made this little guy for magic planet snack:

don’t know if i’m going to use the “walking away” animation. we’ll see how it looks in the game.

also, tvs for the wizards:

PREAMBLE

i cannot find an elegant beginning for the post so i guess that is it. i am hoping to achieve a monstrous grandeur and mystery akin to an elephant graveyard but perhaps we will settle for the utility of a backyard compost heap?

my life has been more real than digital lately. started as a substitute teacher / substitute instructional aide, which reminds me, ben himley, if you still exist, i have your copy of “on subbing” and you may have it back. so far my stories are only incidentally funny, and only for moments at a time, so i’ll keep them out of lazercatz until they arrive at the appropriate stature / immediacy. in the meantime, here is a list for friday’s job:

- halloween costumes (4: including: myself (mad hatter), scotty (darth vader), hunter (darth vader), charlie (just a cape))

- candy, servings of (3 for all students, as per para-educators’ judgment, being the primary visible representatives of the force that plans the class’s parties)

- turn-yr-mouth-green! cheetos, bags of (2, eaten in their entirety)

- students (8)

- adults (3.5; jori, the social worker, was in and out)

overall, a very good day; at least, no crazier than a typical day in an EBD classroom. so, good job, me.

WENATCHEE

well yes. tiffany and i went on vacation this summer for a day. lake chelan was mentioned, but a different lake interposed, saying, “WENATCHEE.”

- so many bees

- tiffany is allergic to bees and will die if she encounters certain parts of them

- nice outdoor times

- leavenworth what. e.g.:

IN CONCLUSION

lenny kravitz!

more pictures soon, post is too long.

YOU SHALL NOT PASSSSS.

i find it funny that “phew” and “few” have the same sounds, but can’t be used for the same emotional shorthand.

haven’t posted for awhile because there is too much going on. here’s something secret i have been working on:

the game is called “MAGIC PLANET SNACK”, and it is for an (unofficial) game competition over at TIGSOURCE. i’m not going to really say much about it until it’s done. unless you find me in the real life, in which case i will probably make you play it. thanks again, shauna, tiffany, scott, corey, etc.

the secrecy is really just for me to feel special, because it’s not like it’s LUDUM DARE or something. but i like secrets.

that screen is a mockup because i don’t have time to put the sky and the stars in tonight, or the “background” tiles (the dark ones). because sleeping is kind of good for me.

birdwatchers united / transmittens; nero’s day at disneyland / abiku. shipping tomorrow or the next day.

tif made me french toast last night! thankss for ANGRY BUNNY:

we watched “the castle of cagliostro” which i have been TOTALLY mispronouncing and did some wii fit. tetris slept under a pile of clean laundry. i cemented the evening as a perfect good times by forgetting to set the alarm.

reminds me that i have quite a few pictures backed up from some adventures that need posting. should also help me to disengage from game dev for awhile so that i can get some tapes out.

so, more to come. REAL LIFE STUFF.

was going through all the new art assets for cloud cats and it struck me how out of place the player sprite looked. it makes sense; the first version of green cat was done in about five minutes back when i envisioned CLOUD CATS as a short one-level shmup.

i like the third eye in the new version a lot better, as well as the tentacles; i toyed with the idea of adding a cat mouth, but discarded it because it looked pretty silly. i’m going to animate the tentacles and try to add some light emitting from the third eye for the psi blasts. the idle, charge, and both psi animations are done; i like this a lot better:

i’m going to ditch the radiating square chunks and just make different colored auras to represent the player’s conduct; also i will make something appropriately dramatic for the cat kythe build-up. i just replaced the graphics for the portals recently; i’ll post some screenshots when i have time.

i think i will probably redo the sprites for the clouds and trees from fruit snack patagonia, as well; they were made before the style of the game really started to emerge. then i need to finish it, because i have too many projects going concurrently. particularly, i need to be working on music stuff and sending out tape orders. i’m afraid i have become decidedly deadbeat about the label and i need to get it back to a place where it doesn’t feel like a chore and also so i don’t feel like i am letting down THE UNIVERSE.

kind of happy with this. boy version.

girl version.

cave hopper. this is the biggest variety. maybe. i am going to make their behavior similar to ants. there will be a small fungivore that also lives in the caves that will act as a prey animal for the hoppers.

hoppers are basically communal headcrabs. of the deeeeep.

a mural that offers a significant revelation to our star-crossed protagonist; i’ll be making a hi-res version to show when you examine it. can’t talk about it too much without spoiling plot elements. it’s interesting thinking about how to go about delivering “plot” in a procedural dungeon crawl, but i think i have a nice solution. versnoof has a mythos building up around it that is refreshing and fun to write. it’s nothing that hasn’t been done by other people, but i am still pretty excited about it. as with cloud cats, it’s been fun to let the story emerge as i make design decisions, rather than the other way around. the game is much creepier than i intended when i started making it.

wishing i did more tiles for cloud cats, as they are fun to make and it’s nice to have limitations to work with. making versnoof art is comparatively fast and easy to keep consistent. still, i love all the art i’ve made for cloud cats so far and i think it will look better in an installation format (it’s much louder, for one). versnoof will be an alone-in-the-dark game. it  has been good for cloud cats because it has clarified a lot of the graphic design. i know now that i’m going to have to replace the sprites for the portals, among other things; should force me to write better code for handling the portal animations and hitboxes, too.

here is some blurry phone-camera concept art:

for versnoof (the hero i like the best is basically me, down to the flannel and the satchel. i’ll be making a girl version as well. go egoism):

for cloud cats:

some old obsessions there. nice to finally give them life. EATS TAPES (the boombox) is from fruit snack patagonia, which doesn’t make much sense.