Thursday, December 3, 2009

.The Lack of Theory: Brown, A Mans Best Friend.

I've never dwelled to deeply into digital art, now that I am exploring the medium I've started to relize how little I know about it.

As a medium paper is very easy to learn to manipulate and exploit to achieve desired effects, where as working with a tablet takes your senses out of the picture and leaves you having to plan ahead alot more of your art. With physical mediums like paper I've never had a large range of colour to work with so coming into such an unlimited amount of colour in photoshop is all a bit jarring and left me with a huge desire to learn a LOT more about colour theory.

These are some of the works I've done since being given a tablet, the recurring brown theme is evidence of my lack of confidence with colour. Thanks to Matt Dyet for the Tablet.


Monday, October 19, 2009

.Going Indie Baby.

This Post is sort of a response to a Diomades Blog post about porting bit to the IPhone that has gotten me thinking a lot about what has to come next:

It's a really exciting idea, we never finished our original version of "Bit" and I'd like to see such a solid and unique concept have our names attached to it, not to mention that the visual style of bit would perfectly transition to the IPhone, Our end beta-Esq product showed real potential and this would be a chance to actually have a finished product of "The first game I ever made from scratch".

but the more I think about the Legal side of making a game that had so many students attached to its conceptualization the more I get a headache, Now I want to have nothing to do with the Law side of things... NOTHING, my brain just does not go down that lane in a productive way. So I'm thinking maybe it would be wise to enlist the help of a student from another University or College (or a real "Man of Law/Lawyer" but the cheaper the better) to draft up some contracts and run us through what we need to do in terms of making everything legit... then there's the issue of purchasing copies of Adobe software which in the long term would be beneficially but when your a student with no money looking at only making a few bucks out of an IPhone game the sense seems to fade fast, which of course is going to leave me looking for free alternatives that allow commercial use.

But forgetting the subject that haunts my dreams, It's the concept I'm looking forward to expanding on. When you're as passionate about a concept as I am about bit the new idea's seem to flow like a river and it's in this thought that I have a never ending confidence in the concept itself, it seems limitless at this point. Remaking all the art is going to bliss as well... as a self proclaimed artist there is nothing like making some old art look better... cause your harshest critic in the end is always going to be yourself.
I've made an image to show how the art will look compared to how it did in it's first project stage, It's the 16-bit character. It might not seem like much but I believe it has a very defining quality.

UPDATE 20/10/09: Finished upgrading the walk cycle of the "Red Round" character and thought I would mock up how it might look on the IPhone.

~ Scott ~

Monday, September 21, 2009

Alpha to Beta

The GO3 Electronic & Entertainment Expo 2009 will be held in the next couple of weeks from the 2 - 4 of October at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, As far as entering the gaming competition for the this year's upcoming event things are looking a little grim, We've been having collision issues and as it stands the XNA language is very 2D platform oriented and becoming difficult to convert to work in 3D, but with that all said we're not giving up hope and will be endeavoring to complete our Alpha in time. We will have a BETA running at the G03 for all 3 days at the "Space Agents in Space" booth that will be manned by at least one member of the SAIS team, so if you're at the Expo head on down and have a firsthand look at our game. After the Expo will be heading into our Q&A (Quality and Assurance) phase of development where we will be polishing and ironing out all the kinks and bugs, hopefully over this time we will be opening up for external beta testing so if you're interested in getting involved in the development process and being a beta tester keep an eye out.

So the Official Space Agents in Space Website is up and its getting updated every week with new content and news stories, so check it out http://www.spaceagentsinspace.com/.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Drug Addicted Robot

What is “Drug Addicted Robots”, basically we are a college based games development team from Western Australia Localized at East Central Tafe currently working on our own independent property called “Space Agents in Space”. Studying for our Diploma in Games Development we consist of 7 Programmers and 8 Technical Artist each with specific roles, we work in an industry workplace simulated environment under an agile ideology in an effort to become industry ready. As a team we have been assigned 9 weeks in which to conceive, design and develop “Space Agents in Space” for a Steam and Xbox Live release later in the year, This Coming October we will be showcasing a playable beta at the GO3 gaming Convention at the Western Australian Convention Centre.
Each Artist and Programmer has a Role and Team and currently we have:

Matt Dyet: Lead Artist, Designer, Web Artist, UV artist, Texture Artist, UI Designer.
Scott Higginbotham: Lead Artist, Designer, Sprite Artist, Concept Artist, Web Artist, Web Author.
Ben Moreschi: 3D Lead, Concept Artist, Level Designer, Texture Artist.
Kieran McDonald: 3D Artist, Level Designer, Texture Artist.
Ben Russell: Concept Artist, Web Author.Adam Megow: Concept Artist, Sprite Artist, 3D Artist. Mark Angus: Sound Development, Level Design, 3D Artist.
James Smyth: Sound Development, Level Design, 3D Artist.
Curtis Unger: Web Design and Programming, Lead Advertising.
James Gibson: HUD, Collision and Distortion Programmer, Lead Sound, Saboteur.
Tahaa Sharara: Programmer.
Llew Walton: Programmer.
Mathew Louson: Programmer.
Peter Nelson: Program Lead, Programmer, Cell Shading and Sound Programmer.
Andrew Pech: Graphics Engine Developer, Programmer.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

E3


Since E3's opening I’ve been marvelling at all the great games being unveiled, I’m even impressed at the high standard of trailers and how well they sell the experience and the story. This year though I’ve fallen in love with two particular games; Heavy Rain and Shadow Complex.

both these games show so much promise and progression in game genres, the Heavy Rain Audition which was used to display the environment, rendering and emotive mechanics was breath takingly beautiful and I’m very happy to see that Heavy Rain hasn't strayed from its very obscure and open ended game play that was promised in its earlier stages, the project was kept so hush hush and the only piece of information I really had was "you could kill every main character, and still win the game. If one character dies, the game and story continues as the player controls another character.” that has to be the most inspirational concept of all time, it promises to be a truly cinematic experience.

Shadow Complex is a "Next-gen Platformer"; just those three sweet words send shivers down my spine. I love it whenever a new game genre is brought to the table, one day I will make a game genre... one day!!. the two creators Don Mustard and Cliff Bleszinski describe it as a Metroid style sidescroller modernized for a new audience, it makes me think of all the great games that could evolve into this new genre... old games from our childhoods such as Megaman, Final Fight, maybe even a slim chance at reviving sonic and even some indie games like Iji would transfer so perfectly to the next-gen platformer.

Oh how I love E3 and its wave of inspiration.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Catch up.

Blogging isn’t really my forte, I have an innate ability to forget everything important I wish to write about, so I’m going to try and post more regularly with more informative topics that give an insight into what I do and what I aspire to do.

Around 3 weeks ago was the beginning of “Indie Game Jam” that was held by Planet OneTwenty. Despite really wanting to enter I didn’t, in the end I didn’t have enough time due to the fact that I was just entering our remaining 2 week sprint for Bit Game. I will defiantly join a team for the next game jam; one of my dreams is to be able to make my own games, just small ones nothing huge but none the less make indie games with my own stories, mechanics and artwork.

Currently studying my Diploma in Interactive Game Development and recently just been finishing up my tafe work for this semester, I’ve been very busy on bit game and it is coming along very well. At the moment I’m thinking a lot about what I’m going to do after my studies, whether or not to go to university or try and continue into the games industry on some level. The majority of jobs I’ve seen ask for a minimum of 4 years industry experience and I could go to university but I will still need those 4 years after finishing, but on the other hand my Tafe training will give me 1 year worth of exemption from Uni and I’m bound to make many contacts from studying there.
There’s another question in what should I specialize in, the way I see it I’ve got a few options, I could become a designer, concept artist or something I’ve been more recently looking into is becoming a pixel artist (but I’m not sure if this even qualifies as a profession). From what I hear it’s important to be a specialist in the industry and employers are not looking for jacks of all trade.
Need to make my online portfolio so I can be researched by possible employers, so a lot of my spare time is going into looking professional online.


~ Scott

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Indie Game Showcase

Last night was the Indie games show case organized by planet OneTwenty, and just a quick note on planet OneTwenty; they are quickly replacing the idga with an extremly well orginized meeting structure which I love.
Matt Dyet (my project producer and class mate) and I took our game in to show the Perth games community. We couldn't actually get a running version off our programmers so we essentially went to show artwork and we didn’t even have much of that... I’m kind of embarrassed that we did not come a little more prepared, but even so we met many people and introduced our game. The over all response was great, we ended up getting a lot of interest in just our concept which is proving to be very solid. Hopefully next month we can return with a running version of our game and wow some people.


~Scott

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Life

I'm Scott Higginbotham, I'm a young aspiring game designer and artist from Perth, Western Australia. currently i'm working on a indie game with 7 other students, we are known as "Bit Team", we are making a plateform game that revolves around the idea of evolving through a video game world. Our game in its early days, but it's looking great and coming together fast.
currently we have three different levels consisting of a 1-bit, 8-bit and 16-bit era.
(1-bit) (8-Bit) (16-bit)



~Scott