Patate Dello Spazio

...according to the Babel Fish Translator, that's Space Potatoes in Italian! Although I have a feeling spazio may be space as in area, who knows! Apart from maybe Italians who speak English or vica versa.

Anywho, here's some English Space Potatoes (for some reason I picture this guy with a mild northern accent) . I really need to start drawing the other ones a bit more! This guy always seem to seep out of the pencil though, and I'm still figuring him out really. While making the game I have come across some problems with how the animation system is going to work, with regards to being able to shoot 360 degrees and run/jump/grapple etc at the same time. While not wanting to make the control/animation system too complicated, I do want it to feel fluid and smooth. Here's some sketches based on that problem and some other random sketches to boot!

Back!

Hello there blog! What do you mean who am I? I'm your creator that's who! Ok, I apologise for the neglect recently but I come bearing goodies!

Earlier this month me and my girlfriend accompanied my parents and travelled down to the Tuscany, Italy. We stayed at a picturesque little place called Pieve Fosciana in the mountain region of Garfangana for a week and a half. We travelled from England by car through France, over the alps into Switzerland, through Mt. Blanc and down into Tuscany and our destination, Pieve Fosciana. The journey took 3 days in total stopping off at 2 hotels on the way down and was an awesome start to the holiday.

From there we visited Pisa, Lucca and Florence during the week overloading on beautiful architechture, art and scenery. It really was almost too much! I would love to do a city break in Florence sometime to see all the things I missed, including getting into the Ufizi (unfortunately the que was massive and we had already spent about an hour queing for the Duomo!).

At the end of the week, we managed to go and see Tosca at the Puccini Festival on the lake side at the Torre del Lago. It was an amazing performance! It's the first time I have seen an Opera and the power blew me away! This was outdoors, we were half way back from the stage, and I still perceived the vocals as loud! All I could think was of the poor actors ears standing next to them! I didn't understand a word but luckily, we had read a printed synopsis off the festival website before-hand. On the way home we travelled by plane and it was an amazing experience to see the 3 day car journey from above in about 2 hours! No wonder the world feels smaller nowadays!

Anyway, here are a few drawings I made during the week, the first 2 are views from the place we were staying at, the third is the place itself and the fourth is an old fort at the top of the valley. Enjoy!

More Potatoes doodles coming soon... ciao for now!

(p.s apologies for the bad scans, a couple of them I had to stitch together as they didn't fit in the scanner!)

Herriman features on IGN!

Herriman is available to download at the XNA UK forums here! It's the unpolished raw version we handed in under pressure (pun intended :P) and Dan has kindly uploaded the more polished version there. It's just under 30 meg. Personally I would suggest the (slightly) more polished version, but the original is there as it is what was handed in and judged on. I think you need to install the latest .net framework and Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable to run the game so if you can be arsed, well done. Also IGN have a news article on the competition along with some thoughts on the entries, including Herriman! Full link yonder, and I have quoted there mini review here:

"HERRIMAN: UNDER PRESSURE

We don't know what a 'herriman' is but this was certainly a nifty little entry. Playing as the titular hero, your task is to repair your spaceship by diving into the sea and recovering toxic waste. However, there are plenty of dangerous fish in your way and you've got to keep an eye on your torch, recharging it as necessary to stop watery predators from eating you. The biggest compliment we can pay Herriman is that we could certainly imagine (with a bit more spit and polish) downloading this from Xbox Live Arcade, quickly getting embroiled in highscore challenges."

Herriman, by the way, is his name. He is an alien. And although it looks like toxic waste it's actually special alien fuel! ;)

If anyone reads this regularly (who are you?! stoppit!) I am aware I missed my own deadline for the comic *slaps wrist* but I did make a lot of headway on it I promise! So I'm hoping it won't be too much longer before I get the first page up. I don't think I will set myself another deadline on here as it's turning me into a schizophrenic, I almost stayed in bed this morning thinking of excuses...

However, in my defence I have started work on the Mercenary Space Potato Game now as well and I wanted the comic and game to tie in to each other so its taking longer to think it through than I thought it would. It's a fairly ambitious project on my part soon as I am inexperienced in both comics and games design but what the hell, you learn by doing eh?

EDIT: a better alternative download for the new version here.

We won!

News just in, our game Herriman: Under Pressure won best overall game in the XNA UK competition! I honestly didn't expect we would win but I guess I was wrong! Well done to everyone who entered and the winners of the other categories too. I can't wait until they have the rest of the games up for download so I can check all the other cool stuff! When they are made public, I will post a link here if your interested in trying them out.

Thanks to the other team members Dan, Dave and his brother Rob, you all did a great job! We will probably upload a slightly less buggy version for people as we have been working on it a little since the competition deadline. Only minor stuff, mostly bugs (the version we handed in had a really annoying sound bug in it every now and again). I'll post some of my crappy designs and stuff from the game here at some point, but for now here's a quick sketch of a bewildered Herriman!

Blog?

I was going to apologize for the lack of stuff on my blog but then I realised I'm the only one who reads it... so apologies to me! I promise I will put some of that stuff I was on about up here tonight so I can look at it!

In other news, results of the XNA UK competition I was apart of should be annouced tomorrow I think. I'm hoping that whatever happens we will have a breakdown of how our game did, so we can improve it. I am all to aware of its bugs and flaws due to the short time we made it in, but I'm also quite proud we actually got something together in such short time. It's amazing what a short timescale can do for your creativity!

