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Dec 31, 2012

Corridor Class Pictures Set #1

I've been getting into graphic illustration a lot lately! It's just fun to see my mundane G2 doodles turn into full-color shaded masterpieces.
These are three classes from Corridor, which I've illustrated and added a description to that will be in the manual. While writing the descriptions, I decided to give each class a motive for entering the Dungeon, such as a desire for riches or glory, that corresponded to that class. I have no idea how far Corridor will go, but I'll probably just post the manual online so that the full color pictures can be admired.
Anyway! Here are three of the sixteen classes playable in Corridor. For the purposes of limited font symbols, Attack = , Defense = , Magic = , and Magic Defense = ☯.
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Barbarian
berzerker warrior class
 STATS: 
 The Barbarian enters the Dungeon with the sole desire to prove himself stronger than the creatures of the darkness within. The very thought that treasure is being hoarded by monsters weaker than him fills him with rage, and his goal is to liberate it as soon and as powerfully as possible. Barbarians believe that the best defense is a good offense, preferring to seek  the most powerful weapons available rather than weigh themselves down with armor. In this way the Barbarian can cleave his way to the top of the pyramid of brute strength and power.


  

Paladin
defensive warrior class
STATS:  ♜♜
The goal of the Paladin is to expel evil at any costs. Harboring a strong grudge against the creatures of darkness, the Paladin seeks to illuminate the Dungeon with the light of vengeance and retribution. Armed with a strong devotion to the gods and a knowledge of armor and weapons, the Paladin’s ultimate goal is to do his part to rid the Dungeon—and the world—of all forms of evil.



Spellsword
magic-offensive rogue class
STATS:  ☆☆
Wielder of the mystical ormerods, or weapon-conjuring artifacts, the Spellsword’s motive in entering the Dungeon is as much a mystery as is his entire race. Hailing from unknown lands, the Spellsword seems to gain satisfaction merely from practicing his deadly fighting arts and reaping the glittering rewards from his defeated enemies.

Dec 29, 2012

Personal Avatar

I've been looking into Graphic Art ideas lately, and this is one I've been meaning to do for awhile. I've admired customized avatars on online communities, and decided to make my own.


This is basically just a self-portrait. I especially like the shirt, because it looks exactly like the actual one. I'm a generic-looking guy, so the only distinguishing features I could think to put were my squarish ears, my bushy eyebrows, and my twizzy (soul-patch).

If you ever happen to subscribe to or follow me on YouTube or deviantArt, this is what you'll see.

Dec 18, 2012

Ancient N.E.C. Facsimiles

Whenever I stay over at my parents' house in Idaho, I try to find time to look through the archives of my ancient tablet stash. In these two or three large boxes are contained the vast majority of my best doodles that have been preserved for decades. There are standalone pages of graffitied classroom notebook pages, actual formal colored drawings on printer paper, and makeshift "tablets" made from the backs of hundreds of used worksheets stapled together (my dad used to be a 5th Grade teacher). It seems like every time I skim through this treasure trove I find memories inscribed in markers, ink, and colored pencils. This time I found these gems, and I figured if any of you have read through the Never-Ending Comic I uploaded this past summer, they may be interesting to you.


Some of these color schemes surprise me. Zabo, for instance, I thought would have an inverted form of the color scheme that he has above. And Manto looks more like Mewtwo than I think I intended with those gray colors. You can also see an interesting assortment of characters that were never seen. Mercu, which appears to be the Chaun-evolved form of Geo, as well as Red Zabo, "Pall" (an obvious clone of Palmon from Digimon) and Spikehare.

Anyway, it's mostly just fun to speculate what might have continued on on NEC. It's interesting that these drawings seem to be from when I was at least in 7th Grade, which was a year after I stopped making new comics.

