Tim makes things

The ramblings of a dutch illustrator and game developer

  • Week two

    While trying to fight against the heat to get stuff done, this week just flew by.

    At the start of the week controversy around Phil Fish and David Vonderhaar caught my attention. We’ve seen disturbingly often before, but instead of writing it off as “oh well, that’s the internet!” more people are starting to report on it and get in on the discussion. This is a good development for an awful phenomenon.

    Progress on Off-stage has been steady but slow. Drawing full pages takes forever. I don’t know if it’s the heat or if I am not yet honed enough with this style to do it under two hours. Hopefully after next week I will be able to start posting them regularly.

    On Saturday I went to the opening of gallery Pepper in Rotterdam. A friend of mine did a mural there so we went to check it out. I met some cool new art people to chat with about freelancing and illustration, something I was jonesin’ for. I feel like I have so much to learn.
    Sitting in the park the next day I was thankful, despite the whirlpool of uncertainty, for having the time now to sit and think about these things and figure out what really drives me as an artist.

    Oh, also updated a wordpress installation somewhere along the way. Nothing broke. There was much rejoicing.

  • Alina

    The way strong light illuminates and scatters through hair has always been a fascinating phenomenon to me. It looks so great. Any sort of rim lighting always makes things look more interesting.

    [Update] Alina liked it.

  • De Apps Tor

    A silly play on the word App Store that made me giggle. You’ll probably only get it if you’re dutch.

  • Week one

    Week one has been a quiet one, as I expect some weeks to follow will be too. Although the first gig is a fact: I’m working on a series of cartoons to accompany the thesis of a friend of a friend. They’re fun to draw and don’t take a lot of time, so it’s a good way to start.

    After watching Star Trek First Contact again an idea for a scifi story popped into my head, tentatively named ‘Deck 5. I’m not sure yet whether it should be a game or a comic, but I like where it is headed. I will continue to explore it further with my bro Ralph who has a penchant for these kinds of stories.

    On tuesday I met with Niels ‘t Hooft (ka-pow, pingback) to chat about narrative games and the craft of being a freelancer. After that we visited Digital Dreams to take a look at Metrico, a very intruiging game that uses inforgraphics as platforming puzzles, really smart and cool. It also gave me a chance to wonder what the hell Sony was thinking with that PS Vita UI…

    After that I drew some things here and there which you can see below this post. On Friday I visited the Human Adventure expo by NASA with my family and witnessed all facets of the museum experience at once, as my dad and his friend are super knowledgeable about this stuff and the rest is not really, right down to my cousin who just wanted to press some buttons. Had a good conversation with my uncle about the absence of an engaging narrative in most museums.

    Other than that I’ve mostly been surrounding myself with media to extract inspiration from. I’ve watched more movies this week than the past 3 months I think, a lot of them scifi, and I dove into Fallout New Vegas, which I was initially not too excited to look at or play with, but some great mods helped me get past that so I could get to the masterful Bethesda/Obsidian storytelling which has engrossed me once again.
    Funny enough the best quest so far was one that was unmarked, so it had no tell-tale markers to tell me exactly what’s what. It was the story of Vault 11, a shining example of environmental storytelling without any real reward other than knowing what had happened in the depths of that Vault, which turned out more satisfying than any old XP boost or weapon upgrade. Something to remember.

    As the week wraps up I’m staring at my Trello board with the page scripts for Off-stage. I want to get back into the swing of releasing at least one new page a week again.

  • Nikko Racer

    An initial promo sketch I did for the Nikko RC Racer game that Paladin made.

  • The view

    Sometimes I glance sideways from my desk and see the most beautiful colors out of my 10th floor window. So today I decided to rotate my desk and draw what I saw.

  • “Oh, I see – you’re trying to kill me.”

    I’ve been a fan of Jeremy Davies since his excellent role on Lost, but his performance in Solaris is pretty much perfect.
    A painting exercise in photoshop, took me about an hour or three maybe.

  • Week Zero

    Last week I decided to return to being a freelancer after a year and a half as a game designer at Paladin Studios. I had a great time there among fantastically talented people, but I felt the need to make the games and the comics that I want to make.

