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2014 recap + update on my next game

Lets Recap 2014 for le M dot Strange So at the beginning on 2014 I released my 3rd animated feature film I am Nightmare which you can buy  on dvd here  or  digitally here  or watch for free  here I also released the original soundtrack for I am Nightmare (w/ Mad Dashiell) I did  this presentation on I am Nightmare in LA I released  this album with my wife here I released  these 4 games here I released this  free Cinema 4d basics tutorial series I did a presentation on  filmmaking and character animation  at Siggraph and a presentation of  making games with Unity and Playmaker I released two "music video games"  Cold Pizza  and  The Curse of Marie I released  all 3 of my animated feature films for free on youtube ------------------- Update on my next game Work on my next game is moving forward steadily- it slows down a bit when I have to learn some new tools- like recently I realized I needed to learn how to use behavior trees if I wanted to do more

Sharing the filmmaking/animation advice

Every once in awhile someone emails me asking me for advice on animation and/or filmmaking- I figured I should start sharing my answers publicly as it could be useful for some peeps out there- Here's a recent answer I gave to someone- Animation/Filmmaking advice for a 12 year old animator/filmmaker In my experience the best way to learn anything is out of necessity- I've learned most everything I have through personal projects- with animation- like you I started with a bunch of experiments but then I started getting confused as to what to learn next- as there's SO MUCH to learn- So then I starting making really short animated film things- like 1-3 minute long stuff- I made up stories for them- and what happened in the stories dictated to me what I had to learn next- for example if the beginning of the film had a character walking across a desert then I knew I had to learn how to make a desert, how to make a character and how to make them walk across a scene- that

Keepin it magickal

I'm working alone in the middle of the night like I have for years but now instead of setting up shots and animating them for a film I'm working out different ways to parse data to make the creation and management of this big game easier- On the subject of film- HSM lives- or I should say it hasn't really come alive yet- but someday it will- So the same person that made this a few years ago.... Is now super excited about hash tables- you've got just to follow the excitement- the intrigue- I got into filmmaking after seeing films like those made by David Lynch which seemed like magic to me- the more I made films the more the magic faded away- I guess things seem magical when you don't know much about them... So game development now has that magic for me- its all magic so I'm having a lot of fun trying to figure out all these tricks en route to making my first big game project- My excitement has been kept at bay most of the time because of the

Thanks again to the I am Nightmare extra's!

On my last film I am Nightmare (2014) I needed some last minute funds to finish the film so I offered to make people extra's in the film for something like $50 I believe- some cool peoples stepped up and helped me out- I finished the film and they were made into 3d models and put in the film- I'm making the DVD for I am Nightmare right now as I was invited to attend a comic convention next month here in Cali and I have nothing to sell haha so I'm making these dvd's- they'll be showing I am Nightmare so I figure I should have dvd's on hand eh? Anyway these dvd's are barebones BUT I added in a little photo gallery featuring the people who were extra's in the film ya see... Epsilon paid for 4 versions of himself ^_^ Thanks again my friends! NOW I'll be able to do even better stuff with you all in my games ^_^

Prototyping progress....

Click for full size version That's a window into my current game dev world- I'm still working on the prototype for my next game- It's by FAR the most complex project I've built into my short 9 month old game dev career- I've finished all the major player controls now- it took about 3-4 weeks to do that- I'm trying to do this prototype the right way so I have to build in everything the character will be able to do for the whole game + all the weapon he'll ever use etc- So the work is really front loaded- if I do everything right now- building out the actual levels and creating the playable game should move pretty quickly compared to this part- With this game I want really tight game controls that aren't overly simplistic but not so complex that they aren't fun- I want to be able to pick it up and have fun and play- I still have some decisions to make with the player controls though before I can totally move on- The player will have to pr

So I'm working on my next game....

After I finished my last game The Bad Platform I starting prototyping a Bitcoin mining adventure game- after I built a rough prototype of that I realized that the game wasn't very fun so I stopped work on it- I'm following a lot of the design guidelines from this book - so I built the toy- it wasn't fun at all so I move on to something else- Now the whole plan for me moving into games was to eventually create video games with the same atmosphere, visual quality, feeling and depth as my animated films-  I wrote up the outlines, script and a basic design document for what is to be my first big game project a few months ago- I was really excited about it BUT that was before I did Magnetdroid so I didn't have the knowledge and/or experience to take it on at that time- and Magnetdroid actually started as a prototype for one of the game mechanics I need for my big game idea- the magnetics system- Since I'm not going to do the Bitcoin game and since I've l

