Thursday, July 12, 2007
GEE GEE GEE GEE

~MONSTER DESIGN IS MY PASSION!~

That has always been a big draw in for me when it comes to video games. You'll see giant robot dinosaurs, undead flying dragons, floating cities with eyeballs, things you can not imagine. It's always been about cool bosses, clever enemy design, even vehicles. Most of the time the bad guys get the best things possible. They get decked out rides, flying robotic fortresses, the works. Rarely do the good guys get anything as cool as what the bad guys get. So many games have pulled off such incredible assortment of bosses and enemies, obviously the two that comes to mind is the Castlevania Series, as well as Contra. I can't forget Amano's monster designs either. I think I am well around average artist at best, but I feel like my ability to create interesting monster designs is my strong point.

It's fun to get a txt from someone who writes something incredible vague and just says "make something" out of this tiny blarb. It's like constructing something creative out of your own mind from thin air with only a base to go from. Something like that feels to me, when your imagination and your artistic ability kind of flows together to create something neat out of nothing. You aren't being asked to create a stupid Anime portrait that can be done by anyone because Anime art can be taught in tutorials. When you get good at Anime, that's the extent of your creativity. If someone asked you to draw something beyond that, I'm sure it would be difficult. Personally I would find that less satisfying. There is a difference from creating your own art and creating something you find in some kind of Anime tutorial. I am sure anatomy design is very useful, and there are a lot of artists who actually blend Anime and different styles to construct something new. Something like that I can appreciate very much. It always sounds like I am knocking Anime artists, but I'm not. It is still impressive regardless.

It's like, being a musical composer. Being influenced by other composers and creating something but still retaining your own sound. I'm sure there are a lot of different examples that can be applied. But, I am sure there is a difference between having an influence and simply taking a song and changing a few notes and saying it's "my original piece".

~Technobabel~


I've been focusing all of my energy on this Android Shmup Firas(RPG) and I are working on. I prefer this project over RN for many-many reasons. Essentially with Technobabel I can do whatever I want from a creators standpoint without the hindrance of RPG related content(battle system, story, characters, etc). I've touched the RPG genre, it's fun for a while, and I plan on releasing RN on Android in the future, but I'm just done with it. Eventually you just want to expand your creativity. I want to make platformers, puzzlers, beat em' ups. I'm being honest when I say making an RPG is god awful. If you want to burn yourself out, try to make an RPG. I do not understand how people can churn out the same thing over and over when it is essentially the same thing. We call those people "Chumps".
Technobabel is not a normal Shmup. We want it to go up-down-left-right- we want you to dodge enemies, and terrain, we want to add obscure and abnormal bosses, a card system, an endless supply of support characters to enhance the replay value. I feel stuff like that is real game design, not laying down tiles and going "hurr". I'm starting to value spriting a lot more because of this project, slowly learning how to create bigger sprites. I get back more than most people, improving yourself artistically while creating something.

Basically, when we finish this project we either know a lot about Game Design or jack shit about it. If it's successful, we might be onto something, if not, well maybe it's not our thing. But, games aren't exactly rocket science in the first place. A game that is a Shmup/Contra hybrid with some cool jams from Chef.

~BEAD ART~

My good friend Kim has been working on bead art recently. The stuff is really neat and thought I would post a few since I find it interesting and creative. We've done a couple projects together, and she is very fun to work with. Few people get my vibe I guess! Someday I want to just, sip tea and surround myself with artistic and creative humans and just talk the day away about art. But alas, tis a dream.. Kim has an Artfire account selling these for fun in the form of jewelry and other cool stuff in the future. If you have a nerdy girlfriend it would make a pretty rad gift. So check that out.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
As an Artist

I was 6 or 7 when I drew this. I started off terrible.

Well, growing up I got into art at a very young age. I think I was around 6 or 10 my parents would buy me those lined paper note pads to draw with(I still have most of them). What I would do is make comic boxes and draw inside them, they wouldn't really make sense but I would just imagine a story along with it in my head. Like, when you're young your parents can't afford to buy you every single toy on the planet! So I found it was just as fun to draw them on paper and make them do things instead. So most of my little art doodles revolved around 80's toys like Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, stuff like that.
I had a thing for Mega Man when I was 10.

Stuff like that influenced me a lot when I was young. People have commented that I draw a lot
of Zombies and Robots. Well, when I was young I couldn't get enough of Transformers stuff. So
I would draw them almost constantly doing crazy things or TMNT/Transformers crossovers.
Then Mega Man was introduced on the NES so Transformers took a back seat and then EVERYTHING was Mega Man stuff.

