Hedgeblog

The ramblings of illustrator and game developer Hedgefield

Year: 2014

  • Week 74

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Week 73 wasn’t that notheworthy. I mostly worked at my parttime job and caught up on games and tv shows.

    Last week I drew a new Off-Stage page of course, and I spent some time re-wwriting the plot for Black Feather Forest. I believe I’ve told you that I came up with s handful of new angles, and I’ve been trying to write those out into full summaries. Coincidentally the podcast Stuff You Should Know did an episode on the phenomenon one of the new storylines is based on, so that added some motivation to the process.

    Other than that I’ve been emailing some more, trying to score new leads. And I engaged in a game of Subterfuge with the guys at Game Oven. It’s a really nice take on Neptune’s Pride.

    Next week: Christmas.

  • Calendar doodles

    I came across an open call for calendar illustrations here in Holland, and I submitted a few simple drawings to be included, along with some from my girlfriend. It’s pretty cool to have them hanging on the bathroom wall now, and there are tons of other cool submissions in it as well.

    scheurkalender2
    “Today is a great day for adventure!”
    scheurkalender3
    “We all have our ups and downs.”
    scheurkalender4
    “Learn something new today.”

    If you want to order one too, head over here.

  • Week 72

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Last week started off well with getting hired for a part-time job. It’s enough to cover the rent each month and it only takes three mornings a week, so by noon I can be back behind Photoshop. I’d like to do more but for now this is okay, it’s not a well-off market out there it seems.

    The rest of the day and into tuesday I worked on a new Off-Stage page as usual.

    In the meantime I emailed another potential Black Feather Forest publisher on the recommendation of a friend, and this at least was the first one that wasn’t full/unavailable yet. I’ve been brainstorming story ideas for them and I managed to come up with five or six alternate angles to the second half of the game that are exciting me more than the original story draft, so I’m looking forward to writing those out.

    On wednesday I went by the Dutch Game Garden networking lunch and caught up with some industry friend. I should really hang out with them more.

    Thursday was filled up with Sinterklaas crafts, making cardboard constructions, a nice change of pace from the digital world.

    On friday I booted up the Trusted Soil adventure game project again and implemented and linked up all the rooms that we had in the previous version, so you can walk around all the locations again. It’s a bit of a mechanical task, porting old code and going through the same motions again and again, but the result is fun to click around in.

    On saturday I returned to an old favorite of mine, audio production. I was overdue to do a voiceover for a friend’s game trailer, and while I was at it I recorded the first episode of a new podcast I’m thinking of starting. Due to the traffic noise outside my window (even when it is closed), I had to set up my recording studio in the bathroom (and leave the light off otherwise the air purification fan would kick in…)

    On sunday we celebrated the Sinterklaas holiday with my family. It was very gezellig. (check out my construction below)

    Next week: getting up at dawn to do a job!

  • Week 71

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Last week was the week of advertising. I have Project Wonderful set up on the Off-Stage site, and now it was time to use the system in the opposite direction and advertise out. I chose two or three similar webcomics and put up a skyscraper ad running for a few days, and I got some decent traffic out of it. After a quiet period it was nice to see that spike in Google Analytics. Let’s see if some of that traffic sticks.

    spike

    And on tuesday I posted a new comic page as usual. I also got word that an assignment I was counting on fell through, which put me in a bit of a tough spot. So I decided to send some emails out for some part-time work on the side. And for the heck of it I decided to send Off-Stage to Paradiso aswell.

    The next day I got an email from Paradiso’s publicist that he liked the comic, and wondered if I could do a last-minute logo for the Paradiso Christmas gifts, and possibly more work in the future. And so I spent the afternoon designing a simple Paradiso logo.

    I drew some more drawings that week, and spent a fair chunk of friday evening marvelling over the new Star Wars trailer. To have a new Star Wars in my lifetime, what a joy. And it looks great.

    Next week: job market success.

  • Week 70

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    I started last week off feeling kind of drained, a condition that’s been developing for the past few weeks. Rather than write it off on fatigue, I had it looked at, and turns out it was the most freelance-creative thing it could be – a vitamin D deficiency. So hopefully the doc has me back at 100% soon.