Interesting stuff I saw at Siggraph 2014

 I just came back from Siggraph 2014 in Vancouver as I was a presenter for Maxon which is the company that makes my favorite 3d software Cinema 4d. I had a great time- I got to meet and hangout with some of the developers that work on Cinema 4d and a gang of awesome artists that use it. I did two presentations- one on character animation for cg filmmaking and one on game dev for non programmers- they will be available on c4dlive.com soon if you missed them I also got to hang out with my friend Ricky Grove whom you may know as the voice of Lord Wor in Heart String Marionette and Mayor Tom in I am Nightmare Two professional weirdo's in Vancouver Here's the most interesting things I saw at Siggraph 2014 Unity 5 A lot of new awesome stuff has been added to the newest version of Unity- I was most excited about the new audio features, the ability to add scripts to mecanim states, the new UI system,  the webgl export, the new universal shader- well pretty much every

THE BAD PLATFORM- post commentary+bitcoin shirts

I just finished a new little game called "THE BAD PLATFORM"  that I spent about a week on- you can watch the trailer here- You can play the game in your browser here I had been working on the prototype for a bitcoin mining adventure game when I got the idea for the bad platform- I just got the idea one day to make a game from the perspective of the platform in platformer games- most of us are probably more like the platforms than the players in the real world- getting stepped on by douchebags on their way to money and copulation- Is this the first game where you play as a platform getting revenge on the players? I couldn't find any- if it is I called this genre "platformer revenge" It was fun to take a concept and turn it around into a game that was released in a week- the mechanics are very simple so its not like its some complicated thing but games don't have to be complicated to be fun- I started this project as my first mobile game- I was

That precarious position: Soft, vulnerable dreams in a world of predators

The above photo my wife took is of a discarded cicada larva skin- these cicadas spend between 13-17 YEARS underground in their larval stage- then emerge from holes in the ground to climb up a tree or other tall structure in hopes of emerging out of their skin and flying away as adults- Here's a nice mini documentary on the cicada life cycle In that documentary there are billions of cicadas emerging- but I live in the city so there are very few- the city I live in used to consist of orchards and fields now its all paved over and made up of condo's and business parks- So I can imagine cicada's going underground in a field only to try to emerge 17 years later to find concrete they cannot dig through- they'll desperately try to find a way out but their not equipped to dig through concrete so they'd hatch underground and die with no open sky to fly through- When they emerge from the ground they are vulnerable to predators- in my yard I've found 10-15 wasps

On why I quit filmmaking

Since someone I know has followed my work for some time asked me this on twitter I figure I should write up a proper post about it... To make a long story short- I got bored with filmmaking- it just wasn't doing it for me anymore- I lost my love for it- and so instead of faking it- I quit. It started to feel like I was just going through the motions with film- I had lost my passion for the process- and when you make films alone like I do if you don't have the passion you don't have much- If you don't love what you're doing stop doing it- pretty simple. I also came across a quote that was something like this "If you feel like you're in a hole, stop digging" I did feel like I was in a hole with filmmaking so I decided to stop- I have no regrets with that decision. I started working on We are the Strange in 2004. I released Heart String Marionette in 2012 and I released I am Nightmare at the end of 2013. So I made 3 animated feature films ov

Post commentary on my game MAGNETDROID

I made a new game in the past month days called MagnetDroid- in case you didn't know I quit filmmaking and am now a game developer. You can get MagnetDroid  here at the site for the game jam contest I made it for Voting starts July 1st- if you like it please give it a vote ^_^ I still can't consider this a real "game" as the initial motivation wasn't to make a game it was to practice game mechanics then it was to have something for a contest- I hope people have fun with it but deep in my heart I know its a fraud! haha After making this game the proper workflow is becoming clearer to me- the level maps you draw up are like your storyboards in film production- and if you start work without storyboards you're asking for trouble! Before I starting drawing out the levels- I scoured the web looking for pertinent articles-printed them out- went to a cafe- read it all and took notes then started drawing my levels right then keeping all the info in mind as

Grindin on basic game mechanics

This week I learned some more basic game mechanics as I prepare to start iterating prototypes of my first big game project- I already have some basics like- Run, jump, push objects, fire projectiles at enemies, melee attacks, player life/item management, use bombs that damage things based on distance, basic enemy ai.... The things on this weeks list were- Freeze Ray- something like the ice weapon in Megaman 1 as it can freeze level elements like fire and water as well as freeze enemies for a limited time This freeze water I did this in Playmaker ... So to freeze a pool of water that the player would fall through by default I just added a trigger event so that when the projectile tagged "icebeam" collided with the water it moved it into the freeze state- the freeze state switches the water from the water material to the ice material and turns on the box collider for that object and sets a timer of 6 seconds- so when hit with the ice beam it turns to ice and now t