Digital Painting and Twitter Pressure

So I've done it, I'm now on Twitter against my better judgement.

Let me explain! After going to Bungie Studios and running into the whole crew, I've heard over and over how Twitter is the way to stay in touch with people, which I usually suck at. More and more I'm realizing that people are using Twitter whether I like it or not, and I'm being left behind!

So I've dusted my Twitter handle off and am now broadcasting to the world the cool things I'm doing. I promise to not post worthless "my life" posts and keep it as interesting as possible. Mostly things will be about cool art, video games, events, animation, and other creative things.

Here's a snippet of art since you're here...

Atroxity: The Online Graphic Novel

-Atroxity-

I've hopped on to a new project this week as the colorist for an online graphic novel, Atroxity! It's a very exciting, dark, and visceral graphic novel with a new page released every week. After reading the script, I'm extremely excited to get to work and take this project to the next level.

Check it out at www.atroxity.com and keep an eye out for my name!

Jonathan Blow on the State of Game Design

-Jonathan Blow on the State of Game Design-

In the same week Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid, had a talk about the current state of video game design and the "Bad TV" that is Free-to-Play(F2P) games. If you do design these games, please close your eyes, because Jonathan strong opinions cast down all games designed around this business model.

Jonathan begins with a horrible episode of the Six Million Dollar Man fighting against a robotic Big Foot, a sore sight for modern eyes with terrible timing, effects, and camera angles. Using this example as "Bad TV", Jonathan tears down games like "Farmville" and "Candy Crush Saga", claiming their poor and immoral design is destroying the game industry.

For the most part, Jonathan is actually spot on. His points on how these models effectively "trick" players into playing a game for "free" while luring them into micro-transactions by keeping vital parts of the game behind a pay-wall. This business model can be seen everywhere, forcing players to pay for "buildings" in a city, "special gems" to improve their gameplay, and even "energy" to simply play the game.

Unfortunately, this business model is extremely successful in monetizing a game, making it a preferable choice for developers big and small. This trend destroys wholesome design and replaces it with games designed around gimmicks and endless treadmills to make a player think they're getting more game out of a F2P, swindling them out of hundreds, than from a $2.99 up-front traditional game.

Basically, Jonathan Blow was calling F2P games trash, which is not a bad assessment. As always there are a few exceptions to the rules and I'm not one to cast down a genre just because I don't agree with it. But I definitely felt bad for the F2P developers in the audience for having their idol call their work garbage.

Check out a write-up by a good friend of mine HERE to find out more about the talk.

Adam Fosters Impossible Puzzles at Bungie

-Adam Fosters Impossible Puzzles at Bungie-

Valve's designer Adam Foster talking about Alternate Reality Games at Bungie Studios. What more could you ask for?

If you don't know, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are a combination of mystery and cryptography creating an almost impossible puzzle that extends from a fictional game into the real world. Adam specifically designed the great "Radio" ARG seen in the hit game Portal, where strategically placed radios in the levels made strange noises when picked up and moved around.

These were no ordinary noises, but coded bits of information through Morse code and Slow-Scan Television (SSTV, encodes low resolution images in audio form). Within these decoded messages were even more puzzles, which causes the player to do research to figure these bits of information out. It even goes as far as connecting to a random modem to extract rough images of Portal 2, making this entire game end in a Portal 2 announcement!

Big thanks to Adam, the IGDASeattle group, and Bungie for blowing our minds.

Go HERE to read more about what Adam did, it will blow your mind.