    I like stories and what they can do to/for people. Interactive stories make that experience even stronger for me. But I realize now that maybe that means that I don’t want to make what is traditionally considered a ‘videogame’. I like those just fine (my Steam library has 230 of ’em) but I don’t think I want to make something that has scores or in-app purchases etc. I want to tell stories. And games like Kentucky Route Zero, Papo & Yo and Gone Home prove this is as good a time as any to try.

    So to track my progress I’ve decided to steal copy a blogging idea from colleague Niels ‘t Hooft, who has been doing weekly recaps of his independent adventures for 757 weeks. Woof.

    Week zero has mostly been about slowing down to a pace where I can think at again. I was in an office for the last 1,5 years and had to travel quite a distance to get there, so everything was very… timeboxed. It left little room to wander and contemplate. I noticed my well of story ideas evaporated. So I’ve been nurturing it back to health by spending time outside, catching up with friends and family and absorbing media. There are about 6 uncompleted games on my desktop and double that amount in my movies to watch folder, so finally working through that has been nice. I’m starting to feel some ideas well up again. And I also completely lost track of time, holy shit. I think it’s monday today, right?

    Anyway, tune in again next week to follow me along on this adventure and see if I’ve lost my mind yet!

    ~Tim

  • Battle

    Concept art for my current project at Paladin Studios, an honest-to-god dungeon crawler RPG!

  • dAds

    Mockups for a fashion brand’s potential father’s day campaign.

  • Gravel shit

    Saw the ad at the bus stop the other day and thought how hilarious it would be if they actually gave them their oatmeal.

  • Tim’s Top Tien Strip Tips

    Voor alle Mussen die na gisteravond graag in de wereld van de comics en graphic novels willen duiken, hier zijn tien aanraders om mee te beginnen:

    – Blankets. Een prachtig autobiografisch verhaal over de eerste liefde van de auteur. Van dezelfde hand ook ‘Habibi’ en ‘Carnet du Voyage’.
    – Blacksad. Een ex-Disney tekenaar zet schitterende karikaturen neer in dit verhaal over een zwarte kat als ruige detective in het amerika van de jaren twintig.
    – Casper en Hobbes. Onmiskenbaar een van de beste en meest tijdloze strips die ooit gemaakt zijn.
    – Wormworld Saga. Een fantasieverhaal dat niet onderdoet voor Harry Potter of Lord of the Rings.
    – Hark! A Vagrant. Historische komedie en parodie van de scherpe Kate Beaton.
    – Bad Machinery. Een stel highschool jongeren in een doods brits stadje lossen allerlei vreemde mysteries op.
    – Gunshow. Voor de liefhebbers van absurditeit en vulgariteiten.
    – Chester 5000. Volgens Jeroen Kramer zijn we stiekem allemaal viezerikken dus dan hoef je je voor deze comic ook niet te schamen.
    – Comik.nl. Een verzamelplek voor aanstormend nederlands striptalent.
    – Penny Arcade. De comic is onmisbaar als je een fan van videogames bent. Maar kijk ook vooral de documentaires, erg interessant.

    Loop ook een de American Book Center aan het Spui binnen, op de eerste verdieping vind je een enorme kast met graphics novels, waaronder ook veel van de bovenstaande in boekvorm en de grondleggende comics van The Walking Dead, 300, Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim en V For Vendetta.

    En voor mijn eigen werk kijkt men op timhengeveld.com.

  • Wilde words

    After watching The Words tonight I felt compelled to paint this striking shot from the movie.
    Done in photoshop in about an hour.

    I feel this film deserves more recognition than it got, it’s a surprisingly heartfelt story about people and the mistakes they make. If you haven’t seen it, it deserves a look.

  • Gallery opening

    Part of a storyboard for an adventure game pitch. I still like the idea very much. It had a lot of Tintin and Roman Polanski influences.

  • Flo

  • Istanbul NPCs

    Some sketches for characters in a game I’m working on at Paladin Studios.

  • The dancing elephant

    Spot illustration for children’s merchandise.