As far as Zombies are concerned, I think after watching Bruce Campell, in Army of Darkness and some really old Clash of the Titans movie where this guy had to fight all these skeleton zombie things so I thought that is super cool and I would start drawing Zombies and Skeletons. Just like MegaMan, Castlevania shortly came out and pretty much enhanced my interest in them. So, I don't draw them because I'm morbid, because I'm the opposite of that, but I just find them interesting because you can do a bunch of goofy things with them.
I didn't improve much starting Highschool.

So I have stuck with those two things as my primary sources of inspiration ever since I was super young. So in a way I think those two things are kind of my "thing". I've expanded my
art in other areas over the years but those two are always the primary things I draw. That's why you see a lot of undead and robots in my games. Not because I like scary or Cyberpunk games.

As far as other artists who have inspired me, I've taken a few styles and worked them into my own. YoshitakaAmano is one who has inspired me greatly. He creates beautiful pieces, that I first got to experience in the Final Fantasy games. I can't get enough of his sketchy abstract work. Yoji Shinkawa has a similar sketchy style that is just simply incredible. I love the pieces he's done for the Metal Gear series. I am a big-big-big fan. That's probably why I always put some
kind of military equipment on my characters. When I am casually drawing I'll usually use black
ink pens or sharpies(markers). I feel markers are as close to a paintbrush as possible, and I get
the best control and results from using them. It's like when you go in the shower and you have a sliding glass door and you start to sketch things out with your finger on the glass.

I use normal pens to sketch conceptual art and I avoid using pencils as much as possible. I don't like the feel of pencils at all. And I think finding what tool works best in your hand takes priority over anything.
I must admit, I don't really like to color much unless it's with sharpies. I adore bright and abstract colors vs standard darker colors. I hate coloring with Photoshop, but it's cost effective
and practical, so I deal with it. Sharpies are by far the ideal coloring tool for me. I'm still a big
fan of traditional cheap coloring tools like Markers or Crayons.

A lot of people think you're born with the art talent. I used to think this too when I was very young. After reflecting off everything I have experienced, I have just got decent at art simply because I spent a lot of time doing it, not because I was naturally good at it. Having fun putting something to paper isn't a gift. When I first started I was terrible at it up until Highschool where I started to refine my style, and I am still learning how to make it better on my own, and I will probably continue to learn how to improve it up until I just stop drawing. It's just something that comes with time, not tips from other other people, not art classes, just time. Infact, in High school I failed every single art class and I had to make up for them in Summer school. I didn't agree with the methods used, and I felt it was a cookie cutter class. Art is something you produce with your imagination and creativity. I don't think you can be a good artist without a big imagination.

I highly respect anyone who decides to pick up a pen or pencil and expresses themselves. In fact, I have noticed a surge of artists now then what I saw from when I was growing up. I think it has a lot to do with mainstream anime being apart of peoples daily lives. That's the difference I've noticed between my art and younger people. When you grow up surrounded by anime naturally that is what you'll want to draw and get inspiration from. When I was growing up it was from 80's American cartoons.

Finally, my advice to artists is, no matter what style or skill level you have if you enjoy it keep doing it, f-u-c-k what anyone else says. Even if it is some art celebrity art snob telling you your work is bad. Just tell him to go SUCK A DICK, because anyone can tell you what is bad about something. No matter what it comes down to art is subjective, what one person sees another person won't. I think that is the only useful thing I have learned from my art teachers.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Summer Lovin' ~Hiatus is oversaurus Rex!
Lady Libra would like to have a word with you!

So let me explain something. I'm from California. I was born in Ca, and I will probably expire from this this planet in Ca. The thing we love the most is the summer. It sounds sort of like a stereotypical thing but it's really accurate, we love summer. We're like lizards searching for
a cozy heated rock to lay on top of and let the death ray sun vapors hit our skin all day, everyday.

Now, during the winter I do absolutely nothing. I usually sit in my room huddled in a blanket with some hot tea and my laptop and couch surf the day away playing World of Warcraft or wasting time on IRC. My work computer that has all of my art, game docs, etc, is on the other side of the freezing cold room next to the bathroom, so it totally enhances the freeze factor. During the winter I try every other day to open RN and work on it, but I just instantly click it off and float back to the heater.

