Daily Sketches 4/17/11 - 4/23/11

Updating a day late because of Easter. (And Portal 2 may have also had something to do with it...)

Not as strong as last week, but I did spend more time working on IO stuff, so here's what we have. No sketches for the end of the week due to IO work, like a couple of weeks ago.


Sunday:



Wanted to try playing with some more extreme facial expressions, focusing on where the face stretches and bunches up. I was going for something kinda gross/scary, heh.


Monday:



Bit of a cat movement study. I really want to do a cat animation sometime...


Tuesday:



Portal 2 Day!!! Wanted to draw something fairly non-spoilery to celebrate the occasion.

Wednesday:



I had been in the mood to draw a fish all week, for some reason. Based on a photo of a goldfish I found online. I liked the pose.

Thursday:



This is when I kinda started to go hardcore into IO stuff, but I did a little doodle of Mr. Saturn shortly before I started working, heh.

Friday & Saturday:

Worked on IO stuff that's not ready to be seen at this time.

And that's it for this week!

Daily Sketches 4/10/11 - 4/16/11

To make up for a kind of blah week last week and a potentially very-busy-with-IO-stuff week in the coming week, I wanted to push myself a little harder this time. Some of them are even scanned. Holy crap. :O


Sunday:



This is the dieffenbachia that lives in my cubicle at work. I've had it for over five years now. It's crazy overgrown and has stalks twisting around everywhere, and that's the way I like it. :) This is just a small section of it.


Monday:



Adrian is waiting for his chance to fire.


Tuesday:



She wants to be a mad scientist when she grows up.


Wednesday:



I wasn't sure what to draw, so I looked through photos on my camera until I found one that had a bunch of people in a crowd. I tried to find a person in that crowd who seemed to be telling a story, and I ended up going with this girl.


Thursday:



I really liked the angles in this guy's pose.


Friday:



My sister is away this weekend, so my mom and I are ratsitting her three rats. This is one of her rats, Gwen (same rat, drawn three times). Gwen is such a sweetie. Here we have hungry Gwen, curious Gwen, and sleepy Gwen.


Saturday:



I had some delicious angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries for dessert Saturday night. So, after eating that, I decided to draw Yoshi enjoying some delicious angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries. I was trying to go for a more SNES-era Yoshi.

Daily Sketches 4/3/11 - 4/9/11

Unfortunately, it's been kind of a blah week in sketchblog land. As I mentioned before, some of the stuff I'm working on is under NDA, so I won't be able to post it at this point in time. But, anyway, here's my week in drawing.


Sunday:

Worked on a box concept. First real one I tried putting on paper for this game, but it's definitely missing something. Can't post this now, though.


Monday:



Quick doodle while on break at work, based on a photo reference. I just liked the way the dog's paws were positioned and wanted to try drawing them. Nothing special.


Tuesday:

Spent more time studying boxes than drawing them, but I did mess around with our logo a bit. I didn't design the logo (logos are unfortunately not a strong point of mine), but we're trying to figure out a final version based on group feedback. Again, can't really post anything. I literally can't, in this case. I did try to put together some mock up stuff on my computer, but my poor laptop ended up bluescreening on me while trying to save it. I ended up getting frustrated and going to bed. Really need to save up for a new computer.


Wednesday:




I needed a break from boxes on Wednesday and decided to randomly study bird wings instead. I was trying to figure out the shape breakdown and feather layout. It's something I'd like to study further, especially if I ever want to try some decent wing animation.


Thursday:

On Thursday, it was back to trying out more box art ideas. Tried one with color, but ultimately, I think it was too busy and didn't direct the eye properly. Can't post, though.


Friday:

Another day of stuff I can't post. Did another pencil sketch box concept that wasn't really doing anything for me, and also tried my hand at refining part of someone else's idea, which I'm going to play with some more. We did some group critiques the following day of everyone's concepts, so hopefully that'll give everyone some more direction and ideas to draw from going into next week.


Saturday:



Spent a lot of time doing box critiques on Saturday, but I wanted to do something unrelated when I got home from our meeting. Just a simple sketch.

And that's it for this week! Hopefully next week will be more fun. Though I suspect it will still be full of box studying...

Daily Sketches 3/27/11 - 4/2/11

Hey, I made it through week 2!


Sunday:



This is the boy with the balloon from Hands On! Tangrams. He gets bored easily and wishes he was out on an adventure.


Monday:



Quick character rotation sketches of the boy.


Tuesday:



I bought an Oswald plush at the Disney Store. I'm telling myself it's for Easter, but I really just wanted an excuse to have an Oswald plush. I had watched the old Oswald cartoon "Oh What a Knight" recently, so that's why he's holding the sword.


Wednesday:



Face! I really like the way his nose came out.



Thursday & Friday:





In response to Tomm Guycot's thingy on Talking Time:

"The all-ages saturday morning spinoff of Konami's premier horror series: Silent High"

Worked on sketches throughout the day on Thursday into Friday. Perhaps other characters will pop up eventually, too. I think my favorite is still Vice Principal Pyramid Head.


