorites, and I intend to get back to it with a final design. Next I worked on the Captain himself, drawing inspiration from different sources (from left:) the cover art for Captain Comic II: Fractured Reality, astronaut suits and motorcycle body armor.

Scrappy game jam

Last week a group of friends, lead by my friend Allen, came together for the weekend to work on a game. As part of the group, I had done concept art and tiles for the level. After our composers played the music they had made for the game we decided to head in a different direction as far as environments go, but maybe I inspired ideas by doing these.

I have done concept for our protagonist, Scrappy, but Ellis, one of the other artists, has taken on the task of fleshing him out.

Finally, I worked on enemies. Again, most of these will be thrown away as we work out the mechanics, since Scrappy is supposed to collect parts from downed enemies changing his abilities, but it may inspire ideas in the rest of the team.

We are also planning to have a flying mid-boss, as well as one underground.

Song Bird

Started digging deeper into designing aliens for my game concept, I thought a good first contact would be an alien that could heal, and doing it with sound would be an interesting concept. This reminded me of how barn owl use their face as satellite dishes, and I took it from there. The healing aspect then changed to buff/debuff using songs on one skill branch, while the other will turn these aliens into skilled night fighters. I started sketching adult-sized aliens at sketch night, and took the concept I liked into Photoshop only remember I wanted to go super deformed. I also decided I would call my game "Star Voices" as there will be many playable species, each with their own voice, as well as for the democracy system which will give each played a voice on global game concerns, such as alien diplomacy or research options.

Chibi M4 Carbine

Another in the series. This and the Beretta are the weapons you would start with in my game.

Happy new year :)

I ended 2010 attending the annual life drawing marathon at Tiltan, my old college. I talked with Erez and Michal, the couple who founded this small art school, and with Mail, the head of the graphic design course, who taught me back in the day.
I also saw Kobi and Ilan, old professors of mine, but we didn't talk.

On Friday I took the car to IBM in Petach Tikva, for the 2010 Israel game unconference. It was pretty sweet, seeing who makes games in Israel, listening to lectures, and dropping off some of my business cards. Free pastries for breakfast, free pizza for lunch. Can't complain. ;)

Sagi, charcoal, first drawing of the night, warming up.

Sagi and Andre, charcoal, one hour pose (These guys are champs, sitting for an hour straight)

Yael, 6B pencil, 30 minutes? hour?

5 min. gestures of Yael, charcoal

 

Yulia, 6B