A huge issue I had was this scene that I kept kicking around all winter trying to figure out how to
pull it off, and I just couldn't find any way to do it. So, basically this 5 minute scene prevented my progress all winter.



scene that took me all winter to finish (-\\)

So it's currently summer, things are totally different. Why? Because now I'm warm. When I'm warm, I go out more, socialize, and when I socialize I get ideas, and draw, and do all sorts of things. ALL BECAUSE I HAVE THE SUN TO KEEP ME WARM! Like, I cannot accept any weather that is not 90 something. Weather is a huge deal to me, because I am moody, and the weather has almost everything to do with that.

So with RN lately I have been just hitting it hard, like I've been getting a ridiculous amount of content and scenes done. Everything looks good, story is cruising, characters developing, it's just all great right now.

So, to sort of recap on the game, I'm working on one full game that contains a bunch of short stories. Like Live-a-Live. Except it's in the same universe and all of the stories connect to each
other from different time frames, like Sukioden 3. Now, when I created my first game in RM, I thought, well it was a nice test to see what the program is capable of and if it was for me, so then I created the Rainbow Nightmare with Wolfie and Lush, and it won a few Misaos, few interviews, people seem to overall enjoy it despite the many bugs and stuff. I didn't like the game, really. I thought it did a few clever things, but overall I thought it was a really stupid game. At the end of it I just thought I could create something better.

So I don't talk about Libra's Story much, because when I announced I would be working on a new game which was Granin, Renders, and Myth falling into this town that is filled with undead, and it was very grim and spooky, and the bad guys were different undead, and you met all these cool characters and you join together to enter this vast castle. I like it a lot, and I still write about it and it's being worked on sometimes. I started to think about it, and I went well, I already did Granin in one game I don't want to feel like it's a re-used kind of deal, plus I still had new characters that I wanted to try out.

So I created Libra's Story which goes side by side with Granin's Story. Libra's story is by far my favorite out of anything I've designed or came up with so far. When I started the RN games I wanted to be more robots and machines vs fantasy, and when I created the game with Wolfie and Lush, practically the whole demo was in a fantasy setting, and I eventually started to really hate the game. It just came out like that, because that is where the story went. So instead of just quitting I finished it and told myself I would try something new, instead of working on something I felt was flawed in too many ways.

Libra's story works into everything I ever wanted. Fantasy characters going up against machines and robots, advanced cities, trains, etc. So as far as game progress goes I'm tying up the first introduction area up. It's very simple, so people will get a feeling about how the game will play. The areas are so simple, but they're filled with so much content that I want people to be more excited about what they'll see, instead of how the characters react, or how the story plays out.

I feel like rambling about a specific character in Libra's story. Alternate 6 are Lady Libra's main Antagonist in the story. And what they are is sort of like the machine core of Neon Empire. Cyborg humans. I originally created 6 from the start and thought for sure I would use the 6 I started off with. As time passed by I thought, well what else can I do with them? So ultimately I dropped 3 out of the 6 and introduced 3 new characters.

Anyway, I came up with this old man in a hat and cane, named Deacon the Suspicious. And he started off with like, NO personality whatsoever. And I thought, well as long as he looks cool I guess it doesn't really matter much. So I threw him in while I was creating the game and started to write dialogue for him. And I just decided to make sure he threw out stupid things like "kid" and in my "age" because he was old, and that is what old people do I guess and that will be his "thing".

And I kept writing dialogue about him and I had accidentally typed "Welcome to the performance, friends" and I looked at it for the longest time and I just said to myself what if I just made him into a classic magician, not a wizard or mage, but just a magician who uses card tricks so I started
writing references about a magician and he started to develop into this really fun character that I loved to write for.

What's cool about this character, and I didn't plan this out at all it just happened, was when he is first introduced he comes off as really arrogant and he has that "Well, you're going to get owned kthxbai" attitude and an event happens and he doesn't directly get to fight you. And as you progress through the dungeon he starts to doubt his abilities and loses the arrogant attitude, and by the end of the dungeon he's at his wits end. It was just very crazy how it just wrote itself.