Saturday:



I think the only time Xena holds still is when she's sleeping. I took advantage of this!

Daily Sketches 3/20/11 - 3/26/11

Hey, isn't this why I originally started this blog? Let's see if I can stick with it.

Unfortunately, I've been having computer problems, so this week, I've got pictures of pencil sketches photographed with my phone's camera. Sorry about the quality. ^_^;;

Sunday:



Forum challenge for Sonic's 20th Anniversary. It was supposed to be an image of a boss battle from a Sonic game. I picked the Metal Overlord battle from Sonic Heroes. Definitely not my favorite boss battle or favorite Sonic game, but I thought that it would be fun to draw, and I liked that Tails and Knuckles came along for the ride. :)

Monday:


So, I've been thinking a lot about yawning lately. Maybe it's because I've been so tired all the time. But I've always had trouble drawing a proper yawn. So, I was googling yawns and found this yawning dog. I love it. The photo gallery was from someone named Loo, I believe? Anyway, great dog. I wanted to try drawing it, so I did. Sucks that I'm so afraid of dogs (after getting bitten by an escaped dog as a kid), 'cause they're really awesome looking.

Tuesday:





I had a little more free time on Tuesday, so I decided to subject myself to cat life drawing. :) I love drawing my cats, but they never want to sit still long enough, so I usually end up with really loose line drawings. Then I went to my boyfriend's place and tried to draw his cat. She was a little easier, since she tends to just flop onto her back and stay in that position for extended periods of time. I wanted to draw my sister's rats, too, but the only way I could even attempt to draw them was when their little sleepy heads poked out of their hammock. Otherwise, they won't sit still for even half a second.

Wednesday:



I was really tired on Wednesday, and after I got off work, I just wanted to pass out. But I wanted to make sure I did my daily sketch, so it ended up being a weird cartoonish version of my foot. Tried to draw Adrian's cat again, but she wasn't upside down, so it didn't work.

Thursday:



On Thursday, I kind of wanted to make up for Wednesday's crappy drawing, so I spent a little more time on a picture of one of my cats, Haruka. I used a photo I had on my computer as reference, since she never sits still long enough for me to get her stripes down properly. I drew this way too small with too large of a pencil, though, so some of the finer details ended up looking a bit wonky.


Friday:



By Friday, I was back in a more cartoony kind of mood and wanted to try drawing the Easter Bunny as an epic adveturer. There is totally candy in that messenger bag. Lots of candy.

Saturday:



I spent most of Saturday night fighting with my computer. It was getting late, and I realized I hadn't drawn anything yet, so I looked around the room and drew the legs of someone sitting on the couch across the room from me, because I thought the lines were interesting.

So, that's week one! Over the next couple of months, I'm doing to be doing a lot of game related stuff, so I may not be able to post what I'm working on some days if it's under NDA. But I'll do my best to keep up!

Hands On! Tangrams Post Mortem

Well, it's been over a year since the initial release of Tangrams, so I thought I'd take a look back at the many lessons learned from working on our first DS title.


Project Profile:
Hands On! Tangrams
(2008 - 2009)

Overview:

Hands On! Tangrams was my first published game project, developed by Island Officials and published by Storm City Games. It is a Nintendo DS game based on Chinese tangram puzzles, where the player must arange a series of seven shapes in order to form a picture. It is primarily targeted toward a young/casual demographic. As the player completes puzzles on the DS's bottom screen, the puzzle shapes are transformed into simple hand-drawn animations of the character or object, which then transfer to the top screen to complete a larger illustration. There are ten levels in the game, each featuring ten different puzzles, and each level is based around a different theme.

This was the first game to be completed by the newly-formed Island Officials, headed by Ryan Morrison and Ryan Harbinson. It was created by a team of roughly 20 people, mostly working in a part-time capacity, over the course of about 13-14 months. The game was released on November 24th, 2009.


My involvement:

I served as both a level/interface artist and art director on this project. My individual contributions were all of the art for the Zoo and Fairy Tale levels (levels 1 and 10), including all backgrounds and 2-frame animations, the interface design, and I also worked colaboratively on the Park level (level 6) with multiple other team members. As art director, I was responsible for establishing and maintaining the game's overall visual style and managing a team of nine artists. In addition to the in-game art, I also created the artwork used on the box and manual for the second printing of Hands On! Tangrams, which better represented the style and objective of the game.


Lessons learned:

This project was one lesson after another. It was my first time working with the Nintendo DS hardware, and the rest of the team's as well. Island Officials was a fresh, new startup company, and for most of us, this was our first professional game project, having previously worked on PC-based student games. We spent much of the first few months learning about the Nintendo DS's hardware limitations and how to work within those restrictions. We knew we would be limited to the smallest cartridge size available, so we had to make sure that we controlled our number of art assets and optimized our image compression. I think early on, we were approaching the art too much like we were doing PC development, so we had to change our thinking in that area before we could move forward.

