Whoo... been a long time...

Suffice to say, this spring got pretty busy. I think the lack of updates was a pretty big hint.

The Troglobyte team and I finished four games (space shooter Neon Trigger, real time strategy Illgresi, first person shooter Illumina, and beat-'em-up Cadence). They were all pirated, Cadence within less than 24 hours, which we're quite proud of. Since they're free games it just means that more people play them. Additionally, we found that there were actual honest to god reviews for them, 2-300 words long even! We were super proud. However, there was also a portfolio that had to be done, applying for internship, volunteering at the Nordic Game Conference, etc. There never seemed to be enough time for much of anything, truth be told.
I've signed the necessary papers for my internship now, and I'll be moving "back home". That is to say, to the north of Sweden where I was born. When I was a child, my cousin and I were most upset that we had to move to the south of Sweden and both wanted to stay. So, we started the club "we who are going to move back to the snow when we've grown up" and were very cranky. A little over two decades later, we still live in the south. I'm of half a mind to suggest he moves up with me now that I'm moving.
I just need to find an apartment now...

The pigs, finished!

Amanda and I held our The Good, the Bad, the Babbler presentation, about character creation, development and representation at Kodachi-Con. The second time we did that lecture, first being at I Seriernas Värld 2013. Got some nice responses and feedback, which we are definitely going to use to update and improve the presentation.

In other news, Champions and Heroes turned three, it is running steadily on tumblr now as well. We've decided to give Project Wonderful a go, and see what happens. Touch wood and all of that.
The plan is to make multiple fanzines for next year's SPX/SIS, together and with Think Ink. Since I have to move for my internship things involving any kind of printing and conventions are a little bit uncertain, but the comic is definitely going to keep going.

I also finished Aquae Sulis for Think Ink's 9th fanzine Mysterious Tales, and lived in a dazed state of confusion when I had spare time after handing it in. I think I spent November to April with practically no time to myself due to the comic, my studies and the portoflio, and absolutely none that was guilt free. On the plus side, I still kinda like the comic, despite having worked on it for so long.

Additionally, SF-bokhandeln is turning 30, and they're hosting a ball in Stockholm in late August. The plan is to go as an imperial officer, but that's provided I find the time to make the outfit. Otherwise I suppose it's going to be one of the old cosplays.
Aaaaand there's going to be some camp NaNoWriMo this month too. I've already started, fallen behind, and caught up. One of my main characters finally decided on a plan, so now I know where she's at least going to try to go (hooray!) but there's a lot of incoherent rambling going on (boo!), but that's NaNo I guess.

A bit of progress

I've wanted to do a pig with big floppy ears in 3d for a year now. I finally sat down and did. And then continued to make a boar while I was at it. Still some tweaking to do, obviously, but... piggy!

And since it's early in the year, I'm slaving away on a comic during what little spare time I have. It's a comic that I've wanted to do for two years, set in Bath, England, for Think Ink's mythology and fantasy themed fanzine this year. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the backgrounds are killing me.

And it's going to be 14 pages and I'm beginning to question my sanity.
At the same time, I'm going to have to set up a homepage for my portfolio as the time of applying for internship approaches, as well as putting together a portfolio. Ho hum. Let's just say that the stress level is quite high.

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!

Back to school

We started school off with an introduction to dynamics and... I'm honestly really excited. It's fun when things go right and, well, ok so maybe I spent way too much time trying to get that box-falling-out-of-cart to work but it came together in the end.

Speaking of the Game Assembly, I was going to post the cutscene pictures from the third game. I was kind of hoping that they'd get around to put it up on the homepage first, but that seems to be uh... a potential 'never' at this point. Only the top three text adventures (the first game we did) of my year are up, out of four finished games :(
So, with that said, here are cutscenes from our shoot 'em up:

The final one is the cropped version, because I have successfully managed to misplace the complete version. And by misplace I mean 'I can't find it on neither laptop nor external harddrive, and the school computers were wiped during summer so it's only existence at this point is in game'. Hooray, or something.
Oh well.

A little rest

Finally moved out of my old apartment and into the new. Still got a lot to sort out, but at least the vast majority is where it should be. Today I won't be running back and forth to clean at least, so that's a relief.
I have instead finished the basics on my Strong Female Pose picture, aka the butt picture, aka Dragon Age featuring Escher Girls and Hawkeye Initiative.

I've worked on it on and off since... late autumn during breaks at the Game Assembly. I didn't touch it for most of spring though. I'm still going to do some basic shading and add magic shine and whatnot but... yeah. Something presentable! Sorta. There are so many broken spines and snapped limbs I don't even know... The poses (all but Hawke) are based on 'female' poses of other works that are meant to be sexy I suppose. Well. It was great fun doing, and I might muster the energy to do a Mass Effect version in the (probably far off) future.

Speaking of the Game Assembly. The second game that I worked on, The Tomte, was nominated for Best Scenario at the Swedish Game Awards 2013. Which was all kinds of awesome, even if we didn't win. Hopefully it will be up at the Game Assembly's homepage soon, free to play.

Now that I've had a proper amount of sleep for a couple of days, it's clearly time to start camp NaNoWriMo. Plans are to continue that No Coffin Needed story.

I also continued doing those scribbly trio character pictures for the story. I've three other characters that have been finished, but no matching trio sets so... eh. Soon. Sooooon.

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.

SPX/SIS coming up

And my team and I are finishing up game three at the Game Assembly. This time it's a shoot 'em up, and it's been fun despite it not being my genre of choice. I finished cutscenes and convo pictures earlier this week, and we got working on what little dialogue we have today. I might show the cutscenes off later, but for now know that I'm working on rim lights. ALL the rim lights.
We also finished the concept art course, during which I made these two:

We were to take the Grimm Brothers's story The Skillful Huntsman, and do a take on one of the characters. I had great fun doing thumbnails (a total of 87 before I realized that perhaps it was time to continue to the next stage XD) and ended up with enough time to do two.

And now I'm going to go and pack my bag, because I'll be way too tired tomorrow. If you're in the Stockholm area this weekend, be sure to come by. Think Ink is releasing our first printed book The Art of Fika, and we'll be selling some old pieces and some individual new pieces as well :)