After a long silence

I have returned. I have been way too swamped these past months, which I suppose I should have expected for my second year at the Game Assembly. By now my fellow second years and I have been divided into three teams of 22, and finished our first game. I've been bad at updating or this would already have been known. On the other hand I can direct you to Troglobyte's facebook page, with various videos ranging from team building to in-progress trailers, and our Indie DB page where you can play Neon Trigger, our first game!
Neon Trigger is a space shooter, and the story of dr Fox, a man of many talents and a lot of anger. It's got an 80s feel to it, and you fight space bikers. Neon, spikes, asteroids, what more could you possibly need? Reviews are much appreciated to help us grow and improve. It was made under a period of 10 weeks, but at half-time as we had studies demanding our attention as well.
The Troglobyte team has just started working on our second game, so far unnamed, which is going to be a real time strategy. We're all very excited over it even as we're starting to hammer out the basics of it. One and a half week done, eight and a half to go.

An early version of our logo, which has since been simplified.

I've also done my 12th year of NaNoWriMo. I've cheated, once again, and continued on the same story. This year was probably one of the most even years I've ever had. It was not that inspiration flowed like a wild river or anything like that, but that together with school I nearly had no spare time so it was a battle every day. It evened out and stopped being a pain to force out those words. They started coming at a reasonable pace, I found my inspiration probably because I was too tired to chase after it. It was a strange and somehow yet rewarding experience. And I finally got to introduce Fyren, who is one of my old characters who's still around, which was very exciting for me.
And speaking of which...

I drew him a while back, together with Zillah and Ziv who are both important to the story's history.

And then these three as well. I've got two half-finished trios waiting for a third party, and neither time nor inspiration for them at the moment. In part because it's now time to start working on this year's Think Ink comic. This year's comic is something I've wanted to do since 2011 when I visited Bath. I got super inspired at the roman baths there, and that's where the focus is going to be. This year the plan is to print in Japan, as Fanny is there for her studies and it would be a shame to waste such an opportunity!

A busy month

Three weeks left before the summer holiday arrives for us at the Game Assembly. The rest of Sweden's students tend to end about... two weeks before that. On one hand, a bit jealous, on the other... we've got a lot of stuff to do and a lot of it is fun, and I know what I need to practice on during the summer.
We're currently working on our fourth game - a turn based strategy this time. It makes three weeks left seem short :O
I've also been a volunteer at Nordic Game (fun!), visited SPX/SIS together with Think Ink and sold comics and had fun with old friends and new, and been part of a game art exhibition. Additionally, Amanda and I have passed the 150 comics benchmark on Champions and Heroes (!!) and are preparing for one but possibly up to three new fanzines for next year, in addition to Think Ink's yearly new fanzine.

In other words, I've been quite busy and had a lot of fun, though I think I'll appreciate a breather when the summer break finally arrives. As much of a break as it will be.
Meanwhile, I've started experimenting with a new scribbly style. My comic teachers always told me I needed to stop fiddling with details (sorry, not quite there yet XD) and let go of my careful lines and add more black spaces. Well! I've been drawing some of my (huge horde of) characters from my NaNoWriMo novel that I keep working on, doing just that. And it's fun! And faster than my usual pace.

 

 

 

Evidently I can't decide on what to write about them, but on the plus side, characters who I've only had work names for before now have proper names. So that's... what I've been doing with essentially all my time this past month.

Time flies

I have been oh so very busy since... oh... October, I'd say. Squeezing in the time to manage a cosplay before the Bioware dinner, going to the Bioware dinner, NaNoWriMo, trying to catch up on my studies as the cosplay ate too much of my time and I had to sleep too, and learning the basics of 3d in Maya. It ended up with me being sick as a dog the last days before the holidays, but I'm recovered and back in the Game Assembly as the new term began. We've started working on our third 3d project, and our second game. So far so good, but I could certainly do with a few extra hours in the day. And then some in the night.
But, so far we have a lowpoly fjord horse.

I am really happy with this, even though I would have liked to give it more detailed legs and a fringe, but we were only allowed to use 500 triangles. I'm not sure where they all went to be honest. I checked inside so many times, expecting to see a tiny horse or something in there, explaining where all the triangles went XD

The second 3d project was the vampire hunter's crossbow.



I wish I had had the energy to do more on it, texturing and working on adding more details on the normal map for all of the crossbow. Alas, I was sick half of the week, and it got worse towards the end of it. It is named both as a bad pun, and as a Supernatural reference, courtesy of my friend Jonas.

 

And then I've been doing some character designs for the game. We are basing the story around old Swedish myths, and where they would be now. Evidently I chose the huldra/skogsrå/lady of the forest to design. She is a favorite of mine after all. Personally, I like the idea of a crown made of raven wings, but the dark skinned version is my favorite. Whether or not she, and Näcken (a nude violin player who drowns people) who I am currently working on, will have clothes in the game depends entirely on the outcome of our meeting with the teachers tomorrow. Personally I'm all for nudity as long as it's not treated with the 'male gaze', but I provided a clothing alternative all the same, just in case. Viking inspired, but altered to reveal her hollow back :)