Tim makes things

Week 37

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creative.

When taking stock of my projects this past week I concluded that everything was trucking along nicely, but nothing was really getting done. It’s nice to have different stuff to turn to when you crave some work diversity, but focusing on one thing is ultimately better for productivity, so I decided to leave fawlty towers and off-stage and whatnot be for now and bear down on my detective game.

Preproduction on a detective story feels a bit like being a detective yourself. You start with a vague conception of the events and then you start to unravel all the clues until you have a sound theory. And much like an investigation, you start at the end and work backwards.

I’ve been writing the past few days, just a straight-up text file, hashing out the game flow from end to end, and I’m excited about what it’s becoming. This week will mostly be about scoping it appropriately and determining the mechanics and features.

I like to always incorporate something from the real world in my games, be it an event or a place or a folklore tale. And so during my research I found myself reading through an official Board of Inquiry report from a real murder investigation at one point. That’s about as close to feeling like a true detective as I think I’ll ever get.
Week 36

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creative.

Week 35 was pretty quiet since I was mostly occupied with doing other stuff and hanging out with people.

Week 36 I spent working on my own project in Adventure Creator. It’s pretty cool to see that plugin taking shape and a community forming around it. A dedicated forum was finally opened to post bugs and feature requests and showcase projects. I have high hopes for this software turning into the perfect suite for me to make narrative-driven games in.

Initially I was on the fence about switching my project over, but I decided this week to leave practicalities aside and just dive into the software and get to know it, so I set up a local SVN repo and went to town. Some things are the same, some things are better, and some things are a bit more cumbersome, but overall I almost feel like this is the way to go. For years I’ve fantasized about having all of these pixels and cameras that I could zoom and pan on the fly, plus cross-platform compatibility makes this a shoe-in for my affection.

On tuesday I had dinner with old classmates and colleagues Bas (Sophisti), Tim (Ronimo) and Bojan (Game Oven) to catch up and to discuss some secret heat brewin in the Game Oven kitchen. On thursday I had dinner with fellow illustrator Ming to catch up and dive into Unity. If Ming would apply his unique art style to games I have no doubt something cool would come out of it. Something to think about. In the meantime go check out his work.
Week 34

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

This last week has been mostly been about flipping out.

Inherent to the life of the freelancer is not having a steady income, but I haven’t really been in that situation yet since I started to pick up steam a few months back. And so after a few days where I had to both pay some hefty incidental costs aswell as suffer cuts on income that was taken for granted, I saw the fictional line in my head where I feel comfortable with my bank balance approach. Which is nonsense because I have several thousands left in my buffer and a payday coming soon, but that immediate feedback of dipping below what I’ve marked as ‘doing well’, together with winding down some assignments caused me to get nervous.

What helped me was remembering the independant’s motto someone once imparted on me: ‘If these are my problems, I will take em’. Which is to say that worrying about getting paid for drawing, something I already like to do, and I think was made to do, is still infinitely better than worrying about long meetings, getting up at 7 AM, and deadlines on projects I don’t nescessarily like. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.

It also jolted me into looking for new opportunities. In my quest to ‘add legs under this table’ I started a webshop, wrote to a few potential clients, explored other avenues where I could use my talents, found that I could cut my healthcare costs considerably etcetera. And that, mostly, the feeling that things are happening, is what got me comfortable again.

So don’t be scared of being scared!

Anyway, that was like a day or two. The rest of the week I was working on the final designs for the second mascotte I was commissioned to draw, and got Unity to the point where it does all the things I want from it. Having my character walk around in the same space – properly scaled and interacting with the environment – in both engines was good to see. ‘Advanced scripting’ is the only thing left on my test checklist before I can seriously consider porting the whole project over to Unity. In the meantime there is a lot of background art and animation left to do which helps keep the project going outside of this engine stalemate.
Week 33

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

Week 32 and 33 were quietly productive, not that much to write about.