Which brings me back to the Mercenary Space Potatoes, I really enjoyed designing a game and the possibilties that are there for telling a story with my characters. I'm going to try and carry on my creative roll and make another game, this time featuring the Space Potatoes! I will also during the process create a weekly comic, as I mentioned I was going to near the start of this blog, to go along with the game story. Notice I say will and not try. I always end up coming up with ideas and not following them through to completion (this blog is a living record of that fact at the moment!) so this is my attempt to put in writing what I am going to do and hopefully that will be an extra incentive for myself. I should probably start writing a schedule and put some time away for this right now! I have never been very good at managing my own time. In fact I'm going to give myself a deadline this very moment, one week to come up with the first installment of the comic! That's Tuesday 3rd July. There, it is set.

Right then, I had better get on with it! Can't wait to finish work now! Here's some Flash doodlez in the mean time. Check back in a week to see if I make the deadline!

Herriman: Under Pressure!

Here's a peek at the character I designed for our game, Herriman: Under Pressure! Cheesy title I know... That is Herriman below. The competion is over now and we managed to get something resembling a game in! A hectic weekend that's for sure! 11 days to make a game was one hell of a challenge and even though it didnt turn out perfect, I have learned a lot from it, thats for sure. I will post more art and animations and screenshots from the game soon. Cheers!

XNA UK competition

Hey there people! Been busy at work and at home recently, still trying to sort out my internet connection properly... it works but not as it should. I feel like I have spent the last 2 weeks on the phone to customer services (on hold of course)!

Anyway, Space Potatoes have taken a back seat at the moment. I will still be developing them and getting a story going, but at the moment myself and my good friend Dan are developing a game for a competition. It's an incredibly small time scale, the idea is they will give some specifications of what it must include 48 hours from the deadline! We started on it last Wednesday and have until this weekend coming to sort something out. We're just going to go with our idea and then try to fit the mandatory elements they ask for in at the end... gulp! I've been involved in the idea development and I'm in charge of character design and animation for the main guy and some fishy enemies (the theme is ocean oddysey).

Wish us luck!

Crap! no pictures... erm heres a sketch I did of my mate George and his banjo!

Post-it note sketches

More from the sketchpad and a couple of post-it notes... boy do I need to practice more! :S Especially hands. Dont ask what the big guy was meant to be holding I don't know. I wasn't really thinking properly there was I!

Oh well, I guess thats where I'm "at" now so I just need to keep going. I'm not going to censor any of my stuff for this as I want it to be a record of progress, the aim being to have some solid characters and an interesting story by the end of it. More important than that though is to improve my drawing skills and myself as an artist. I don't know how long it will take as I am doing it in any free time I get and sometimes it's hard to get into it. So if there is anybody reading this, hopefully you will find the progress interesting and I will try to update on at least a weekly basis. Thanks!

Sketchbook Stuff

Finally! I have some kind of internet connection at home! Here's some hardcore Space Potatoness from my sketchbook...

Apologies for the dirt and smudges its hard to keep it clean when you have spud fingers!

More Flash doodles...

I still haven't got the internet working properly at home so here's another Flash doodle I did at work today (in my lunchtime, honest!). I've had a few early character ideas and feel a story brewing so in the near future I'm going to attempt an Action/Adventure/Comedy comic starring these guys! Hope you like them!

Also, coming soon, I have a load of sketchbook stuff to scan in and upload. Some of it is potato related and some is not, stay tuned!

Moving house!

Sorry I havent posted over the weekend! The reason being I have just moved house and our phone and internet account was swapped to our new address. It even moved house the night before we did so I could set up straight away when we moved in! Unfortunately it didn't quite work out like that so I am awaiting an engineer this afternoon (I'm posting from work... SHHH!).


Well, I don't like posting without a picture for you all to look at so I am limited to what I have on my work computer. Luckily for you all I got bored at somepoint last week and doodled this in flash.

I'm still figuring out how his helmet actually fits on, how his oxygen pack attaches and what his gun is. It's funny how you don't think of these things in a doodle! Also, I'm going to make his shooter a little spud gun, get it?! Yeah I know it's lame, but it makes me chuckle inside and that's all I'm doing this for! :P

Anyway, I'd better get back to work and hopefully I will have some cool stuff for you when I have settled in to my new place and have been "jacked in" again!

Doodle

Just a doodle I wanted to put as my profile image :)

Hello world of blog!

OK, this is my first foray into the world of blogging! A bit late on the bandwagon but never mind eh? Who am I? Well, I'm a Flash Designer by day, I also have a huge interest in animation, drawing and design and I like to draw cartoons! Mainly consisting of Potatoes. In space.

Having been inspired by the many animation blogs around, I want to use this blog as a way of motivating myself to draw more outside of work and to improve my drawing skills through some hopefully constructive criticism! So I will basically be posting doodles, sketches and scraps for everyone to point at and go "that's shit!".

Here's a picture to start off with, of... a Potato! In fact this is the doodle that started my fascination with these strange fellows. It's a few years old now, I doodled it in Painter 8 when I first started to learn it, I've been trying to develop him a bit further recently so I'll post some more sketches and stuff in the near future. Thanks for looking!