Dec 10, 2012

AustinCraft Spotlight: Paintings

In Minecraft there are paintings you can use as decoration, and the file that generates the random paintings is editable! I've been having fun personalizing almost every aspect of my texture pack, and this is no exception. I decided to use the paintings as a way to celebrate many of my interests, whether in projects, video games, memories, etc.
Here is a sample of some of the paintings. Shown from left to right going down columns, there's a painting of Brai from the Never Ending Comic, a Brazilian Flag, A painting from Heroes of Might and Magic III, a panel from the Wormie Graphic Novel, the Fate icon from Argaenothruzil, a picture of a sandwich (I like food), a screenshot from Runescape, the Super Smash Brothers logo, the Triforce, Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and a portrait of me (I had to have at least one of those). The large painting to the right is a photo of a park in my hometown of Rexburg.

Besides the ones shown, I also have paintings that reference Terraria, Commander Keen, World of WarCraft, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and several others including Homestarrunner.com and even Pretzel Lectern! (the glowy teal plasma thingy in the background)

In short, it's been a lot of fun to make this project as enjoyable as possible for me personally. I'm sure it'll be fun for anyone who knows me or shares my interests as well. And if not, then at least the paintings are a relatively small part of the game. And they still look nice, at any rate. I tried to balance the colors and whatnot.

Anyway, AustinCraft'll be up for download soon! There are only a few things left I need to do, including having some actual people test it out and get some feedback. Until then, later days!

Dec 4, 2012

Minecraft: The Search for the End

I finished a project! I know, right? Pretty out of the blue. That's because I started it a year ago not really considering it as a project, and decided today it was and finished it!

The Search for the End is... well, a fictional glorified documentary, I guess, of a Minecraft campaign I played in 2011. It started out as a "Race to the End" with my friend Jon, to see who could get to the End Realm and beat the end boss first. I won by a landslide because Jon slacked off on his writing. It was a lot of work to play the game, take cinematic screenshots, separate the mission into segments, come up with a literary way to explain what happened, and in my case, Photoshop some of the screens. But I still bug Jon to finish his story.

The thing I like about this story is the way I tried to 'translate' the odd mechanics and culture of Minecraft into a story with lore that made sense. For example, I keep the origins of the player (In this case, a man actually named Abelhawk based on my Runescape toon) mysterious, but I leave hints as to his origin. Take the first line of the first entry for example: "I awoke in a forest this morning without knowledge of what happened to my ship or crew. It appears that I will have to go on in search of 'The End' alone." This is rarely spoken of again, and adds to the effect that every singleplayer Minecrafter feels while playing: that he is absolutely, terribly, alone.

I also allude to other aspects of the game through storytelling. Of course I take liberties, but most of the story is accurate. I even explain away my character's knowledge of the game as something he gets from books he finds. It was really fun to make this, and I still treasure the world that was built out of it. I intend to make a sequel now that it's a year later and there are other stories to make up about it.

A couple regrets: Each entry begins with "Day #:". I wish I would have just put "Entry #", because the timing on some of them is messed up. I eventually just forget about it anyway and say "Months ago..." even though there are only 35 entries, and thus days, total. I also came up with names for the entries, which I put in the alt text of each entry. So you can see them just by hovering your mouse over them.
Also, there is a continuity screw-up that I might fix involving a desert. That's all I'm gonna say. If you don't notice it, it won't bug you like it bugs me. Yeah, I'll have to fix it sometime.

Anyway, enjoy...
The documenting of my Minecraft adventure to beat the game! Mouse over the pictures for their original titles.
Entry 1: The Search Begins
Entry 2: Dungeons
Entry 3: Lava in the Deep
Entry 4: A Breath of Fresh Air
Entry 5: Diamonds!
Entry 6: Underground Victory
Entry 7: Obsidian
Entry 8: Welcome to Hell
Entry 9: Hellish Encounters
Entry 10: Surviving in a Damned World
Entry 11: The Dark Fortress
Entry 12: Blaze Rods
Entry 13: Brewing
Entry 14: Exploration
Entry 15: Caught in the Rain
Entry 16: The Canyon
Entry 17: Enchanting!
Entry 18: Ender Pearls
Entry 19: Eyes of Ender
Entry 20: Forest of the Stronghold
Entry 21: The Village
Entry 22: The Second Expedition
Entry 23: Humanity at Its Finest
Entry 24: Inside the Stronghold
Entry 25: Library of the Ancients
Entry 26: The End PortalEntry 27: Lost in the Nether
Entry 28: The Nightmare
Entry 29: Awakening
Entry 30: Recovery
Entry 31: Ender Hunting
Entry 32: Gateway to the End
Entry 33: The Time Has Come
The End Realm
Entry 34: The Quest is Over
Entry 35: The Literal End
I hope you enjoyed my adventure as much as I did! Stay tuned for Episode 2: Advent of the Wither
 