I launched a webshop with Society6! Selling prints of my artwork is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and it was surprisingly easy to set up actually. Though not all of my artwork is nescessarily useful to serve as a print, because when I paint freely I usually don’t think about the resolution. So maybe I’ll make artwork specifically designed for print now. If you have any suggestions or requests let me know in the comments!

Other than that I continued work on the site mascots – finished one and iterated on the other. Fawlty Towers was also in the mix the past two weeks, with more and more graphics slotting into place. Last week it was mostly deferred in favor of working on an update to the Putin dressup game. I made a bunch of new items that should show up sometime soon. Going back to an old project is often somehow soothing, like “I know how to do this” – the process is fleshed out, the idea is fully formed, so it’s comfortable to produce extra content.

I also did more writing on my detective concept. I’ve played most of the games that speak to the same aesthetic but it feels like there ought to be more out there. If you know any good obscure detective games, let me know in the comments.

One great game I played during the writing phase was Detective Grimoire, available on just about everything. It’s a small game but it has a great story and it knows exactly how it wants to tell it. There are no excess features or distracting things, and that makes it one of the best mystery-solving games I’ve played in a while. Very cool to collect all the clues and eventually form the theory yourself. Highly recommended.
Week 31

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

Week 31 wasn’t too much of a whirlwind. I kept truckin’ on the Fawlty Towers game and got to upgrade the engine to a new release that solved a few annoyances on the technical side. It’s easy to keep fidgeting with technical stuff that doesn’t make the game noticably better for the end user, so the next step is to get more fully drawn backgrounds in.

I also got started on some commisioned character designs for a site mascotte. Two actually; one of the cuddly monster kind and one of the spiffy racecar driver kind. It’s always fun to design characters and explore all the different variations on their size, outfits, colors. I always impress myself by the end with what ended up on paper. Work on that bled over into this week, which I’ll write about next time.

On wednesday I bought a new iPhone, so the rest of that day was lost.
I wrote a post about jailbreaking a long time ago and I might do another just to update on what I’ve got on there and why I did it.

Spurred on by True Detective, I started writing a detective game again on thursday. I had worked on one rooted in 90’s buddy cop movies years ago, but it got a little out of hand. This new idea ticks a lot of the boxes of what I wanted to change from that game. It’s been a nebulous idea in my head for a while but I started looking into a real case and that brought it all together. More on that soon.

During the weekend I went to look at some proper art in the Groningen museum, and met up with fellow gamedev and DayZ partner-in-crime Ralph, who I hadn’t seen in too many years.
Week 30

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creative.

Last week I branched out a bit and did some video editing for a friend’s relative. She breeds show dogs and wanted a showreel for a new dog she got. I wasn’t initially keen to do it but it paid and upon further inspection didn’t seem like too much work, and I’m glad I accepted, because it was a nice example of how you can make someone really happy with something you made. With two hours of work that were in equal parts productive for me learning how to use Premiere Pro and the video getting made the woman was almost moved to tears. It reminds you that your work doesn’t always have to be high art in order to have people enjoy it. It’s something that you forget sometimes.

On tuesday we launched the webgame I’ve been making assets for the past few weeks. It took a while to sink in that it was really done now but it seems to be doing well, with the creations in the gallery blowing up exponentially every day.
You can check it out at putingaydressup.com.

Strengthened by the boost of energy from completing things, I worked on my Fawlty Towers project the rest of the week. Working on games creates its own motivation because you engage your brain on so many fronts – visual, logical, problem solving. At some points I felt my mental capacity stretched to its maximum by trying to remember the structure between five open scripts and what I was trying to achieve across all of them; it’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a while.

On thursday I tagged along with my girlfriend to her admittance exam for an art school in Utrecht. It felt nice to be back in that kind of atmosphere. Even the wi-fi connected automatically because the password was still somewhere deep in my iPhone from my own time there. There was a sense of solidarity that you don’t soon find outside of an art school setting. But at the same time I was glad I could walk out of there at the end of the day and get back to doing my own thing.