Again, for old content worth checking out look at the News section.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Hiatus thus far!
I have returned to the game making scene! Just kidding. I actually have time to update my blog, how shocking! I have just been so burnt out from the holidays and everything else in life. I want to give a big FUCK YOU to the guy I did commission work and gave him a lot of original content and then he didn't pay me!
People ask me the process of which I work on my game, which is really odd because my game is very stupid/not cool. But yeah, I thought I would kind of indulge myself and show people how I come up with stuff.
This is the vault of Rainbow Nightmare crap. I keep all my designs, concepts, whatever in this cabinet. It's pretty big, so there is no lack of ideas. I just, collect so much content that I can use later.
Yeah, it's totally all RN junk waiting to be used too! It's hard to imagine never getting ideas, and even when I do I can just
pop this open and randomly pick something to use. In fact, I am running out of room! Basically all the content I can't quite
figure out what to do with at that time I just toss it here to be used later. So people who say I do not take game design seriously, fuck ya'll

When I come up with stuff I don't really do it from a writers perspective. I start off using storyboards for everything I want to do instead of writing out what is going to happen. I usually do my storyboards on an actual story board on my wall, but I had to take it down for a while, so I use regular paper to create mini-story boards.

After that I come up with designs focusing around the theme for the specific scene, just sketching out random content and seeing what sticks is probably my favorite part. Because for one scene I will have about 60 different things to choose from and usually use only 4 to 5 pieces.



I came up during the end game you ride on a giant robot's arm that is themed after a highway. It's still a work in progress but I try to make it accurate to the concept. what in theory is suppose to happen is you shoot riders using the mouse when they appear or get too close. and bigger vehicles appear throwing out enemies that you also have to shoot that progressively gets more difficult. Iwould like it to have the boss slowly pan in the background as you progress across the highway(arm) I figure if it's coded correctly could be incredibly fun. it's just a simple mini-game masked with a bunch of content happening at the same time to give the illusion that it's really good. that's all games really are, masked with over the top things happening while the core gameplay is simple. you can do plenty of things with push "A" or move "up and down" but people are too stupid and not clever enough to figure that out.

Concept1

Concept 2
Concept 3


I've been toying with the battle layout of the game too. This is what I've come up with so far. It's really rough and it doesn't have much yet. I want a major focus on the ability to use cards that are randomly generated by the enemy and player so I am for sure going to keep the card shuffle on their respective sides, but as you can see i have no space for hp for the 3 characters. I think at the top instead of enemy cards i will display their hp and it will change depending on which enemy you select to attack. I also don't like the character sprites. It's just, really traditional looking, and it doesn't seem that fun at all. If I could somehow make it so the camera enhances the screen to give it a closeup shot when they go and attack I think that would make it 100 times better.


I am in freaking love with sharpies!

Hmm, I guess that's all I have to offer for a while! Keep it on the low, ya'll~
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Dissidia Sucks!

Yes, it's true...this game is very VERY stupid. I just got done playing this and it's incredibly frustrating to play. The game dynamics are very shitty and the level design makes it really hard for you to win. I think this is a good rental...but I wouldn't buy it.

I think people will buy it if they're really die hard Final Fantasy fans. Seriously, the only reason anyone will play this is for the re-touched Kefka and Terra. The voice and overall way they did Kefka is really spot on and cool, and it really makes you wish they re-did FF3 for PS3 or something. I wouldn't be shocked if they did this eventually. Visually the game is beautiful but the play mechanics are clunky. They have a lot of pointless extras too. I don't know, I sort of liked the game but be expected to get REALLY FRUSTRATED at losing because of the weird camera angles/level design being shitty.

I like the art though.


RN-
I haven't updated because I have almost no content to update with. I am out of art supplies and I'm struggling to finish my commission job to get paid. So, I've been focusing on that. I'll have more stuff to update with next time. Shitty update, I know. I apologize.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
BZZZT!

Hmm, so there isn't too much to update you on Rainbow Nightmare. I've been writing and doing charsets and comic book type animations. I've been working more and more on the intro, and I'm not happy with it unless it goes smoothly. The intro's are fully animated in a comic book fashion so, it takes a lot of work!

Sections, yes, go take a look at the Cast section. I've added the Lamberton Corp, enemies you'll face in Robbin's Rest, the profiles of the characters in the RN video, and Renders bio. I'm still constructing a bunch of stuff. I'm doing monster design for
Nessiah so, that should be good to add to my references. If you want to see her project it can be found here.

-Ghost in a Bottle-

This is a game I made for a contest a long time ago that won me 15 american dollar bills. You take the role of a young lad named Chester Cobblepot attending ghost school(jr college) to become a GhostBuster. But that seems like a pipedream until he meets up with a time warrior called "Dark Babby" and must fight the off the demon lord Vigo to save the ghost world.

Peter Venkman is called from retirement to take revenge for his fallen comrades...

