Sunday, March 27, 2011

Freelance

Oh wow, its been a while guys.


I haven't had much chance to work on personal projects lately as I am currently working on 2 freelance projects. I call it freelance loosely as I would hope freelance artists get paid better or at least more frequently. Still, the projects are turning out to be very rewarding in their own ways and both are so different that it keeps me from getting too bored between the two. Both are outside of my usual line of work, but go back to some of my roots while still providing some new challenges.

There isn't a whole lot I can say about both projects. One of them, I'm under NDA with and while my client has given me permission to post stuff here, not much so far has really been postable as its all preliminary stuff right now.

This project is a 2D beat-'em-up style game intended for Xbox Live Arcade. It is the brain child of Stephen Green, a programmer who is looking to get into game design. I came into the project as sort of a friend of a friend of a friend type connection, but we've slowly been working our way towards getting his vision to light. Currently the goal is to get the game into a demo stage by early June in order to enter it into a game contest.

The main character is a Ninja character who basically fights, well. . . everyone. I'm in charge of all the art/visual parts of the game. This includes not only character design and environments, but also character animations. Animation is something I haven't really messed with in a VERY long time, but since the method of implementing the animation is similar to classic sprite sheets, I'm finding tons of references to help me along in the process.

Anyway, here's some preliminary Zombie designs (one of the many types of enemies in the game):



The other project I have going on is the art half of a board game production. My friend (and Ben's Co-worker) Ahmed Abdelmeguid needed an artist for the sci-fi board game he is working on. Having come into the project now, I've been helping him play test the game and refine the mechanics and storyline. If you like Arkham Horror and Sci-Fi, chances are you'll like this board game. It currently has no name, as we're still trying to find the perfect one for it. While the Ninja game is very cartoony and 2D, this game is getting me back into portrait painting (which I love and haven't done in a looong time). It also involves much more graphic design to it, which is something I've always avoided despite the fact that once I get into it, I tend to actually enjoy the process.

Here's one of a few possible character sheets for players to take on. I'd say this is in alpha, as all that text and numbers are just filler so that I can actually design around something.


So yeah, both games are VERY different.

I haven't forgotten about my house project, it simply has been put on the back burner for a while. I'm getting anxious to start working on something of my own again though, so I may finally be returning to it again.

I've also in my free time been reworking an old art test, trying to improve it here and there. It's been good practice although annoying since as I improve, the earlier work becomes outdated and thus the cycle begins anew, trying to get all 4 pieces up to the same level.










Still working on the stone. There's something about it that just isn't doing it for me. The stone is a pretty intensive redo of the first but still in the same theme and the wood has just been touched up here and there.


In other news we are moving to Providence in a few weeks. Still trying to find a house but its pretty inevitable that we'll be doing temporary housing for at least a month (oh god. . .living in a hotel. . . . ). Despite all that I'm looking forward to living in Providence. I haven't really enjoyed MA, as much as other places I've lived. Hopefully RI will be a better version.



1 comment:

  1. Awesome see that you have a few gigs going.

    With that scifi card, I'd recommend you steer away from any easily recognizable sci-fi fonts. Upon first look, I thought it was Star Trek related.

    Nice job with the cloth.

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