This was also the first time I had really found myself in a leadership position, which is a role that I still find myself growing into. I was responsible for solidifying the look of the game, and in the end, I feel that there were definite hits and misses in that area. When we were tasked with creating a look for the first "Hands On!" game, I really wanted to draw from my memories of playing with tangrams back in elementary school and the tactile nature of it. I wanted to try to find a way to bring that feeling to the Nintendo DS, which, despite being a digital game system, is played with a stylus and still carries a hint of manipulating the puzzle pieces with your hands. I wanted to play on that idea, so that's where the interface design filled with construction paper and crayons and wooden blocks and shiny star stickers originated. We actually bought a bunch of craft supplies and experimented with them quite a bit before settling on the final look. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the style we came up with, though I do wish we had done more with the visual feedback to make it feel more interactive, such as having the construction paper buttons shift or crumble when pressed rather than just relying on the audio feedback.

As for the themes and level art, we were going for more of a picture book effect. We didn't just want a sterile series of shape after shape, but wanted to play on what that shape might translate to in a child's imagination. We had decided early on that we wanted a different look for each level, which resulted in most of the levels being drawn by a completely different artist. The idea was that this would resemble some of the storybook compilations that we read as kids, with different stories having different illustrators. I'm not sure if this was as successful in practice as it was in theory, and I largely blame myself for not exercising more control over the quality and consistency of the art. It wasn't until the end of the development process that a lot of the art team really started to find their strengths and use them collaboratively, and I imagine that if we had reached this point sooner, it would have gone a long way toward increasing the overall visual quality of the game. This is one lesson that we have definitely taken to heart while developing the next game in the series, however, and we have taken steps to improve our processes and documentation across the board.

Despite our stumbling blocks and the relative simplicity of the game overall, I consider this project to be a huge accomplishment for both myself and my team, and one that I am personally very proud of. We managed to balance our inexperience with passion and determination and were able to build an entire game from the ground up and see it published. The lessons we've learned as both developers and as a team have been invaluable and have strengthened us significantly going forward.

Hands On! Tangrams release - and a thank you.

On Tuesday, November 24th, my first published video game, Hands On! Tangrams, will be released into the wild.

I'm sure much of the gaming community will view this release as another run-of-the-mill Nintendo DS budget title, but for me, this is a lifelong dream come true. The game is simple, yes, and that is because it was a young team's first game and first time working on DS hardware. The game received no outside funding and the dev team went into it with no expectation of monetary compensation. This is a game developed by people fueled entirely by their determination to break into the game industry... without even leaving New Jersey.

That this game is being published is nothing short of amazing. Island Officials formed nearly three years ago, and this is the first title we have been able to get off the ground. We have experienced countless setbacks and frustrations, and we have lost a few people along the way. But for those of us who stuck with it, we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And for all of our past failures, we have emerged infinitely stronger and more determined as we plan for our company's future.

From a personal standpoint, I consider this one of my life's greatest accomplishments. When I look back at myself three years ago, it amazes me how far I've come and how much I have been able to push myself as an artist and as a leader within that time. This has been my career ambition since I was a little girl, and to finally be able to claim it is nothing short of incredible.

And I never would have been able to achieve this on my own.

Please excuse me if I get a bit sappy here, but I only had a few words of special thanks to include in the game, and that could never cover my gratitude to the numerous individuals who have provided me with support through the development of this game.

First and foremost, I have to thank Ryan and Ryan for giving me, and all of us, this opportunity. Thank you for bringing us all together and keeping us all together when things got rough. Thank you, both of you, for sticking with us and seeing this through to the end... and to the beginning of everything still to come.

Thank you to my parents, for raising me as a proper geek and for introducing me to video games at such a tender young age and playing them with me. Thank you for letting me know that I could do whatever I set out to do, and for encouraging me even when school guidance counselors told me that game development wasn't the most realistic career goal.

Kristin and Matt, thank you for your support and for ultimately joining the cause. Your work is incredible, and I can't imagine the team now without you guys.

Adrian, thank you for putting up with all of my ranting and sticking with me when I thought I was going to lose my mind. You have a big heart, and your passion for IO and game development in general continues to inspire me.

To the rest of the team: You guys rock. Thanks for not killing me and for not making me kill any of you. :) We've been through so much, and I look forward to seeing what comes next. None of us could have done this alone, and I love you all.

To Corvus and my fellow GDC CAs: Thank you for believing in us and giving us an outside perspective on things. You give me faith in the industry and our ability to push out in new directions.

To all of my friends at VGMM: Your faith in me has been an inspiration. Thank you for being the best home away from home on the internet. :)

And finally, to my managers and coworkers at CAI, past and present, thank you so much for your support. I can't tell you how much I've appreciated your understanding and allowing me to be flexible in my schedule so that I could help pull this off. Thank you for showing me by example how a company should be run and how a workplace can feel like a family.


Sorry to get all mushy on ya, but after all the ups and downs we've been through, the reality that this is finally happening is almost overwhelming.

Thank you, everyone, and may this game be the first of many!