Due to the request of a compilation Classic PuffBOMB will be a part of, I’ve collected various bits of concept art and sketches from 2003 and 2004. Given that the game was a solo effort, and completely dependent on my art skill, it’s no “Art of Warcraft 3″ style giant happy book of fantastic reference doodles. No sir. Instead, it’s just 4 collections of “learner artist” scribbles depicting some sort of character evolution....
So, that’s what happens on the 91’st day of the year shows up, your name is Mike, and you want to poke fun at casual gaming. You end up with a human body themed match 3, and an outrageous story that I don’t even want to rationalize. And yes, all Mike’s were thinking the exact same thing. Yeah, this post is a rather plain one. Just a confirmation that yes, that was a joke, and an excuse to do an image dump....
Page 50. Two and a half months later. Sure it’s not front page news (except maybe for here), but it’s a small achievement I like to indulge myself in. Being a coder, I code a lot. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been doing professionally these past 6 years. So, I’m on a mission to improve my art and music skillzorz whilst on my adventures in independent game development. This little burning through a sketchbook challenge has been a constructive one for me....
Low fat disposable hats present, part 7: A Sunset in Stone Which is probably quite warm, despite the cold imagery of anything in stone…… Why are you looking at me like that? Okay, I wanted an epic name to finish my cheesy little series of updates. Then it’s actual updates when they happen!!! Wow! That actually makes this a blog, instead of story time! But I like story time … So back to the technical....
Cream soda kung fu presents, part 6: The Epic Tales of Hypocrisyism Viewer discretion is advised. So, right now, the current evolution of the character is this said goo blob thing. It shoots these tentacles/appendages out and swings, like any good monkey should. However, for as long as I’ve been thinking about going with a gooey character, I’d been concerned about the Gishness factor. This “factor” is what I’m calling all the references to Gish....
Dude! There’s like, this site. And it has something to do with tunnels, or tunneling. Boy, I could tell you stories of tunneling. But they’re so amazing, they’d blow the minds of my 5 readers. The problem is I’d then have to acquire a new reader base. I can’t have that. Right, so the more temporally correct but logically wrong February Round Up is online. Can you believe it? People mistakening the round up’s as horribly late or something....
Hey there sports fans. Our epic saga continues with part 5: The Character (or I’m a little tea pot why are you reading this sub heading like I have something insightful to say e-i-e-i-o) Last we left our hero, he was an eight legged insect. Now he’s an eight legged insect looking for a job!!! Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s not a bad guy. You see, it’s not you, it’s me....
So we have a character, and certain way the physics work. Cool. I want this game out reasonably soon, so that meant I needed to keep things simple. So minimal amounts of non functional stuff and no heavy animation. I don’t have an art team, just me. So the thought was to make the legs dangle and have shots of webbing shoot out. And sure, this’ll make some nice still shots, but the character was going to be very nonfunctional looking....
And the legend continues. Now, a spider would make a rather cool game character. Especially in a game about swinging. So I toyed with some designs, keeping in mind a sphere’ish geometric character, as shown in the collision diagram above. The following are some results of that early concept work. And a new one for good measure. But despite the abundance of designs, I was running into a sort of dilemma coming up with some easy ways to make the character functional....
And here we are. Hopefully, it’s the start of a more regular practice. You’ve probably read the brief Manifesto to the right. This was written some 9 months ago. And now, since things are a tad more orderly, it’s time to expand on that. Sykhronics, pronounced “psi-cron-icks”. A branding of Mike Kasprzak’s independent game works. Established in 1998, replacing my older branding Gamma Flare Games. After bouncing around the gracious hosting of a few friends, I acquired the “dot com” in 2000....