At the same time as working on the Fawlty Towers game I’m trying to build the same thing in Unity using Adventure Creator. I can’t give enough props to Chris who works tirelessly on making it an awesome plugin, and I finally got things to the point where I feel I can do the same things with it as I can in Adventure Game Studio (although not as fast). It’s an exciting prospect to be working resolution-independently and cross-platform soon.
Where is Ledoux

More True Detective.
Week 29

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creative.

Week 28 was a short week in which not a whole lot of interesting work stuff happened. I basically continued working on what I had worked on the week before, and visited Game Oven again on thursday. I also started playing Broken Age which I was initially not raring to try until talking to Niels ‘t Hooft enthused me about it, and I finished Shay’s story in one sitting and loved it.

That weekend I spent on the island of Texel with my girlfriend. I turned off my phone and it’s funny how you don’t realize how much email you get until you come back to a whole stack of it after a few disconnected days.

This past week has basically been more of the same. Off-stage has sadly slipped between the cracks so I’m letting that be for a bit while I figure out how to wrap up its second chapter. I finished the mockups for the grant application for Niels’ Ninja Gimmick Girl 2.0. It was fun to take a dive back into old E3 culture and where I came from as a games enthusiast, and I learned a lot about interface design and working with Apple’s design vision of iOS 7.

Unity continues to work against me but making a full game with it feels ever closer.
“Religion is a language virus”

True Detective is a strangely fascinating show. Sometimes I feel like I’m not smart enough to understand it, but then it hits you with some hauntingly evocative Louisiana vistas and I just keep on watching.

Drawing Matthew McConaughey is not easy. He turns into Arnold Schwarzenegger too easily with a few wrong lines. I’m not too happy with the likeness but the lighting turned out fine and it’s not like it needs to be perfect so there it is.
Iron

I’ve always enjoyed writing stories and working on narratives, but I rarely actually write something intended for ‘words only’ so to speak, it’s always in service of a game or a comic or something. But just opening up an empty text file and writing for ten minutes can be a great way to exercise coming up with stories. To just start writing and see where it leads. I’ve been doing a bit more of it nowadays and maybe I want to compile some of them into an ebook of short stories. But for now, here is a snippet I just came across that I wrote a long time ago:

I look up from my laptop screen at the sound of a faint crackle. The iron resting on the end of the ironing board next to me hisses gently. It reminds me of a chubby contented cat, even though I’ve never owned one, and admittedly spent a far too small percentage of my life not being in the company of one.

The iron prattles some more and I wonder if I should unplug it. I finished ironing my laundry almost 15 minutes ago, it’s all been stowed away already, but somewhere on the way to put away the ironing board I veered slightly to the right and ended up by my laptop, which was spitting out semi-melancholical songs from people I feel like I know better than I actually do.

Maybe it was to check if that girl I like and have been talking to for two weeks now but have zero idea of how she feels and where things are going other than it’s fun right now and I like talking to her but I don’t want to push my luck is online and oh yeah she is but I won’t talk to her now maybe tomorrow.

Another fizz. I consider getting up to pull the plug out but I kind of enjoy the warm air it is pumping into the room.
Week 27

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

It’s been a pretty productive week, finished up my to-do list for the webgame I’ve been making assets for, did some logo design and mockups for two other projects, and spent thursday working at Game Oven again on Bounden. We looked at some new interface shapes and button layouts for various menus, and managed to push a Testflight build out the door so I can finally check it out on my own phone, which is quite useful when I’m designing at home.

I did some writing on friday based on a dream I had the day before, and the satisfaction I got from it was quite intense in comparison to the bigger tasks I’ve been doing the past few weeks. I forget what an instant high writing a short story can give you. It was a welcome feeling.

