PK: OLYMPIAN SWAG

I wanted to do something to celebrate the Olympics, but we're trying to steer away from silly holiday or event themed swag. So instead I did some ancient Greek themed items. I was very busy this week and working a lot between home and the office, and I'm not exactly sure where I put the high resolution versions of these. Oh well, I thought the pixel art turned out pretty well. Our players especially seemed to enjoy the gold olive wreath.

TEAM RANDI HOODIE WITH CHRIS STEDMAN!

Looks like JREF created a hoodie variation of the Team Randi t-shirt design I made for last year's TAM. And what fun to see it modeled here by none other than Chris Stedman, humanist chaplain at Harvard, interfaith activist, and soon-to-be best-selling author once his book (F)a(i)theist hits the market in November!

Cheers Chris, thanks for letting me add you to my portfolio. :P

PZ: LAUNCH ASSETS

My contributions to our third major GPS-based MMORPG, Parallel Zombies, were primarily in the form of items, menu art and other icon-driven assets. Some of these were deceptively challenging. The character buffs, tiny icons that appear above or below the players' on-screen avatar, were limited to only a few pixels. It is not easy to render objects and make them readable at that low resolution!

PK: RENAISSANCE SWAG

Some swag loosely based on the Renaissance, including a wooden, mechanical crossbow that Leonardo DaVinci might appreciate. :)

PK: GOLEM TOWER

Quite a large update, with new traps, monsters, bosses, inventory items and weapons.

Here's a fun video I found on Youtube, of the new golem boss in action. The great part is that completing a dungeon is pretty much impossible on your own, so this is a feature of our game that really pushes social interaction and cooperation between several players. Love that!

PARALLEL ZOMBIES WEBSITE IS UP!

Exciting stuff, the website for our latest game is now live.

PK BEHIND THE SCENES: STONE GOLEM

The masterminds at work wanted to give the players a glimpse behind the scenes, into our creative process. I recorded regular screenshots while I was working on a new creature for the game, and my fellow artist Beau put together a cool time-lapse video with epic music. There's also a short interview with me on the Parallel Kingdom website. Fun!

PARALLEL ZOMBIES IS ANNOUNCED!

Well, it looks like our latest game has officially made the news. We've been working hard on Parallel Zombies for a while now. Like our other games, it will be location based, and a deeper RPG experience for mobile devices in a market dominated by casual games. However, Zombies is more action-based with real time battles and gruesome sound effects. Not sure what other information I am allowed to share at this point, other than what's already mentioned in this Joystiq article.

PK: STONESEEKERS

Some assorted images for Parallel Kingdom including Stoneseekers tribal swag, a new golem NPC, and a nifty tome of wisdom.

INFLUENCES: BEYONCÉ FALLING DOWN STAIRS

You think I'm joking? I'm not. I find this video incredibly inspiring. Why? Well, I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. I know that's often the generic, go-to response when you're being interviewed for a new job and they ask you about your faults. But honestly, for me it's absolutely true. A big struggle for me has been to figure out how to not obsess over details, because for artists that can lead to overworking a piece, wasting lots of time on a small part of a painting while a deadline approaches, or even being so scared to make a mistake that you don't start at all and end up procrastinating. So a major struggle - probably THE major struggle - for me as an artist has been learning how to let go; to accept that my best is all I can do; to force myself to stop fretting and just get cracking on a project, and have enough faith in myself to know it will probably work out; and also to pick myself up after a tough break or disappointment. In other words, accepting my own human imperfection.

Watch this video and the way Beyoncé tumbles down the stairs, but then immediately gets right back up and keeps on head banging:

Did you laugh? That's okay, it's a natural reaction. But I hope you also felt a shot of deep respect for her as an artist. It takes a lot to put yourself out there and perform in front of a crowd (something that, as a 2D visual artist, I rarely have to face). And to tumble in front of everyone... on top of the embarrassment, there might have been injuries she sustained, which she had to cover up in order to tough out the rest of the performance. I think this video is evidence of a real class act and a professional. The top comment under the video is spot on: "got to hand it to her though for real, she got right back up." Yep.

If you're feeling defeated, think of this. Then get back up and start head banging. :)

MILLENNIAL MAN

An original character I created, based on myself and inspired by my memories of coming of age during the late 1990's/early 2000's.

GOOMBA TIME LAPSE

Just a fast sketch to experiment with time lapse software.

PM: PUBLIC TRANSIT ADS

I'm very excited that PerBlue has rolled out large format public transit ads for our game Parallel Mafia! It's great to know my Bruiser is currently riding along on buses and trains in Pittsburgh intimidating commuters. Grrr!!

INFLUENCE: CO-WORKERS!

I thought I would start treating this a bit more like a blog and not just my own sketchbook, so I've decided to start a new series of posts on issues that surround my art practice but don't necessarily focus on my drawings. I decided to begin a series on some of my personal artistic influences, the most immediate example being my very talented PerBlue co-workers. We all have different styles and interests but it's fascinating how much synergy exists among us as a team, and how we are able to blend our styles together to make visually coherent products. Here's just a little taste of what they do, and as always I have links to their respective websites in the sidebar on the right side of this blog. Enjoy!

Alayna and Beau both have facebook fan pages for their art as well, so you should check them out, share, 'like', all that jazz.

PK: GRADUATION

Ah, commencement: the end of one thing, the start of something new... Congratulations to all our Parallel Kingdom players who will be graduating this year!! We've given our players a mortarboard and gown, and a spitball shooter for the class clowns. :)

PK: MOTHER'S DAY

Celebrating Mother's Day in Parallel Kingdom with a hat and old timey mom glasses, and a bouquet "sling" that fires flower ammunition. This is a good example of how too much detail would have been overkill since it has to be brought down to pixel size to fit in the game anyway. The carnations are very, shall we say, impressionistic. Another side note: My own mother's favorite colors are green and purple, so I colored the hat to honor her. Love you mom! :)

PK: CINCO DE MAYO

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Un poncho, un sombrero y un shuriken de cactus.

PK: GOLDEN WEEK

Made a Japanese garden for Parallel Kingdom to celebrate Golden Week. We already have a rectangular zen garden with a cherry tree for one of our character classes, so I tried to do something a bit different; I decided to ground the design in a threefold tomoe symbol. Here in the high resolution painting you can see how I leave a lot unpolished, since many of the details won't translate to the in-game pixel size anyway. Yet it is detailed enough so that it wouldn't require too much touch up work in case my employer wanted to use the hi-res image elsewhere.

PM: HI RES ENEMIES

Polished a couple of my enemy NPC designs from Parallel Mafia.

PK: EARTH DAY

Celebrating Earth Day with new Parallel Kingdom swag.

PK: MONSTER SWAG

A few more armors for Parallel Kingdom.

PARALLEL MAFIA: LAUNCH!!

Parallel Mafia officially launched today for Android and iOS. Here is some of the first artwork I made for the game, including most of the times, class and skills icons, and some ads. I designed the enemies as well but I'm working on something special to show them off. Will update later.

PK: EASTER

Only one swag design for me this week.