    I spent the day prior to the diagnosis playing catch-up with all my favorite shows. And sadly most of them are entering their final season. I’m gonna miss The Newsroom and White Collar. But Constantine has captured my attention, and Agents of SHIELD and Bob’s Burgers continue to be fun. They’re also recharging my creative vocabulary with situations, characters, shots and poses I can draw from in my own work.

    On thursday I went by the new Paladin Studios office to catch up with my old colleagues. It was fun as always and it’s great to see them doing well now. I miss having them in the same room to sparr with, but I don’t miss the travel time, woof.

    2014-11-20 16.23.34

    Inbetween I’ve also finally started reading The Webcomics Handbook by Brad Guigar, which I backed (and received) ages ago, to polish up my webcomic skills. Most of it sounds like a familiar tune, but there were some useful morsels in there.

    Then I got to the chapter on Google PageSpeed and I fell down a WordPress optimization rathole for an evening. In the end the site is running leaner and nicer though, I think it was worth it.

    Over the weekend we celebrated my grandparents being married for 60 years. What a feat, wow.

    Next week: searching for ad revenue and trespassing mice

  • Week 69

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    The week started off with the classic inking of a new Off-Stage page. It took a little longer than I anticipated so I had to finish up on tuesday. Time to get a buffer reinstated again! I’m starting on the next one as soon as I finish this post.

    On tuesday I did a lot of holiday shopping with the girlfriend. Being away from the internet for a day feels quite regenerative. All the energy spent fussing over this or that on social media can be put to much better use. Interestingly, similar thoughts were also explored on the latest Surviving Creativity, a podcast I recommend you listen to if you’re a creator, and the season 3 pilot episode of The Newsroom.

    On wednesday I ported some bits of code from the old version of Trusted Soil we made in college to the new version currently in development. Progress has mostly been going on outside of my purview, the artists and designer setting up the new project and determining the art style. I’m waiting in the wings for tech support on the more difficult features. I quite like being on this end of the gamedev spectrum for this project.

    Last week also saw the version 2.0 update for Mischief, a vector drawing program I really like. No real new features yet, but the interface is much cleaner, and interestingly, there is now also a free version! If you’ve ever had to do something in print or with varying resolutions, you’ll understand how magnificent this tool is.

    The only thing I’m not crazy about is the new icon. I have a dock on my desktop with flat Windows 8 icons, so it didn’t really fit. So I decided to make my own. If you want to use it too, grab it below!

    And finally, I woke up this past Saturday and read through the week’s webcomic updates in Comic Chameleon when I was struck with the idea “what if I get Off-Stage into this app?!”. You may have seen me post about it, and if you’re interested in helping me achieve this, read about it here (only takes a minute).

    Next week: I expect more flailing in search of new opportunities.

  • Week 68

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Last week I booted up Off-Stage again. It was on hiatus for a while because my other projects took up too much time, it was becoming a drag to fit in the drawing and it didn’t improve the quality of the strip. Coming back to it is always fun, drawing the characters again and playing with page layout.

    But returning to WordPress also meant dealing with WordPress, something I despise and enjoy in equal measure. This time around I spent some time tweaking the site design before going live. There were some little quirks in the design like miniscule empty spaces between the main content area and the sidebar/header, inconsistent line spacing and conflicts between plugins and ad boxes. I also took the opportunity to add a Patreon link to the sidebar. Finally I feel like the layout is solid and how I wanted it. It’s not a big change but those little things annoyed me every time I opened the site. It should also be a bit faster now thanks to a new caching method. Oh and I built a rad Cast page!

    On wednesday I stopped by the Dutch Game Garden networking lunch again to catch up with some colleagues. I was also meeting an old client there who may have some new assignments for me.

    I also got to send my first international invoice this week, for an assignment in the UK. A joyous fact, but it meant I had to dive into the tax database to figure out how to do the VAT charge. It’s a bit dense, and it depends on what kind of person you’re selling to, but I think I got it right.

    Over the weekend I went on a weekend getaway with my girlfriend and some friends, hanging out in a cabin on the German border. It was very relaxing and ‘gezellig’.

    Next week: ???

  • Week 67

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    I got started on some sketches for the new illustration project I was contacted for. First up was logo design, and the goal was something iconic without it being a flat icon per sé. I like that, it’s more fun giving the logo some depth and styling it according to the feel of the game, like it could be part of the world. Here are some designs that were not chosen (I’ve blurred out the name for obvious reasons).