Your ‘job’ as an independant creator doesn’t just stop at doing the work and nmanaging your clients and finances, you also have to manage yourself and your own contentment in doing the work in the first place. It’s an aspect that often gets overlooked, and I read some good articles about it this week that made me realise again that we as humans are inclined to focus on everything that can be improved and all the uncertainty we face, and with that forget all the good parts.

http://zenhabits.net/down/
http://www.artfulgamer.com/the-albatross-of-incompletion/
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamieFristrom/20131212/206951/How_To_Be_A_Happy_Indie_Game_Developer.php

It’s good sometimes to stop and take a moment to appreciate all that you have, even if it is an uncertain whirlwind. Getting up early to go to the office on thursday through the cold and the dark was one of those moments for me. Check out those articles, they’re a good read.
Crosshairs and Markers

Some early designs for a lock-and-key mechanism in a game I’m working on.
Sochi

I was doing some backgrounds for a work-for-hire project and this one turned out pretty cool when I thought it was going to be dumb. Fun how a speedpaint can sometimes surprise you with the outcome.
Week 26

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

I had hoped my sickness to be vanquished by monday morning, and it seemed so for an instant, but a second wave crashed into me by tuesday so I didn’t really get anything done until thursday, when I managed to drag myself to Utrecht to meet up with Niels ‘t Hooft to talk about games and our next steps in the Ninja Gimmick Girl 2.0 process. So no Off-stage this week either, sadly.

When I had recovered from that outing the next day, I did some final UI polish on a project I hope to wrap up by the end of the month. Most of this week will be spent on that project too, now that I feel alright again. I also got an offer to design a logo for someone I had previously worked with. It made me realize that the word-of-mouth thing is actually a real thing and I felt glad to see a satisfied customer return.

I also did some beta-testing for Paladin Studios’ new game, which is looking hot, and I spent the rest of the weekend with friends.
Holding pattern

A few sketches for an old project. I love airports. Lots of ways to make an airport lounge interesting as an interactive space.
Week 25

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

2014! Time to start things up again.

Last week I drew a new Off-stage page, one that was half done when I took a christmas break but which honestly read like shit then, I didn’t like it. Now I came back to it fresh and found the missing piece that made it a nice rounded out page. Chapter two will be complete soon and then I think I’m going to take a break from it and plan a whole chapter in advance, writing a chunk a week is just not great for an ongoing story.

Between wrapping that up, my work for Bounden tapering off and closing out another project this month I have plenty of time coming up to devote to two things: a second pass at the ideas I worked up with Niels ‘t Hooft for his upcoming iPad novel Ninja Gimmick Girl, and diving into Adventure Creator for my own game.

Classic Jake and Toby, IN SPAAAACE (placeholder dudes). The scene is actually all 3D, textured planes with navmesh and collision

My meddling with Unity so far was all well and good but I was still a bit in over my head when it came to building things like a dialogue system (I hate the Unity GUI system, it’s bonkers) or competent 2D pathfinding. But Adventure Creator is basically all the features I already know how to use from another engine I used to use and love (because the maker did too), so jesus I was over the moon. Now I can start making the sort of game I want right away.

On wednesday I had an extremely productive day working on Ninja Gimmick Girl, and then I got VIOLENTLY ill. Just like that. I could tell you platitudes like ‘life can always intrude’ and ‘be prepared for anything’ but mostly being sick just fucking sucks. So better just submit and get it over with.
Harry the carrier pigeon

How did people ever manage without Whatsapp?

Resulting from a fun conversation the other day, I was compelled to draw a scenario where people communicate as we do today but using the means of old.

It became an interesting exercise in timing. I read this blog post the other day and was made to remember how excellent the Sad Pictures For Children are in their comedic timing. Like really top of the line.