  • Desert

  • Daily Sketch – Delicate Genius

    A little lip-syncing exercise. Inspired by the Daily Affirmation podcast episode 36, where cartoonists Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz discuss their habits in dealing with their strips being late, leading to a series of veiled insults that threatened to end their decades-long bromance.

    [update] now with 100% Scott Kurtz approval.

  • Ominous

    Trusted Soil is almost ready for its public debut, this friday and saturday at the EJECT graduation expo at the HKU! If you are in the neighbourhood, do stop by and come take a look! In anticipation, please enjoy this promo poster:

  • My days as an army general

    In the summer of ’05, I commanded an army. I hadn’t planned on it, but things just sorta played out that way.

    (more…)

  • Trusted Soil

    I recently graduated from the HKU school of game design (thank you, thank you), so I thought it was a good time to point you in the direction of my graduation work.

    I’ve been working on an adventure game the past few months with a few people that we’re really excited about called Trusted Soil. You can read all about it on the official webpage or the freshly erected devblog, I won’t reiterate all that here. What I am here for is to give you something to look at.

    For Trusted Soil I did all the background art, character designs and animations (and some scripting/design). It was a challenge for me to work in a slightly more realistic style than I am used to. While the lineart is still fairly distinctively my style, the lighting and color is much more detailed than what I am used to doing. I drew a lot of inspiration from Wormworld Saga, and initially I wanted to approach that style even more closely, but we decided it would not have been time-efficient as we wanted a completely functional end product, not just something that looked good.

    Below is a sampling of backgrounds I created for Trusted Soil.

    In addition to that I also developed a custom dialogue system, about which you can read much more on this page.

    We are working now to polish up the build we submitted for our exams, and will soon release the first episode.

  • Serendipity

    About a year ago, I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe with some friends, and one of them made a quip about how I’m writing a semi-autobiographical comic. He was referring to DinerDate. Up to that point I had never even considered it as autobiographical, but when I thought about it I realized just how right he was, how much of myself had seeped into DD over the years.

    Two years earlier, right after the original DinerDate ended, I started writing the sequel. I chose to write something closer to my heart this time, so I moved the setting to Amsterdam and changed the tone of the narrative. I wrote about 50 strips over the next few months following the lives of a group of friends, but it felt like something was missing so I left it to gestate and decided that I could probably only ever finish it if I moved to Amsterdam myself. Back then I was still living with my parents and had no plans of moving until I finished college.

    Cut to today,  my senior year, I have now lived in Amsterdam 8 months running. I hadn’t planned on it but the opportunity just sort of presented itself. And what’s more, I find what I had written all those years ago to be frighteningly accurate to what I have experienced here so far.

    For one, I wrote about a foreign exchange student moving in at the start of the story; next thing I end up with roommates that regularly host foreign travellers. I actually met two travellers who are not even that dissimilar from the character I wrote. There have even been times where I found myself uttering lines from a few strips verbatim in real life. Those were surreal moments, where it felt like I was living what I wrote.

    It’s been an amazing experience so far, but it also worries me; I don’t want DD turning into some sort of twilight version of my life. Luckily there are still plenty of differences. But right now I gotta focus on graduating first (one month to go!), after that I’m jonesin’ to get back into the webcomics game.

  • Stacking

    Found a sketch from back when I still did dailies. I was intent on doing more of these but I never really got around to it.

    I’m glad someone managed to snap a pic of the car in question later to prove I wasn’t exaggerating. If anything I was doing the opposite, because apparently in reality there were 24 boxes…

  • Reimagening

    These are some character designs for a project I’m working on. The game follows a group of scouts on an adventure a good few decades into the future, so that was a good excuse to give the classic boyscout outfit a facelift. I kept a few things that seemed integral to the scouts outfit, like the scarf and the badges, and updated everything else.

    Since nature evolved aswell in this future scenario (and became a lot more wild and dangerous), I took inspiration from mountaineering outfits and even the costume redesigns for recent superhero movies to create an outfit that would better protect these kids against different kinds of environments – making a thermal shirt, long pants, gloves and a futuristic version of the swiss army knife part of their standard equipment.