I still exist! ...and I'm still making stuff.

Alright... Let's catch some fish.

MousePaw has pretty much taken over my life... yes, it's true. Creating a game requires a lot of devotion! But in my spare time (weekends, pretty much) I still work on other things...

A Vocaloid Character Design Contest!

Yes, blog followers, by now you must know that I love Vocaloid a great deal... so when I heard about the "Everyone's Vocaloid Project" Character Design contest held by Yamaha, I had to try my hand at drawing up a character or two.

This one, Nocturne, is my first entry, but since there are no limits on entries I'll probably make another one (a guy) as well. :)

One-Wing 2011 - Finished at last.

It feels like months ago when I posted the pencil drawing which eventually led to this finished product. At first I attempted shading her in Photoshop like I did with my illustration of Len & Rin Kagamine. But no matter how many times I tried, I just wasn't satisfied with it...so I ended up going with a much simpler vectorized shading instead. ^^;

And that's what I've been working on.

Thanks for visiting; I'm really sorry I no longer update this blog nearly as much as I used to. I'm down from once a week to once a month if even...but yeah. At this time of my life, I have to keep myself busy or I'm afraid I'll become depressed or something. :/

MousePaw: Pipe Climbing

I finally have a new Word4Word clip to show!

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The last couple of weeks I've spent on "exit" and "enter" animations - where our two characters Alicia and Rebekah walk in and walk out of various stages (leading up to the various challenges/ story sequences). It sounds simple enough, but there are a few twists...

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One of them is that they have to climb in and out of pipes! Take a look...

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Another challenge is that I always have to have the characters stop and start in the exact same place so that the various clips can play together seamlessly. (The video above is actually four clips played in a row, for example.) It's so interesting to experience all that goes into making art for a game.

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Hopefully I can find a few more things to post that won't give away too much of the storyline of the game. We'll see! ^.^~

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One more thing. Mousepawgames.com has just opened its Beta listing. If any elementary school teacher would be interested in Beta testing our game for free in their classroom, please visit our homepage. :)

MousePaw: Aviary Ambient Animations

Do you think there are enough A words in the title of this post? :)
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Once again, the ambient animations for Word4Word are intended to be background as the player is making decisions - just to make the characters seem like they're not standing around lifelessly.
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Here are the different bird characters in the aviary of the pet store. Simple enough animations, yet fun - I enjoy how "twitchy" bird movements are.
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The Seagull Sisters:

Dip the Pelican:

(He isn't eating the soup, he's just stirring it...for now.)

Stringfellow the Hawk:

Morris the Eagle:

Sadly, I won't be able to post too much more of my MousePaw work online because it will give away elements of the story - and we can't have that :) So you'll just have to wait for the release to see the rest of my work for the game.

Vocaloid: Len & Rin Kagamine - Append Version

And it's finished!
I can't remember the last time I spent this long on a full-render... I tried quite a few new things with this, and I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with the result.
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I just have to say again that I really love the Len & Rin's append designs...especially all the transparency involved, that was really fun to play around with. They truly do look like a hybrid of humanity and technology - which is exactly what a Vocaloid is :)
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Coming soon: More MousePaw animations (The birds!) and a brand new full-render of my character mascot One-Wing. ^.^

What I'm Working On

Remember the days when I used to post something new once or twice a week?
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Those days are definately gone, but it's not because I'm producing less work than usual. I could still crank out a fully-rendered drawing a week. However, I've turned my focus to bigger projects - and lots of 'em! The only downside is the long periods of time where I have nothing to show.
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That's why I decided to make this special post to show a few bits and pieces of all my various projects right now. All of them are works in progress, but it should give a bit of an idea what I'm spending my time on lately.

I. MousePaw: Word4Word

Not surprisingly, a great deal of time is going into MousePaw Games' latest game project, Word4Word, an educational game that teaches English skills. The kindergarden version Beta is projected to be finished in August of 2011 (Just in time to give to schools for testing. :))
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I'm approaching the animation for the game by starting with the simplest things and working my way up. First on the list is the ambient animations, which basically have the characters staying in one place, but shifting around and blinking as part of the background while the player is doing something. I've uploaded two short clips to serve as examples:
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Here are Alicia and Rebekah in ambient:


And here they are again, but this time in scuba mode!

After the ambients are finished for every stage, I will move on to the exiting and entering animations - and then finally the action and lip-sync as the characters interact with one another and with the player.

II. Vocaloid Art: Len & Rin Kagamine, Append ver.

By now, most of my blog visitors probably know how much I love Vocaloid, the software which allows users to create songs with virtual vocalists.
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Len & Rin Kagamine were originally designed by character artist KEI, the same artist who designed my two favorite Vocaloid characters, Miku Hatsune and Luka Megurine. However, I did not love the Kagamines quite as much... that was until I saw their Append versions.
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Miku's Append version, which served as an add-on to the original program, adding 6 new variations of her voice, was released about half a year ago. Besides increasing the realism of the virtual voice, Miku Append also came with new box art featuring the character Miku in a much more "technological" design. Now, last December on the Kagamines' 2-year birthday, their own Append version was released. I was absolutely amazed by the new box art and knew from the moment I saw it that I would have to draw them myself, and soon.
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And so I began with Len:

This Vector drawing may seem nearly finished, but it actually has a long way to go. Firstly, I plan to take it into photoshop and paint on more dramatic shading. And secondly:

I have to add Rin!

Here is a rough idea of what the completed version will look like. Sing it, Kagamines!!!

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III. One-Wing 2011

Because it's just been too long since I've drawn my own character mascot... ^^;

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Right now she's only in rough pencil phase. Hopefully I will get more time to finish her soon...but it probably won't be until after I finish the Kagamines.

No, the dress won't be transparent in the finished version. :P

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I'm also doing a little bit more internship work for Shine Global in NY... however, I am not allowed to post any work online. But that is what I am working on! Please come back soon to see all of these projects once they are finished. :)

The Last MousePaw Characters...

Finally done with all of these! Now to move on to in-game animations.
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Here's Dip the Pelican, who is fond of alphabet soup.
And this last little guy is the player character! His (or her) name is Scamper, and he works for the SpyRats, as you can tell from the funky spy-watch he wears. His watch serves as part of the UI for the game :)

Trying a New Style...

I have a confession to make... I've been slightly afraid of tablets. That's right, a bit of tablet-phobia on my part. I've become so accustomed to drawing with pencil & paper, scanning my images, and then finishing with a mouse that I feared transitioning to a tablet would change my style too drastically.

Another less shocking confession is that I've become kind of attached to vectors. They're smooth and clean -- everything my art isn't naturally -- and animatable to boot! But as I've been looking at art all around the web by my favorite artists, it's clear that using a tablet with photoshop is the preferred artistic look which is embraced by most.

So at last I tried it myself. Here my first entirely tablet-drawn work... Please click to view the full-size.

The work is called "The Cursed Sword" and features a character of my own creation named Brice Bataille.

In conclusion, I'm not going to abandon the world of vectors and go Photoshop-all-the-way... It takes much longer and there's no hope of ever animating an image like this... However, I think it would be interesting to combine the two styles (vector + painted) and see what I can come up with. :)