Ludum Dare 29 day 2

(Click here for day 1)

Day 2 of ludum dare 29 is now over, and we (Christina Lewis, Benjamin Benjaminsen, Tormod Berge and now Martin Kvale) have made a functioning game! It's not quite polished, but it has mechanics and art, and we are pretty happy about that. Download is here: Fishy Business, ludum dare 29

We all collectively forgot about the good ideas we had for names, and a decision had to be made, I attempted to make some sort of pun involving deep/ depression / fishing for compliments, but it was not to be. Growing impatient and the day ending, I went home and my dear coworkers went for the opportunity and named it "Fishy Business"

Benjamin finished the game's programming, and we were extremely lucky to have Martin Kvale of Krillbite Studio making some music for us! (They made Among the sleep you know)

I would like to say that our game was super deep and well thought trough, but in the end we had more of a "something something emotions as physical landscape" "something something metaphor" as a general direction. In the end, we had fun, we (probably) learned things, and I enjoyed working together with everyone.

(I will see about making some sort of video showcasing the game, I will have to figure out how first, in the mean time, you can download it up top.)

Skyfish out! 

Ludum Dare 29

I am participating in Ludum Dare 29! 
(As of writing, that is today and tomorrow)

This time's theme is "below the surface". My game jam sort of began a day in advance, spending the evening troubleshooting various problems with my laptop. In the end I got some help to get twitch streaming working, (but of course I forgot all about streaming when the game jam really came) At 8:00 this morning I promptly awoke on my own, checked the theme, and dreamily wrote down some obscure and confusing words into my smartphone before falling asleep for another hour:

Insects topsoil
Fungus network
Educatinal game about cells, clorofyll
Underwatet drama
My fish jump game
Something largr and looming on hook.
A persons emotions
A persons thoughts
A game about erradocating depressive thoughts from The mind, black sketchystuff, use erasing motion and gun play to kill sketchystuff.
A game about learning to swim
Drowning in everyday life; 2D sink or swim in city landscape with business men floating up and elaborate creatures eating people floating while normal life resumes below.
Man hiding in bath refill foam and water to not be embarrassed
-surface of a problem

Some hours later I arrived at Local Oslo hackerspace: Bitraf and met two strangers who had agreed to make games with me the evening prior. These people consisted of Benjamin Benjaminsen and Tormod Berge We presented our thoughts/ideas/associations, and like last time, my ideas struck fancy with my new friends and the idea we picked were the following:

"Drowning in everyday life; 2D sink or swim in city landscape with business men floating up and elaborate creatures eating people floating while normal life resumes below."

The current state of my work on this game can be seen below, I am trying to create an underwater-sort-of scene with skyscrapers, people and fish, but the buildings and fish will be provided by the 3D guy while I work on the overall mood and make sure the end result doesn't look like we threw a bunch of very different assets together. Trying to capture the pallette I had in mind is being annoyingly difficult, I wand a grim, miserable, depth, deep feeling, but without the planned paralax effect the depth doesn't really kick in like I imagine, having to rely on colours alone.

In afterthrought I'm not sure if it really makes sense anymore. It's quite literally "below the surface" and I imagine many other Ludum Dare entries will be set underwater, but I really like the idea of these business people stuck in the rat race feeling "below" in this metaphor of emotion as a strange underwater landscape with ominous fish in it. We/I are primarily operating on instinct with the metaphorical part, playing around with whether or not the people should float up, sink down, escape, be saved, be eaten, avoid the fish, get eaten by the fish, or if the fish are background elements.

Check in tomorrow to see how far we get, we have only scheduled these two days to work on it ;)

Ludum Dare game jam result

I participated in the ludum dare game jam with the hacker space Bitraf in oslo. We didn't manage to get the game working in time, but here are the assets I drew for it. The game jam only lasted 2 days.

The game was supposed to be about the life of a horse-fly, (the green eyed bug) They slice open human skin to lick their blood, so the arm is the "boss" if you like. Dragonflies are casual enemies to be avoided.

The game was supposed to have a funny control mechanism where you control the wings independently, thus making it hard and funny to steer. I still like this concept, so I may work further on it in the future sometime.

Dream 26.01.2013 Skyrim, Argonian

Unfinished rendition of dream.

Full dream below. Short version
(Click on the links to see the inspiration source for some items.)

I find myself in a new age (myst). A large donut shaped island with a lot of snowy forest and some ruins. I can see an overview map in my head. As I slowly approach, more trees become visible and the dream looks less like the myst chanellwood age and more and more like skyrim. I see some balloons tied to bushes and many interesting colourful things. I wonder who's birthday they are for? I decide not to approach the empty forest birthday party and explore cautiously in the opposite direction. On the ground amongst the bushes I find a dead man with a sword. The sword is longer than my arm, not so heavy and silvery angular. It has a green symbol on it that I perceive as very beautiful. This indicates it has some kind of magical properties. At this point I have become my character from skyrim, an argonian. I approach a fortress, there are many people inside, they live there. They have fires and warm houses and food. There are guards patrolling the walls of the fortress. I am cautious, though these people are nice, I know they will turn hostile if they see my sword. I think I give the sword away, or people take the sword from me. I turn invisible and steal it back, they don't know it is me who have taken it, but as I leave they realize and they start chasing me. Though I can conjure demons and turn invisible, they manage to chase. I suspect this is because I leave footprints in the snow, so instead of running I spring from tree to tree at an unrealistically high speed. But as the trees drop snow when I hit them, the people are able to follow.

False Awakening initial artwork

Due to the time limit of the initial deadline for my videogame project, I'm going about the creation of assets and other materials somewhat untraditionally. It is more of a freeform art exploration than the strict and sensible concepting I'm used to from formal projects. You know the one: draw a bunch of concept thumbnails  pick the best one, polish. I have to create enough assets to initially have a complete game world, so my first tries are also my final tries, and my accidents are all happy. When the uni project ends, I'm free to revise and recreate anything for the actual making of this game however. I find  this laid back creation process quite liberating and enjoyable. 

Creature concept for False Awakening. This one has the temporary nickname "sharpface"

Completed contest entry

I entered a contest to draw a baby elite from the halo franchise, here is the final piece:

Here is the updated WIP with loose explenations.

Slenderman Uni Project

This is my Interpretation of the legendary creepypasta Slender man, the favourite horror story on the internet that people still believe in!

Slenderman is often though of as a paranormal being who snatches people away if he is witnessed, so if you see him, you have to pretend not to see or somehow erase your memory if you hope to live. He is characterised as a tall and slender figure with limited or no facial features and many arms or tentacle like appendages. 

I like the idea of a slenderman that not only murders/rapes, but actually does damage to society as a whole by puppeteering important individuals like politicians, this is why I associate slenderman to webs and strings as well. The cruel thing, is if he were to puppet people, noone could do anything about it, thus putting more pressure on the situation where if you DO spot him, you SHOULD report to authorities, but would you at the cost of your own life?

So Hide yo kids, Hide you wife, Hide yo kids, Hide yo wife. cus he's rapin' errybody out there.

Amazing tutorial series on concept art for games!

This series of tutorials teach about making good design paintings for the entertainment inustries, both in the subject and presenting. I highly recommend you look at it. I haven't been through them all as I'm currently on episode 7 (and each episode is about 2-4 youtube videos) but so far it has already inflluenced me.
The guy who makes them is called Feng Zhu (youtube channel FZDSCHOOL) and you can see the first tutorial embedded below:



Tutorial part 2
There are many more in this series, and I recommend taking a look even if you just do ordinary painting, as some of the things he talks about is applicable to various things.