Frabbit Animation

Animation Loops

Reverse Engineer

1. Insaniquarium

The game is obviously based off a more exciting version of the standard virtual aquarium games where the player feeds their fish in real time. Insaniquarium requires the player to focus their attention on the game by not only feeding fish, but collecting coins that come from the fish and buying upgrades and items to use in the game. One of the hooks is the excitement of getting a new special fish obtained when you buy all the egg pieces which ends the level. Each special fish has their own unique abilities that one can carry through the other levels and since each player has their own strategy, each player has their favorites. The order in which you obtain the special fish is random which affects the gameplay.
It has a pretty linear gameplay, as in there is a last level, but each time one plays it, the game is a little different depending on the strategies and order in which one receives the special fish.

There is a 2.0 version in the game (pictured below) with better graphics, more levels, more special fish and upgrades, the ability to go back to any level completed before, bonus levels, and a virtual aquarium.

http://www.freshpulp.com/fishtank/fishtank.html

2. Harmony Sketch Pad

I found this randomly and it's definitely not a game, but as an artist, the pan styles are really fun to play with. It's super simple and has several, what I would call issues. First of all there is no eraser, which is a pretty key component to a drawing program; there is a clear button, but there is no way, if one messes up, to keep some part of the drawing and do away with another part. Black and white is fine for maybe a 1.0 version, but some color options would allow for more creative options. The game is based off the basic pen and paper in reality, and computer programs like paint.

http://www.mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/

3. Pokemon (Gameboy)

Super popular game series that been around for a while, which makes Pokemon all the more hard to talk about, but I love the games so I decided to include it. There are many hooks which lend to it's popularity: intricate maps of the "worlds" which provide some excitement discovering new things, battles that require strategy, plenty of mini-games, several goals to reach in the end (as in once one officially finishes the game there are still possible tasks to do), and raising "animals" which  the user may likely become attached to.
Pokemon is definitely one of those successful games that have been tweaking for years to make the game play better and better. Being a fan that played the original gray brick of a Gameboy up to the Gameboy Advanced, I was impressed by the DS versions. Although, I believe they could have taken more advantage of the touch pad and sound sensors (however I have not played the newest Black and White versions).

Post-Mortem Thoughts

One of the most important points that I got from the post-mortems, when making a game, have as many people test and evaluate it. At least one of those many will find a bug, loophole, or improvements for the game. Coming up with an interesting and captivating concept seems like the hardest part to making a game; there is a fine line between something too original and too trendy. Being an successful indie game designer seems like a difficult goal to get to.

Final project

These are the thumbnails I have so far.

I was experimenting with the paper size, color, and pen versus ink:

First couple of pages penciled out. For the figure, I want to redraw some of the panels that appear in the comic later, so this page will have to be finished last.

This is what the finished product will kind of look like. I still have a lot to work on such as shading the background in ballpoint and adding some stylistic swirls and/or contrast to make it look more interesting. I am not happy about how thick some of the lines are, so I may want to redo the page.

Creatively Constructed Comics

David Mack's Kabuki: Metamorphosis

Jeff Benham's Forever All

More of his work here: http://belmondotomato.com/

Ben Catmull's Monster Parade

Research and Notes for Final Project

I decided to create my comic on the anxiety/panic attacks I experienced for 2 years. They kind of went away half a year ago, although I still get the itching of them. Here are some of my nonsensical notes:

The text of the comic is going to work like poetry. So I've been listening to a lot of spoken word poetry to get into the mood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZBhEP42aw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgALhKr4ZZo

The best one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dswhhPtpdck&list=UUW4OkAZwGC0xOmqd77FKWsw

Update:

Taking Stuff From Other Artists

My Eyeless Candy character with Love and Rockets:

Jamie Hewlett mermaid thing:

Self-Assessment

I find it interesting to look at other people’s techniques for concept art. I have my own way of setting up my concept art, for example, in my comics, but there definitely are some techniques I will adopt. Turnarounds and even something as simple as character heights in relation to each other would be useful things for me to preplan. I want to research how specifically other comic artists preplan their work; I learned from my friend and mentor their technique, but I’m curious to see other’s.

I have already been thinking and jotting notes for my final project comic. I went into a lot of detail for the comic on a previous post, so I won’t repeat it, but I’m excited to get started on it already. The direction of where my art is going (including the comic) is making beautiful and disturbing things. I want to viewer to get those simultaneous, almost contradictory feelings. Below are just some of my favorite works and artists, and a lot of them evoke that effect I’m trying to reach.

Inspiration...

Just to name a few....

Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl:

Concept art for Monkey: Journey to the West Opera by Jamie Hewlett also:

Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez's Love and Rockets:

 http://pblejzyk.blogspot.com/

http://yayashin.deviantart.com/

Brom http://www.bromart.com/

Akseli Gallen-Kallela:

And of course, Alphonse Mucha (which I already uploaded a few weeks ago):