Geez it's been a while...

Work has been keeping me super busy so I haven't been able to add any blog-type things in a while. However, Junk: Battles just went through a huge update and I thought I'd share some imagery!

I created a lot of graphics for this update. Most of the UI was remade with new art. Some new chassis were created and others were tweaked to have more depth. I made some animated pop-ups for battle win/loss, loot drops, and battle syncing/searching for opponent.

Here's the new frame, header, and footer. Also, a garage for choosing which craft to build.

Here's the starting town. Buildings are clickable, kind of like old point-and-click games.

Three stores for buying goods.

New Exotica chassis, based off a Lamborghini.

New dragster chassis.

Updated the airship a little bit.

Special Christmas sleigh!



Last but not least, a video of my leet new animating skills.

Work has been pretty awesome. Being the only artist for a game company is intense. I've had a part in everything from UI to environments and characters, vehicles and other items. I've also become more comfortable with Flash and Illustrator, which I am using on our next big project. It's really cool to see the art I've made get put right into the game, and working with programmers on various parts of the artistic direction.

Meanwhile, I haven't really made any art of my own in a while, since I'm pretty happy with the stuff I've been doing at work. Perhaps in the near future I'll have some more stuff to share. :)

-D

Some big news last night. At the 2009 Canadian New Media awards ceremony, Junk: Battles took first place for best innovative web-based game! Our fearless leaders were there to get the award, which I'll post a picture of later.

Meanwhile, work continues to go well for me. I can't believe it's been over a month since I started, but when I look at the amount of work I've done so far, it definitely seems like I've been here a while. :)

Here's some random warm-up and lunchtime sketches.


Hope you like!

-D

Some big news since last I posted anything. I happened upon a company in London Ontario called Antic Entertainment after reading a Joystiq post about them and their new game Junk: Battles. I sent them an email with a resume and it turned out that they were looking for a 2D artist to join their team. An art test and a interview later and I got the job!

Illustration of myself for my custom avatar.

So, I had to go through all the channels to move to Canada and get started. It was a lot less painful than I thought it would be, and now I've been living here for a month and have been having a great time at work!

So far, I have been working on additions to Junk: Battles. We are releasing a big update today and have been testing for the past three days to insure everything is working smoothly. I have contributed artwork to almost every facet of the game so far, and it's been a great learning experience and a lot of fun.

One of the vehicles I created. This is the "Bandit Elite" enemy.

Another vehicle I created. This one will be available for players to use.

And this is the leader of the bandits. You don't want to mess with him!

Everything is 2D, as the game is internet browser based and uses a lot of flash. It's also free to play! The nice thing is that the art I create goes directly into the game, as opposed to drawing concepts that are used to make 3D models. It's really cool to see my artwork in a actual game!

Everyone here is also very nice. Our studio is close-knit and everyone has a stake in the game, so everyone is very involved in all facets of development. I've learned more in the past month than I have in a year previous!

Expect more updates now that I am settled, I'll be blogging both my personal work still, as well as developments on Antic's present and future titles! Also check the Antic Entertainment developer's blog for info.

-D

I've posted about this before, but I've been working with a great team of people across the internet to build a sword fighting game using the Source engine. The game features different factions that have their own style, motivation, and play areas. For each faction I've tried to use a different artistic style to further differentiate factions. Here's a rundown on how a street ninja/samurai was created.

Part of the story for the game is that everyone wears masks. No one shows their true face.
Since the street samurai are obviously Asian themed, we wanted to go with something that would combine bits of Asian culture and street fashion into the characters. I started by sketching street punk style guys wearing a mask inspired by demon mythology.

After showing the work to the team, we deliberated on different mask ideas, so I quickly sketched some out. We were thinking of maybe letting players use their spray tag on the mask.

We decided to go with something more subtle, since the clothing would be in brighter shades than the other factions, a semi-plain mask would be a nice contract to the costume. I did a new sketch to reflect the changes. On the right hand side you can see some changes I made to the armor, trying to get a more interesting asymmetrical silhouette.

The hard part done, it was time to start coloring. I wanted the base colors bright and contrasty, so I went with a light blue and dark red. All this was done in Photoshop.

I brought the painting into Painter so I could use some texture brushes on it and give definition. And there you have it! One character done. Now a back view and possibly a turn around needs to be done, depending on what the character artist wants.

Our team is pretty much in constant contact through mIRC, and we have a wiki and team website where changes and updates are logged. The design work is very much a team effort, and any work I do is shared with the team before being finalized. It's a lot of fun, and our game should be available to play in the coming months.

-D

It's sketchdump time! Here's a bunch of random stuff I've done in the past few weeks. Lots of different styles of work going on, I dig it.






Been working for Hasbro a bit lately, working on a really cool project. Also had an interview and art test with a game company I really admire. Keep your fingers crossed that I might get the gig!

-D

Hey guys! Today I'm deviating from the normal doodles and cars to mention a really important campaign started by my friend Jason and his fiancé Kam. He's more eloquent than I am at describing the goals of the campaign, so I'm going to copy his statement here.

"I’m excited to announce that my fiancé Kam and I are releasing a Dollar Campaign to raise money towards the cure of the disease HIBM. As some as you may already know my fiancé Kam is afflicted with HIBM, which is a progressive muscle wasting disease which can lead to total disability within 10-15 years. We both work very hard for the non-profit organization ARM (http://www.hibm.org/arm/index.php) which is dedicated to curing this debilitating disease.

With ARM we have created this dollar campaign with the hopes of raising 1 million dollars to enable human therapeutic trials to fight HIBM. We are asking for two things: First, go to WEBSITE (http://www.hibm.org/arm/dollar:home) to donate $1. Second, send this email on to all your friends and family.

In the Internet age, reaching one million people in that amount of time is surely do-able. If you are interested in becoming a bigger influence in this campaign, host your own dollar collecting campaign in your community, church, workplace, among your friends and family and donate what you've collected as one donation. Or you can post this story and image on your own blog and Facebook page. The more people we can reach increases the awareness of HIBM.

HIBM (Hereditary Inclusion Body Myopathy) is a progressive and debilitating muscle-wasting disorder caused by a gene defect. It touches those between the ages of 20 and 40 and, although progression is slow, it typically leads to total disability within 10-15 years. Studies suggest that HIBM may be easier to cure than many other disorders or diseases, the only limiting factor is funds.

Thank you for your support,

Jason Hazelroth"

I've known Jason since college and he's been one of my biggest supporters and sources of inspiration and advice in my effort to get going in the entertainment industry. He's been involved with ARM for while a while now and helping him spread the word is the least I can do to repay him for everything he's done for me. Please, make a mention on your blog or Facebook if you can. The more people that can become aware, the better the chances are of finding a cure.

Thanks!

-David

Friday was the Rolling Sculpure Car Show in Ann Arbor. I took the TR-6 there and met up with my buddy Nate to park on the street. The weather was overcast but there was no rain. I was impressed with the varied cars at the show. I'm used to seeing nothing but muscle cars but there was quite a bit of British cars on show. Always a good thing. ;)

Nate's '74 TR-6 in true blue on the right, my '74 in french blue on the left.

Beautiful Porsche 356C

Lovely Sunbeam Alpine.

Bugeye Sprite.

Mini Cooper.

Porsche 914.
Porsche 356 Speedster.
Triumph TR-4
Crazy Citroen #1
Crazy Citroen #2
Amazing paint job on this Crosley Wagon.
Turbine powered F-150.
Audi R8.
Nissan GT-R *drool*.

Last but not least, here's a video of the TR running.

Overall, it was a fun day. Hope you enjoy the pics!

-D