The blank-faced pigeon tossing away the note makes me laugh every time.
Week 22

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

We announced Bounden this week! After working on it for a month or two Game Oven was ready to push some press releases out the door, which means I get to talk about this cool project finally on the record. It was fun being in the office for it, everyone was energetic and in high spirits, watching the retweets and articles pour in. I’m planning on writing a blog post talking about the process of defining this visual style, but for now you can look at these pretty pictures – color tryouts for one of the many theme ideas.

If you want to know more right now you can watch our heads talking about the game in the monthly development videos we’re putting out, the first of which can be viewed here.

On wednesday I met up with Niels ‘t Hooft for lunch. Niels recently put out his first interactive book app for Toiletten, his first novel, and we discussed future plans for this format and the stories he wants to write for them. It’s a very different area than what I usually concern myself with making, but it’s very interesting to point my brain at it and come up with some cool ideas.

I’ve also been writing lately as I miss working on narratives now that I mostly do straight illustration, thanks to Writemonkey, a very lean and sexy writing app. I considered opening a seperate blog for those short stories but I might actually bundle them up eventually as an ebook. If you’d be interested in seeing some of them here on the blog from time to time let me know in the comments.

That evening I met someone who shook up my world a bit. Everything after that is a little foggy but let’s see… on thursday I worked from home on Bounden, finishing up the last few mockups for all the worlds we want to have in the game. We explored so many directions that there is almost nothing left but thanks to a crack art team we keep improving and honing the vision of the final product. I think I finished an Off-stage page somewhere inbetween there aswell.

That night I saw The Hobbit 2 for the second time, the HFR version this time. It’s still a great movie but I’m not sold on this 60 fps business. It looks like someone sped up the footage accidentally. Weird.

Friday I don’t remember.
Saturday was spent with good company exploring the city of Utrecht. I returned early morning the next day and slept most of sunday.
Esther

Half hour paint to flex the coloring muscles. I was going to add more detail but concluded that it didn’t really need it.
Week 21

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

Monday was once again the classic blogpost-offstage day. I’ve been letting the significance of that day as the start of the week slide, so I’m going to enforce it more as if that day is off-limits to anything else.

On tuesday I worked at Game Oven again and we’ve been zeroing in on the final visual look. Rami Ismael dropped by and concurred that it does in fact look quite rad. This week we’re announcing the game!

On wednesday I worked from home and in the evening took a friend to the special edition of De Mus, our weekly theatre cafe night, this time in the church at Waterloo square. Next to the music performances and interviews we also played folk games with Adriaan. Aside from a slightly rambunctious crowd it was a great night and these guys are destined for great things.

Thursday and friday I continued with creating assets for Gamesys. I’ve been doing more with interface design recently, something I’ve never really spent much time on, and I’m learning a lot. I’m still no UX designer but designing goodlooking and functional interfaces is enjoyable work.

At the end of the week I went to eat and see The Hobbit 2 with my old colleagues at Paladin Studios in The Hague. It was great catching up with them and they are working on something truly stunning coming out soon. The level of polish on that thing is amazing.
Week 20

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

On monday I swung by the Gamesys office here in Amsterdam to work on the assets for the game we’re making. I managed to up the catalog of items from 6 to 36 by the end of the afternoon so we made good progress. Their office is right in the middle of the Red Light district, so it feels a little strange walking into the building when all the neighbouring buildings have red windows. And I forgot my laptop charger when I started for home so I got to walk through there twice…

On tuesday I was back in the Game Oven office to film the first production diary for the unannounced game. That should be going online pretty soon so then I can finally talk about what’s going on. On wednesday I was in the building again for the Dutch Game Garden networking lunch where we demo’d the Sinterklaas game we made last weekend. Also caught up with some of my old classmates.

Thursday was the first day in a week that I could sit down at home again for my other projects. I caught up inking Off-stage, and spent too much time figuring out why the site was only displaying the new version when I adjusted the zoom level of the browser. Turned out it was some dumb WordPress CDN feature. I kinda liked the effect though, might be worth making that a feature of the site.

