Friday 30 September 2016

First game made inside an animation task

For the current college assignment about vfx and image manipulation, my separate project will be an interactive piece where you can use the mouse to look around a landscape. Since it's still made in 2d, the look-around part will be done through the use of panoramic photos... Particularly these:




After a bit of effort focused in the technical side of things, all that is left to do is fill some gaps in the programming and then.. simply.. take it...further... :)

Tuesday 27 September 2016

Green-screen test: Liam vs the Cookie Monster

Since this year of college started off with a Visual Effects project, we had to do some green-screen in it as well.. For that, the whole class went outside and recorded some footage with a portable green screen, which would be then manipulated into After-effects and turned into great stuff... :)

Now this is Liam, in a not so dangerous situation...
A normal day, and an only two-meter drop to a relatively soft green screen.
Now this is Liam after a bit of After-Effects, pretty-much Dead...
It's hard to go looking for a cookie in the cookie cave when the real cookie is you...

Sunday 25 September 2016

Tales From The Express - Encounter 3: Ox mind


Today's activities:
-Explore the pretty green field
-Eat some juicy grass
-Take a nap under the sun
-Pay the internet bill
-Complain about the traffic
-Make potato salad for Janet's house party
...
-Forget the last three
-Eat some more juicy grass
-Watch the sunset
-Drift off to sleep
-Enjoy...

Saturday 24 September 2016

A matter of Lemons

I've just launched Lemonless, a multiple choice-based game about life opportunities and what happens when you miss them..
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/681523

Friday 23 September 2016

Tales from the express - Encounter 2: Killer and Shard


They met on his last contract. Being asked to retrieve another fancy artifact that would make a bunch of rich strangers even richer, he set out to that absurdly protected pavilion and did his best. He was sick of doing his best.
After bashing his indestructible skin through more rows of reinforced crystal glass, as well as giving every guard an extreme change of appearance, the mission objective was reached. He deposited the strange chunk of unknown mineral in his chest compartment and left just as subtly...
No day was the same from that point. The bounty was never turned in, and he was now running away from many dangerous folks. He, a former heartless mercenary, was running away from his old ways.. It was the Shard that made him change. Whatever that artefact was doing inside him, he kept on running to this new life, because a change is what he wanted the most..

Wednesday 21 September 2016

Express cover photo update

Today I took a bit of time to freshen up the cover photo for my other social media pages.. Several months ago I came up with this idea that every time I'm creating a new and important character, I would afterwards put it in the scene of the cover...
Here is what the old version of the cover photo looks like:


It seems all good with the suggestive dreamy background and the clean but still empty wagons of the Express...And it even features Alex Green, the main character from my first public game.. (Game that can be found heeeree:  http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/676127 ). But I still just see it as the beginning of the beginning...
Now this is how the new version of the cover looks:


That starts taking shape, right? And it will take even greater shapes with each new character joining in, as well as the stories they carry with them... :)

Tuesday 20 September 2016

Tales From The Express: The first encounter...

Tales From The Express - Encounter 1: Mr. Totem...

'From numerous expeditions across lands that should not be named yet, a first but surprising contact was with a being that remains as mysterious as it is exposed to all visitors... Never moving from its spot, it quickly earned the nickname 'Totem', most likely because of its eroded horns and geometrical fur areas. Looking straight through you (or perhaps inside you...) and taking very deep breaths, It seems like it tries to inhale fragments of the Universe around...'



Monday 19 September 2016

Finishing the lemons

Yesterday's (not so complex) activity was adding a little important detail to Lemonless, the new game I've been working on...And that little but important detail is Text Colour...
The text would have pretty much worked out anyway, but I think that adding colours to the fonts gives a bit of personality to what every character says... Just like matching the sound of a voice to the aspect of a speaking character, this is a way of matching text to the character it's coming from...
As a bonus detail, all this text-colouring was done on top of the practically finished game, so there's only a round of testing left to be done...before the inevitable will happen... :)

Friday 16 September 2016

independent projects stick on

Still being in a phase of the college that mainly focuses on dealing with independent work and getting accustomed to the rhythm of it, I just figured out I could use this time to get on with some..unfinished business.. Have no worries, there are no mobster operations involved, but I will instead try and finish the dialogue for my next story-based game, "Lemonless".
Unfortunately no other information can be disclosed until the release :), apart from dialogue samples that I will post right now in order to show the process...



In the original asset-making part of the game (before adding the programming), I came up with a really vague dialogue just so I would know what the characters Should say... Now, it's a bit more dizzying since I have to pay attention to the personality, attitude and many more features for each of them. But that is a really fun thing to do as well, and I'm also encouraged by the fact that the programming is done and the game is otherwise fully-functional, so it is only a matter of well-chosen words...

Wednesday 14 September 2016

College-work time! (I almost missed it)

Since many of the reasons for beginning this new adventure are tied to the start of my second year of college in the uk, it is natural that a good part of the work I am posting here will be done in the just-mentioned awesome environment. Being on the Animation, Games and Visual Effects course at Newcastle College felt great at first, but it later felt extraordinary once I found out I was diving into everything from digital drawing and animation to better planning techniques.. I heard about amazing art and artists, I learned the steps to making game art, and I even got into game design and programming from books in the college library... There's much more I can say, but I'm afraid I have to get onto the current project... Yes, the adventure continues... :)

Tuesday 13 September 2016

Start of a New Adventure

Hello there, curious visitor! My name's Andreas, and you've just stepped into a space (honestly) not that magical yet, but which will get as magical as possible once I start filling it with my everyday projects and arty stuff...To drop the mistery for a little second, the before-mentioned "arty stuff" will include drawings of (mostly sci-fi) colourful alien monsters, college animations, sketches and final links to choice-based games I am making, along with other similarly crazy things... All that being said, I'll start intensely working on the "magical space" part, and I guess I'll see you around!