-78641 -


Got to give a shout out to all the homeboys who made this. It's a funky puzzle game made by some of the creators behind Barkley, Shut up & Jam. GZ & crew really outdid themselves on this one. Pretty rad, game. If you have the time, check this out.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
FUCK SCIENCE!
AHWOOOOOO!


Hmm, it is 4AM and I haven't updated this in a while. I have been sort of busy with things...Myspace isn't letting me log in and...I am running on some weird Mountain Dew hybrid. I would be asleep by now but...that shit gets you wired. You know what sucks? I am totally running out of my colored pens. And I'm on my last black ink pen too. I am totally broke so I am being really selective with what I do with them!

To top it all off, I have to go on a date with this slaag I met at the coffee shop tomorrow. Look, when I go out, I don't want to socialize, man. I had my laptop, and she asked what I was doing. And I automatically said "research for India refugee's" I don't even know why that came out, because in reality I was downloading a WoW patch. I wanted to sound important, heh.

So yes, somehow I got strung into this date thing that I don't even want to go on. There goes 20 bucks at Denny's. I'll probably bail on her in the middle so I don't have to pay for anything.


I'm still putting together Robbin's Rest piece by piece. I'm currently working on a station type area where you'll have to access to reach this giant castle that hangs over the town. Think Castlevania or something, I don't know.




I don't want to spoil much, but this is a boss you'll fight while riding the trolly everyone in town keeps talking about. I have a few scenes planned out for it. I'm going to finish RPG's concept designs sometime tomorrow for his "secret project" he won't do anything with.



I don't mind doing things for people, but, if I do it for free you kind of expect something productive out of it, but whatever. You got to throw people a bone sometimes I guess.

I've changed Renders portrait, it looks a lot better now. Before it was really clunky and ugly looking. I'll post that along with a bunch of character bio's sometime soon.

Hmm, also, I just read Silver4donuts blog, and that dude is such a hambeast. I don't even want to link his blog because he is just too awful! It's weird how the guy can be this master coder, but be a retard at the same time. I think it's called "The Aten" effect. Like, you can create amazing things out of a useless program like RM and outside of that you're a society reject.

*lights cigar* Heh, look, fuck Silver4donuts okay. I got yer Monopolo right here buddy *throws da bird* collect on dat.

PS: All the old front page updates can be found in News.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
It's a BLAAAGG!

Enemies are all around you.(Backround is a placeholder)

Running from the enemy(Mini Game)

As you can see I posted a few screenshots. This is going to be a mini game where you jump/attack while being chased through a forest. I've been spriting and drawing a lot for RN, I've been very productive with RN lately, I have no idea why. It's becoming visually appealing so it's so hard for me to stop working on it, because I want to see what I can come up with next. It's exciting. People in the RM community bitch and whine so much about RM being restricting. The reality of it is, it's not the program, it's the lack of creativity from the person using it.

The blog has been updated in a few sections. There's new art in Concepts. The Media section is now up if you want to see video's and screenshots. Jobs section is also up, check that out too. Remember, all of the old news goes into the News, section.

~TFT
Monday, July 2, 2007
Video of Robbin's Rest






Yeah, I am really irritated that Youtube will disabled the audio from my other video, totally defeating the point in watching it. I'm looking at an alternative way to upload the other, since Youtube has became a landmine of faggot sellouts.

Things are still being moved around and tweaked in the blog, so it's going to stay a little messy for a while. There's character art uploaded in the Concept section. I'll upload the media section with some screenshots later. I am way too fucking irritated with everything computer wise right now!

Anyway, comment the video tell me what you think. Whatever.

~TFT

Sunday, July 1, 2007
about the upcoming update
Hey, the blog is going to go through a few changes soon. There will be specific sections about the game, news, rants, etc and the front page will just have news. It will make everything here easier to navigate.

Why am I doing this? Because I am going to be making a lot of updates soon and I need space for a huge amount of content. I'll be updating this next time with a few videos and a lot of media. So stay tuned.

I'm starting to shop around for someone to code a battle system and someone who would be interested in creating music. I am not looking for another Brandon Abley though, I would like to find someone fresh or someone nobody has heard of. But I'll post more about that later.

A few sections are up already, but they will be a little messy for a while as I am putting everything into their respective posts. Expect the media section to be up tomorrow.

Also, if you haven't played Paradise Blue by Oceans Dream, go do it naow! It's super fun, super cool, and super custom! I also did a few monsters for that game. Go play it, it's great.

Here is my team: Red Mage, Paladin, Archer, and Summoner. We bomb, yo.

~TFT