Who got art in my games blog?
As those who have talked with me recently know I’ve been considering expanding this blog beyond the scope of games, and using it to post some of the artwork I do in my spare time. This is a combination of my own self-interest in showing my art around to more people, as well as wanting to be able to make relevant posts more often. To me this blog works to an extent as a form of practice in improving my writing skills. In my work and everyday life I tend to not write in long form often. I was concerned about the decision to have both my interests in games and art in the same space without the art being relevant to games because I feared the lack of focus would drive people away who were interested in games, but not so much in art. I decided to move ahead anyway because I feel that this blog is more for myself than for the readers and because, to be quite frank about it, I don’t think my readership is vast enough to care. I get some hits from my friends, and some hits when I link to my blog from various forum posts. It’s not a vast audience I should be concerning myself over here. I thank you for coming and reading my posts, but there’s no reason for me currently to cater to any particular group.
Long story short, I’m going to try to start posting my art regularly as well as any rants I have to make. This may mean eventually adding a new page for a gallery, but at the moment you’ll have to be content with my little sketches that end up in posts. Feel free to critique or comment about them.
Here’s some work I did recently. I’ve been practicing with my tablet in black and white forms to try and loosen up my style a bit more with varying results.
These are various robot poses based on my robots from Entervoid.com.
Just a guy. He’s a bit stiff, and feels kind of like clipart to me
An orc. I like it, but I know I spent too much time making clean, sharp lines and not enough time on anatomy and the pose itself.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hi Daniel,
I am just exploring game development and activities around Toronto and came across your blog. Great art and yes just write and include what ever your heart directs you to and it will turn out to be a great blog. People always come back when stuff has quality and is written from the heart.
Let me know a fast track road map to get into game development if you are familiar with the technologies. Don’t jump off your seat but I am 53 years old and have decent programming skills and also I am hopeless in art. I have some themes in my head for interesting games and I want to learn to implement them.
Good luck with your blog.
SS
July 8th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Hi SS,
Thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate it and its good to know people still find me on the web. It’s very inspiring for me.
As for your question about finding a fast track to game development, I’m unsure if there is one. Of course, it all depends on your level of expertise and to what degree you wish to succeed. For creating your own ideas, I think the quickest, easiest way to develop a single game, is to already have developed 20 games before it. The more games I create the more I can understand what it takes to make a solid game framework, and the more problems I see recurring in my development cycles which I can better deal with. Art can be simplistic, and coding can be learned over time if need be, but it just takes time and practice to apply art or code to make a game.
There are two things I’ve heard from others which act as the “killers” of creating the games they want to. The first is non-starters, and this is something I’ve had to deal with myself. Having an idea in my head, or even just knowing I want to make *some* kind of game, and not jumping in and starting real work to get it done. I’ll often get stuck in “analysis paralysis” where I can overanalyze a situation where I cannot even bring myself to put ideas to paper. Don’t worry about your first few games. They will likely be more learning processes than anything you want to really show off, but sometimes you need to prove to yourself that you can make something, even if it’s small and simple. One thing I do which has helped me to actually work on making games is entering into events. When I enter into an event like TOJam it pushes me to make my game, because I know in 2 days there are going to be a bunch of people expecting me to have created something, and I don’t want to let them down. Sure its a mental trick, but it works for me. You may want to look into the Vortex competition at http://www.mcluhanfestival.com/, where people pitch their game designs. In the same vein, I try to surround myself with people who also want to develop games, and may be of the same mindset as myself. This may mean meeting people at IGDA meetings or at the Toronto Gamecamp events, or just going to forums full of other developers also talking about game development. I can use these people to help keep myself motivated, and to have someone to bounce ideas off of, or just to let them know I’m working on something. I’m more likely to get something done if I’m talking about it to others, because otherwise it becomes “my little secret” that no one will care about if it happens or not, because no one knew in the first place.
The second thing that kills projects is planning too big. There are too many people out there who think their first game will be the next World of Warcraft or Quake, and its really an unrealistic expectation. As I said before, your first games should be small, simple toys that show you can make something. If you start by making something beyond your scope it will be easy to get stuck, or to get depressed by a lack of progress and the project may die because of it. Just try to stay realistic, and keep iterating.
I hope that advice helped and I hope that you’ll move forward and I’ll see games coming from you soon!
-Daniel (The Stegersaurus)