August 4th, 2011

I hope that everyone enjoyed TeleCommunity's Urban Garden flash game while it was posted. I was proud of the kid's work, and it was easily the best project I ever did with that program.

The next page of Wave Tyrant, as you can see is now online. The term "henge" is an japanese term that I've seen translated both as "apparition" or "shapeshifter" . I can't quite remember where I first came across "henge", but I believe it was when I was researching yokai several years ago.

In retrospect, this was a particularly hard page to give my flattener/colorist to start with, because it was the first scene where land was particularly important. Heather pointed out that there was no point of reference for her to work off of. So I ended up tweaking things quite a bit before I figured out what I wanted. It will probably take a few pages before we are an efficient team.

My coloring process is also a little weird and has some glaring inefficiencies, so that isn't helping very much either.

Next week, I am moving to my new apartment for graduate school, and while I hope to have the next page up on time, it is not something I can guarantee. You can always check NRW's Facebook page for announcements and updates.

July 28th, 2011 (Directions for completed game at bottom of blog's post)

News! News! News! As of Sunday, I just got back from teaching summer art camp out of town just to return home to get ready to move out of state. And to top that off, one of my cousins is getting married this week. Congratulations, Emily! Live long and prosper!

In August I will be starting my graduate studies in the illustrious field of Intermedia (most easily explained as combining art and technology). Three years ago I started on this road when I started working on my portfolio, which would be focused on the idea of combining fine arts art video games. I was unable to find anyone who could teach me how to do this, so I ended up teaching myself. I can't even describe how it feels to have come this far - there were plenty of times when I was afraid that it would be too hard accomplish this on my own... Ah, how far I've come since then!

Anyways, the results of my endeavors can be seen in the Flash section of this website, as well as the Gallery, which contains the supporting prints and collages that were also part of my portfolio.

Things are likely to continue to be unpredictable on NRW for a bit longer while I'm settling in. I do plan on returning to my regular Thursday schedule, and if there will be page delays in the future, I promise to be better about posting them on Ninth Runs Wild's Facebook page.

Remember back in June when I announced that I possibly had found a flattener/colorist? The next page of Wave Tyrant will be the first one that I've had my friend Heather assist me on. I'll write more on that when the page goes up next, which will be around next Thursday or Friday, if not sooner.

Anyways, here's a quick preview of the awesome work Heather has given me:

Until next time, here is the finished version of TeleCommunity Urban Garden - the video game project from that summer camp I was spending massive amounts of time on. All artwork was created by children using a combination of drawing and printmaking techniques, and the music was created on Garage Band by one of the students.

Directions:

Use the person button to randomly drop a person into the field, the glove to move things around, the shovel to weed unwanted people or buildings, and the seed buttons to plant buildings.

Goal:

Open-ended. Create your own literal "Urban Garden".

This is technically a sneak peak of the game which will go on the organization's website, and, therefore, will only be up on NRW for a few days.