    As you can see it is Roman themed, which is cool because I’ve never worked on something in that time period. Obviously I can’t tell you anything more until the game is announced. All I can say is I’m very happy with the final result. Here is a snippet:

    I also worked on new Off-Stage comics, the first of which will debut… today actually! It’s been a long time, but you can check out the new page here. I’ve missed you buddy. More about that in next week’s notes.

    Part of my new focus on illustration also includes connecting more with the local illustration communities. I’ve been talking with my drawing and sushi buddies Lowen and Ming about creating a sort of hub for dutch illustrators to come together and share knowledge. And seeing my girlfriend use social media to promote her artwork made me realize my twitter presence is mainly focused on games and international folk. Maybe it’s time to change that.

    It remains weird to me how I’m just turned off to gamedev currently. I love all the devs and creativity in the community, but I feel like I just need some time away right now. Like I said last week, I’ll write more about that soon.

    And near the end of the week I got an email from an old and appreciated client to work together again. This pleased me much. More on that soon too.

    Next week: sticking my hands in the guts of wordpress, and social (media) strategizing.

  • Week 66

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Last week was a bit disappointing. I did get the BlaFF storyline plotted out fully in Twine, which was great because it gave me an instant visual overview of which parts were too linear and which had too much going on at once. I added one location and everything feels better balanced now. The added bonus is that I now have an accurate count of all the clues you can collect during the game and where they are referenced. I was afraid I had planned for too many, but the total number came up short of the space I had reserved for it, so that’s good, I can pad some things out and add more info to find.

    twine

    But then, bad news. Indie Fund reviewed my submission and decided that it didn’t quite fit with what they were looking for in their portfolio. I hadn’t expected much but it was still disappointing. The next day I heard back from Double Fine too – they really liked the game, but with two guys manning their publishing department part-time and three projects on their hands already they didn’t have space on their docket, but it was still nice to hear. I’ve got a few more emails out, so we’ll see how that goes in the coming weeks.

    Mostly it shook me awake to the fact that the core game needs work. I’ve been caught up in polishing what I essentially made in one month, but it needs new features. I’ve just been afraid to break the whole thing open again. But it has to be done. I got some good tips from people that played the demo, some of which I had already thought of myself, so it’s time to put stuff like that in and make the game match up with the promise.

    The only problem is I don’t have much leeway to spend time on it right now. I’d love to, but life costs money, and making games is not exactly a quick return-of-investment. So I decided to pivot back to illustration for a while. I could do a Kickstarter for BlaFF, but setting that up would take me another month, and there’s no guarantee that it will work out, especially in the current sour climate in the games industry. I needed to step away from all that anxiety and get back to what I know I can do well: drawing. (I have more thoughts on this that I’ll put in a seperate blogpost.)

    But for now I’m good doing illustration. I got two emails recently for interesting and substantial projects. They’re both international, so it’s also a new challenge in figuring out how to process that in my administration. And if you’re reading this and have a nice assignment for me: I’m available for hire!

    next week: drawing drawing drawing.

  • Week 65

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Another week of battling the flu, though by the end of the week I conquered it and got back to work.

    On wednesday I dragged myself out the door to have lunch with Richard Ram about him possibly doing the audio for Black Feather Forest. Richard is a cool guy and I think we were on the same page regarding what the soundtrack should be, and we were even wearing the same shirt, so clearly he is a man of taste. So I think we could work together well when the time comes to get started on the audio, somewhere around the end of the year. Richard is currently still working on the audio for Penarium, made by my friends over at Self Made Miracle.

    Safely back in my quarantine zone I got to work on the proposal for the possible investor. Luckily I had a design document ready that I only needed to strip some irrelevant parts out of, and I had a solid demo, so all I needed was one bugfix and a rough estimation of the budget. I think I kept it pretty reasonable, so we’ll see how it goes once they get back to me.

    Once I felt good enough to do some real work again I drew a few cartoons for dutch news site Fresh. They had an open call for illustrators and they liked my work so from now on I’ll be drawing some news-related spot illustration for them every week. You can check that out here (if you’re dutch).

