3/10/03 - "There he
goes, one of Gods prototypes, too strange to live, too weird
to die..."
Back again, back at school.
Its funny how we all have such illusions of grandeur about college
when we are in grade school. You figure you'd be 10x smarter,
responsible and taller by the time youre bunked away in your
dorm at college. Turns out, my maturity level has actually diminished
since then, im constantly losing braincells, much faster than
i can replace them. (its true that i am taller though). Im not
sure what is suffering worse, my motivation levels or my grades
this semester. Oh well, everyone hits those ruts every now and
then, right? Good news is that I have a few plans up my sleeve
that will hopefully get me into some sort of stable business
environment doing what i love, then i can leave the misery of
computer architecture behind me. My options thus far are to
either start up my own operation and take charge of something
for once in my life(which im becoming more and more motivated
to do lately) or i could become a close freinds right hand man
and most defiinitely get some high profile projects to come
my way. Either route is probably more of a short term thing
that i have planned, and both include finishing college, so
there isnt much i can do now other than to continue with my
plans until i get lucky. Also another cool thing that happened
lately was the announcement of Sony Ericssons new line of phones,
the T310 and the T610. It turns out, that the T310 comes installed
with a game that i worked on over half of my winter break. (Tony
Hawk Pro Skater 4 anyone?). (more about it in the projects section).
Its kindof weird to know that I actually had the opportunity
to work on such a title (Mr. Hawk, if youre reading, and i doubt
it, sorry your sprites are soo small , there was just no other
way), and it turned out to be quite fun to do, even for a port.
It turns out that the original backgrounds for the ATT version,
despite having nice composition, were poorly pixeled, and i
wound up just redrawing half of them my own template that i
made. The animations of the original sprites, however, were
quite good, and although they werent really cleaned up too well
on the ATT version after they resized their 3d model, it did
turn out to be quite a nice guide. Bottom line, it was alot
more work for just a 'port' than most people would expect, i
had to redo alot of stuff to make it look just as good using
only half the amount of colors as the ATT version. Im proud
of how the end result turned out.
On the other hand, im startind to develop a nice relationship
with the folks at Synergenix, the creators of the Mophun platform
that is featured on many of the T series phones from SonyEricsson.
Ive been able to find someone at my school who is pretty interested
into starting up development with me. Hes learning a few of
the SDK's, while im trying to shop around for Portals/Distributors
for some of the projects i have in mind. Hopefully, theyll bite,
because i think that they could do really well on the market.
I suppose ill say more about them when they either launch, or
die.
Its sort of ironic, at the
end of the month of January, i had no hopes of work for the
immediate future regarding pixel art. Then came February and
i was working on 5 projects at once all of a sudden! it turns
out that i had to quit 4 of the 5 projects before a week of
working on any of them in order to keep my sanity. In the process
i fear ive burned a few bridges, but i hope that ill be able
to do business with them again sometime in the future. Such
is life i guess, because now i dont have any paying offers once
again, and thus i have to sludge along with my own projects
to try and produce something magnificent to sell. Although it
is quite exciting to take on something like that, i am sort
of running out of funds at the moment... and desperately need
some cash. Time will tell if my entrepeneurial endeavors will
pay off. till my next game launch then...
12/20/02 - "Its the
rebels sir... well, they're here." "God sakes man...Do
they want any tea?"
Mmmmm... December is finally
here. I havent updated the site in a while because ive been
workin my little buns off on finishing this semester up with
school, and with the jobs that I've had recently. Good news
is, I finished out the semester yesterday with a bang, and I
aced all my finals. That is my initial reaction, I'll probably
wind up getting like 3 C's or something. Anyways, what this
does mean is that I have a whole month off to recollect myself
and get some cool art done in the meanwhile. Ive got TWO very
large projects that are wrapping up this weekend. One is for
the Mophun platform, and the other one (which is actually two
titles out of a planned trilogy) is in black n white J2ME style.
Both should make a wave or two I hope... as soon as they are
released ill then be able to add them to the Projects section.
More good news is that I now
have a brand new workstation! The payment that I got from the
failed GBA project allowed me to buy this workstation, and let
me even keep a few hundred dollars left over for some christmas
presents. (see what good things can happen when you work on
something for a whole week before it gets cancelled? heh. )
Actually, now that I think about it, they still havent sent
out the second half of the payment, so until they do, they still
have the last laugh (sorry, still cant reveal who it is). I
bought a Dell Dimension 2350 and customized it online, it was
a pretty good deal since i got a hundred dollar mail-in rebate
at the end of the purchase..plus free shipping! (that reminds
me to go hunt down that rebate, forgot all about it! heh). For
those of you who really enjoy listening to computer specs, its
got a 1.8 Gig Pent. 4 processor (not the fastest , but its all
I really need) , 512 Mb SD RAM , 120 Gigs of HD space (how on
earth am I going to fill up all that memory?) , came with an
optical mouse, speakers with subwoofer, 17in flatscreen Ultrasharp
monitor (its a hella lot better than the laptop LCD screens
ive been staring at for the past two years), CDrw/DVD player,
4 USB slots, which are cool because two are mounted in the rear
of the tower and two are located on the front of the tower,
and best of all , it is a sleek looking black station. Words
cant describe how happy I am that i purchased this thing.