Dec 2, 2012

Super Leafblowing

I think it's funny how I keep uploading videos months after actually filming them. Hopefully this won't make you miss the green grass already. It's barely December!
This is a secret technique to use when mowing churches with thin grass. This was probably during my last week of mowing this past summer.

Dec 1, 2012

AustinCraft Spotlight: Armor

The classic, pixely look of Minecraft was always charming to me, but the armor always got on my nerves. I often forgot while playing that I was a block in the midst of so many other blocks, but wearing the game's blocky, square armor made it very obvious and kind of ruined that aspect for me. This is one of the latter things I've been working on on AustinCraft (It's almost finished, as far as it can be for this version of Minecraft), and here is a sample of what the armor of AustinCraft may look like.


As you can see, there are a couple of things I still may need to modify. For example, the brown parts of the dyed leather armor may not look good with all colors, so I can do some tests to see if I can at least make it look good for the majority of them. Also, looking at it modeled on my avatar, I don't much like the 'nosepiece' on the iron and diamond helmets as much as I thought I would.
But for the most part, I think this gives the armor a much better place in the Minecraft world. Gold armor, which is mostly used to be enchanted and not as much for protection, is mainly for looks—jewels, flashy red trim, and the helmet is a jewelled crown! On the other hand, the diamond armor's shoulders, helm and boots cover more. I also liked my chainmail sleeves and collars for the main armor sets as well.

So there are a couple of things I need to fix, but for the most part this project is going by extremely smoothly. I'll definitely have it up for download soon. Well, later days!

Nov 26, 2012

New Project: AustinCraft

I've enjoyed the popular game Minecraft since its pre-alpha days, and I am very impressed with its amazing potential, scope, and replay value. It's especially fun multiplayer. But this weekend my brother and I got into exploring another aspect of Minecraft: Its customizability! The game has the option to add downloadable Texture Packs to the game, and I hadn't realized until this week how easy it was to make your own texture pack.

My brother and I are each working on our own texture packs now, with several things in mind. First of all, I don't mind the original texture pack of Minecraft. I actually prefer it to even the high-resolution texture packs available online. The classic look of Minecraft is what I began playing, and besides its timeless "cartoony" look I really like, I also enjoyed not having to worry about updating the texture packs as new items and blocks became available.

Despite the classic Minecraft look, there are some things about it that have always bothered me, and this is my chance to not only fix them, but add my own personal touch to them! For example, clay in the game is gray, and hard to distinguish near stone, gravel, and other gray blocks; so I'm coloring it red, like it should be. One of the things my brother and I had fun thinking about was more practical ways to construct tools with materials at hand.
Some of the other things that I've changed are the faces on pumpkins, the saturation of lighting blocks such as Glowstone and lamps, and the coloring of ripe crops. My brother's even changing diamond completely to emerald, making for an Elder Scrolls glass-like array of weapons and armor. I'm excited to be able to play Minecraft with the same gusto as before, with the exception of the blocks and items that always bothered me. It's going to be a fun project! I'll keep you posted with the details, and I'll of course publish it for you to download (provided you play Minecraft at all (I recommend it)) once it's done.

EDIT: Click the link in the sidebar to download it, or click here!

Nov 15, 2012

Wormie Graphic Novel

Here's a compilation of all of the issues of the Wormie graphic novel on one page, with a couple of tweaks in some of the panels. I think it did the story of Salem/Slame good! Examine the Wormie RPG page to download the game!

NOTE: The best way to view these (at least on Firefox) is to CTRL-click them in a new window and zoom in.