    I also tinkered with different materials for my sprites in BlaFF following a suggestion on the Adventure Creator forum. It allows me to tint my characters, which will be useful in later scenes where it’s dark or where there are hard shadows that the characters travel through. The effect is subtle but I like it. I might hit up SpriteLamp at a later stage to really make the lighting dynamic.

    spriteshading

    I’ve taken to the abbreviation BlaFF now, as BFF reminded me too much of, well, the term BFF, and having the ‘la’ in there makes it sound more like the full title – but maybe like you were slurring it ha. What do you think?

    Inbetween I also made good progress in Alien Isolation, and I checked out A Golden Wake by Grundislav Games, a cool retro adventure game that pushes my 1920’s-loving button pretty hard.

    Next week: plotting out the plot, one scene at a time, in Twine.

  • Dinerdate 2.0

    Long ago I did a webcomic called Dinerdate, about a weird bunch of people hanging out in a diner. I ended it because it was sort of going nowhere, but I always liked the idea and for two years off and on I worked on a reboot. I wrote about 50 strips, a complete first chapter, but some things didn’t quite click yet (even though I think the arc is strong) so I shelved it indefinitely. A big focus of the new version was Amsterdam, which, along with some other elements and characters, I rolled into Off-Stage after that. But Dinerdate 2.0 continues to occupy a folder in my Dropbox, to maybe be revisited someday (I have some nice ideas to tie it into the Off-Stage universe).

    Here are the first two strips.


  • A former drug addict, a priest and an investor walk into a games expo…

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

    INDIGO, the games expo put on by the Dutch Game Garden, was pretty intense this year. 32 local devs gathered on the spaceous ninth floor of music palace TivoliVredenburg for two days to showcase their games in development. I was there too with Black Feather Forest.

    I saw some familiar faces, some fresh new ones, and talked to a ton of people. Seeing visitors take the time to play through the entire demo and most of them raving about it afterwards was a really great experience, and a much needed refreshment after the past few weeks. Thank you to everyone who came out and stopped by! My parents, uncle and some good friends included. Also dinner with my Game Oven friends was a good time, and my booth neighbours from Wolfdog Interactive kept me going through the long hours. And a special shout-out to Benjamin who came to help me out on friday evening after work when my legs had turned to jelly. You rock dude!

    It’s hard to describe all the moments and conversations from those two days, but I wanted to highlight a few that really stood out.

    As a kid I used to read Power Unlimited, the biggest games magazine in the Netherlands. Of course like any publication it’s run by normal people, but having looked up at these guys in my teens it felt pretty special to have them stand in front of my booth checking out my game and following me on twitter now. Check that off my bucket list.

    Speaking of nostalgia, the memories left behind by the game Broken Sword are what compelled me to start making my own games, and then all of a sudden I run into a programmer from Revolution Software, and a dutch one at that, on the show floor. It was really cool to meet Joost and exchange adventure gaming stories.

    Near the end of the VIP night on thursday an older man came up to me. He started on the demo as I explained what the game was about, then he turned to me and asked me why I cared so much about this particular true story. From there we got caught up in a passionate exchange of ideas, where he revealed that he was a recovered stock-broker-turned-drug-addict who just started learning about computers three days ago. After getting clean he had set out on a quest to learn about himself, and had become a very joie-de-vivre carpe-diem kind of guy. He wasn’t even on the guest list that night, he had just wandered in and was having a blast talking to people. We spoke for about half an hour and at the end shook each other’s hand with a well-meaning I haven’t experienced in a long time. Like we were both genuinely excited to see the other enjoying life, and wishing eachother well.

    The second day of the expo was also punctuated by an unexpected meeting. 5 minutes before the end of the show a man dressed in a priest’s garb came up to me. I recognized him as Roderick Vonhögen, also known as the podcast priest. He hadn’t played the demo yet but had read all about the project on my website before coming here and went on to tell me how incredibly cool he thought it was. He was even familiar with The Walking Dead games, which was perhaps even more of a surprise. It was super cool to have had a chance to talk with him before packing up and heading off, and I took his encouragement to do a Kickstarter and get on Steam to heart.

    I’d been on the fence about Kickstarter for a while, but after I left the hubbub of INDIGO behind that night and checked my email on the bus home I saw that perhaps a Kickstarter was not even going to be necessary…knock on wood. More info on that very exciting email soon.

    All in all INDIGO was a great succes and I want to thank the Dutch Game Garden for letting me be a part of it.