Over the break, I plan on getting
alot of stuff done for personal enjoyment... one of which is
to catch up on learning Java, and dusting and polishing some
c++ skills so that I might actually be able to code something
useful someday, heh. Also, a coder freind of mine and I are
putting together a prototype for the Mophun platform... we plan
on working on it all of January, and we have some pretty big
players that are interested in the concept, all we have to do
is deliver really... so it is kindof exciting! Also planned
over the break is some tutorial writing, since my keyboard no
longer has any typing issues. I want to not only expand the
previous topics covered with more advanced techniques for cleaner
sprites, but also want to get into tile and background art as
well. Hopefully that will be well underway by mid January. Well
ive taken enough time away from my pixeling time, so its back
to work for me.
11/22/02 - "LIFE OF
A SPAWNING PIXEL ARTIST"
Over the past couple of months,
I have been lucky enough to scrap together a few freelance art
jobs making pixel art for cell phone games. Most of these games
are available in Europe (ok well all of them are that I have
contributed to so far) which doesnt really help my urge to see
them out on the market, being that I reside in the US. Currently
I have two projects that are just kindof looming over me at
the moment. i was supposed to finish them mid fall, but due
to my lack of motivation, interference from school/real life,
etc, I havent exactly been giving them my undivided attention.
Well this month I've been kicking it up a notch to match the
productivity I was having over the summer, so at least I am
accomplishing things again! Anyways, I cant really say much
about the projects yet, and if you dont live in Europe, might
as well not even care because youll never get to play them,
heh. Interesting enough, one of the programmers I was working
with on one of these cell phone games heard word of this opportunity
to publish a title for the GBA, and offered a position to help
him develop it. It would have been a three man team really,
one programmer, one artist, one musician. What more could an
antisocial pixel artist ask for? A game on the shelves... this
would have been a huge step up in my artistic career! (Incidentally
enough, I study computer science in my University, and wound
up learning nothing about programming so far save basic c++
/ java syntax... and here I am wanting to be an artist?) Not
only was this a great opportunity, but the financial implications
were also inviting. Whats the downside? well it called for a
relatively quick development time of just a couple of months.
A couple of days later I start
on the project, and am overwhelmed with enthusiasm. I had to
convert some sprites and write up all this documentation for
some top cheeses working on some top cheese liscenced title...
what could be better? Well, a week later, which was earlier
this week, the programmer told me to "remove all sharp
objects from the area and sit down". We all know immediately
that this is bad news, heh. I failed to see the severity of
the issue, figuring that the publishers wanted a shorter deadline
or something like that. His reply was " <insert top
secret title here> was cancelled." !!!!!! This was terrible!
my first big shot in 'the industry' was blown away by the snap
of the fingers of corporate suits. Take for granted, im not
going to lie, I dont really see how these types of games sell
either, but (with all do respect of course) if games like Lego
Island can sell, then any game should be able to sell. I grabbed
a screencapture of Lego Island (sources will remain nameless)
and I had to immediately laugh at it, it just was not visually
appealing at all, no matter what age group you are in. Regardless
of our woes, we still had to submit a final build of the demo...
apparently we still get paid a little for our time, but its
obviously not the same as getting the game on the shelves.
So after that crushing blow,
there was a decision of some sorts to focus more on the mobile
market, which is really starting to take off. I think that the
mobile market now is much like the handheld market was back
when the Gameboy first came out. However, this market is expanding
rapidly, which means that the market for the games will also
develop just as rapidly, with a high demand for quality game
developers. Its time to strike while the iron is hot. I have
a few prototypes in mind, plus the ideas of some of the people
I am working with. Also I just agreed to convert a title to
the mophun platform, although it wont be very fun, its a widely
known title that almost everyone who lives in the 20th/21st
century would recognize.
As far as school and real life
goes, Ive learned that grades really arent as important as most
people stress them to be, unless you are looking to go into
grad school, which i am definitely not considering (notice ho
i dont care about capitalizing "i" anymore, lol.).
4 of my 5 classes dont even require studying for, they are joke
classes (but then again like i said most of my classes have
nothing to do with the field I am working in now (digital art)
nor my backup plan career, computer science. Therefore, school
for me is pretty much becoming a waste of money and time, but
it is at the point now where my family has invested too much
money in order for me to just quit now. I was seriously considering
taking next semester off to work on some serious projects, but
then my gba title got cancelled and now im just sort of floating
in limbo here. Hopefully my life will follow some better direction
in the near future, but this is the critical point in my life
which will most likely determine what im going to be doing for
the next 40 years that I can work. I should also take into consdieration
that there will be no Social Security money for me when I get
old, so I should probably start building my retirement fund...
today, heh. Thats all for this rant, will update whenever the
hell I feel like it.
-Stoven