During the week I also sort of wrecked my Intuos4 pen. It still works but it’s all ductaped up, no good. I wanted to grab the new Intuos Pro right from the store but this model was 350! Thankfully with my comapny’s VAT number I managed to get it for 250 online. It came in on saturday right before I left for Utrecht to celebrate Sinterklaas with my family. For my dad I made a cardboard Xenomorph head as a gift container, and I like how it turned out (considering I started on it two days before). A ‘gezellig’ weekend was had!
Stop smoking

Sometimes I turn a corner somewhere and I am hit by a stunning composition that I just want to draw. Today I walked out of Bijlmer ArenA station to the busstops and the midday sun cast everything in a silhouette, in the middle of which, this.

Bonus challenge: is she facing you or facing away?
Week 19

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

It’s been a busy week! I’ve been creating webgame assets for a company here in Amsterdam, which is progressing nicely. It’s a good exercise in setting a strict time budget for each thing to make, and the fast turnaround on all these chunks means you get a lot of those ‘completed something’ highs.

Unfortunately my busywork also cut into my time for drawing Off-stage, so I had to put up a sketch version of last week’s page. I’d rather get something up and have it be less polished than miss a post date completely. That’s the whole point of publishing on a schedule. I had hoped to finish inking it later in the week but no such luck yet.

On wednesday I worked out of Adriaan’s kitchen again, and we made great progress on the unannounced game. Feels like we’re zeroing in on a coherent style which is a great feeling after all this experimentation. In the evening we went to our usual weekly theatre cafe hangout, and the rest of the week I also continued working on aforementioned game at the Game Oven office.

Over the weekend we also gathered at Game Oven with current and past employees to do a self-regulated gamejam for Sinterklaas, a dutch holiday. We decided to try and make an HTML5 topdown procedurally-generated local multiplayer action game about the pepernoten prohibition of 2015, and the taskforce erected to enforce it. We got quite far for an engine we had never used before, and learned a lot in the process.

* the actual game doesn’t look as good as this yet.
Week 18

This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.

I startled from a lenghty gaze out of a train window on saturdaynight to the wondering if I had even written a blogpost last week. I had, but I’ve been so absorbed in things it felt like a million years ago. In a good way.

On monday I wrote aforementioned post and processed some feedback on a few projects. A tricky thing when working remotely can be that the people you need feedback from are hard at work at their job too and it might take a while before they get back to you. In this case I didn’t mind as it didn’t mess up my schedule.

On tuesday I focused purely on Off-stage. Writing one comic a week is messing with the feeling of continuity in the comic, so it was nice to plan out the arc for the rest of the chapter and write a few comics in one go. The page I drew afterwards immediately had a better energy than most of the preceding ones, I like how it turned out.

Wednesday evening the guys at Game Oven started their 24h livestream for Friendstrap, and I joined them for a few hours. Talked to the Ostrich Banditos about their amazing game Westerado and the challenges of dialogue systems. It was weird to go home and go to bed and still be able to see how things were going in the office. Watching their stream was a bit of a productivity timesink on thursday too.

Friday was mostly a socializing day. And over the weekend I upgraded to Unity 4.3 to try out the new 2D stuff, and it is rrreally good. I’ve been debating whether or not to reaquaint myself with Adventure Game Studio or bite the bullet and move up to Unity full stop, and I think this made the decision a lot easier. It even has the best errors.
Gestures

I’ve never really been to a life drawing class, which seems odd for an art student, so recently I’ve been thinking about going to one when I came across a really cool tool that infinitely doles out random life drawing poses, so I just sketched a bunch!

On each pose I took a maximum of two minutes. With some you can still see the lines of action (or “swooshes” as Joeri Lefevre likes to call them) with which I started the sketch. It’s useful to first capture the motion of the entire body in a single line and then start building up the drawing from there.

Detail on the one I think turned out the best:

Yep, it's another one of those cookie banners.