Oink oink

February 18th 2007 marks the start of the Year of the Pig.

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone!

Oh, and here’s some art I meant to post up since a long time ago.

Encephalon Poster

Illustration by Moy, Design by Iris Lim

Encephalon in Production : Day 13

8th February 2007

Dear bloggers, we are facing some minor problem in the production team. There will be reshuffling of roles in our team with more additional team members within a few days. Especially, the web development team should have more web programmers.

Last night, we attended a meeting by MobileMonday. It was amazing to blend with people from various backgrounds. Learned a lot from the successful entrepreneurs who were present yesterday. It shows how fast is the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry is moving in Malaysia. Not to forget the lovely food and beverage served. Slade drank 9 glasses of beer.

Yesterday, eMoysh complete some artwork which he hide it from all of us to give us a suprise. It was one of the secret paintings of eMoysh. He will be posting it in awhile after I post this. For the moment, Iris and eMoysh are working on a poster that have to be submitted to Adam Ham from MDeC to help promote this game to the public – first in Hong Kong. We were a little late in submitting the materials so I hope we can make it.

Nowing completed his card layout and went on to prepare for an event he is organizing. It’s a tournament of Magic : The Gathering held in Cyberjaya. Preparation for the tournament was pretty hectic since he had to work and organize in the same time. Nowing knew that he had to manage his time well in order to complete both task in a tight schedule.

Sufiyan, our lead programmer will be away to Sandakan, Sabah for a short period but he’s been sharing his progress in BaseCamp. While Kuan is at home completing his part. As our previous flash programmer couldn’t continue working on our project, Kuan had to take over most of the flash department. The arrival of new web programmers are awaited by the team members.

On the web application part of Encephalon (we still need the name for this, so please give us your suggestion), we will be using the great programming language, Ruby on Rails. The first of the Ruby on Rails developer (sorry PHP programmers) is Vincent Woo from Vancouver. Vincent has a blog @ UndefinedRange. He definetely has the passion and talent to be in Hatchlings Games.

On the art side, We are glad to announce that we are now recruiting more artists to work on the initial set of cards. Bare in mind that we cannot pay much – but you get to work at your own pace from your own home.

Datelines are approaching as everyone in Hatchlings Games are having sleepless nights and endless work.

Alright, I am going to return to my movie, Donnie Darko to take a break. Recommended to watch it alone without annoying friends beside you. Thank you.

Regards,

Roshan

Encephalon in Production : Day 11

5th February 2007

In these few days, I haven’t posted anything regarding the production progress. We face a few major problems in our production. Steps were taken to solve those matters. Considering the fact that the deadline is around the corner, some of us felt like they are slacking and demotivated. Hence, Slade and eMoysh went for a motivational seminar conducted by the apprentice of Anthony Robin, Joseph McClendon III. This seminar has brought new spirit to the whole production team. Slade went on to share his experience to the others and applied what he had learned daily. Hence, increasing the productivity.

Currently, our Flash programmer is going to be unavailable for a few months which will slow the progress of project Encephalon. We are finding a solution to this matter. Many of us are going to have more responsibilities and carry more work in hand.

Today, I had a meeting with Sufiyan, Yuan Kuan, Slade, Nowing, Iris and eMoysh. It started at 2pm and ended at around 9:30pm. Issue that arised in this meeting were more into reconfirm the tasks for the programming team and the design team. Slade explained to everyone the structure of the whole team and how are we related in our parts. It really cleared our doubts. Sufiyan has showed confidence by stating that the Server coding will be complete by the 12th of January 2007. Yuan Kuan and Sufiyan had a long chat and went on splitting their work to reduce the time for completion.

For the programming team, I am proud to say that almost 55% of it is completed. This includes mostly of the Server coding. Soon, they will be working on the Database System and also the Game Client. Both Yuan Kuan and Sufiyan is back at home doing their work. Nowing is designing the User Interface (UI) for our web beside me now. eMoysh is finishing his artwork of the day with a headphone playing Hokkien songs. There is a high probability that we might have a new addition to our web development team in a few days. Iris and Nowing has been cracking their heads to come up with a perfect UI design. A lot of things happened in these few days. Somehow, all team members are calm and encouraging each other to be more positive and continue our project towards the goal.

That is all I have to report for today. Tomorrow, I will post another. Thank you for reading. See ya.

Regards,

Roshan

Concept art, pt 3

Art by Kwang

“Want to chill? Seek no further” said the super cool guy.  😉

From Concept to Canvas

Note: This article is written by a good friend and former artist of Hatchlings Games, Moy. He was working on a cool trading card game where you can create your own cards including its abilities, stats and art. The game is called Quasr: the Trading Card Game (it was codenamed Encephalon during early development, when this article was written by Moy).

Often an artwork will go through alot of changes during its stage of development. Most of the time, the cause for these changes are good. For example during the drawing progress, the artist would want to change the subject in his work so it becomes better, he might find his work more suitable for some other purpose, or both. It is the lead artist’s responsibility to decide on how to reflect written concept on canvas. Take this one as example:

Written concept: This card represents a special territory. At anytime you control the territory and one of your creatures occupies it, they will receive no harm from others as long as they stay in it.

After some tinkering, this is what I came up…

Application in visual: This artwork shows a figure belonging to the special territory. When an opposition approaches, the terrain surrounding her will manifest her will and turn into a defensive guardian to protect her.

Now is time to put those words down with pen and tablet. Ladies and gentleman, please take your time and enjoy.

Stage One: Composition definition.

2-minutes sketch. This is when my mind constantly searches for the right look and an interesting composition. Now, I know this looks like a puddle of crap. So next!

Stage Two: Forms definition, low-level details

Sketchy… sketchy… this one took another 5 minutes. It is still very abstract. However, I’ve worked on enough details for me to glimpse at the final outcome. I kinda liked it. Jagged-stone ravine with a huge body materializing out and looking down at a surprised traveler. Notice the small figure above the guardian’s crown? She’s the creature occupying the territory.

Stage Three: mid-level details

Still stucked at sketching, duh. ’till this point, I was improving on the sketch, experimenting with different sort of details, playing around with lines and perspective as well as compositional density. Some of you will ask, “when are you really gonna move on?”. Well one thing I learned from my experience is that the more time and detail you put in now, the less you would have to worry about later. After that, it was time for me to…

Stage Four: Mood & Color definition

Color! This was the result after 2-3 hours of frustration. I scraped the original composition and zoomed in the view becoming from behind the traveler’s shoulder. Reason of the modification was that my initial sketch wasn’t all that good to begin with and frankly, it’s uncomfortable to look at. So something went horribly wrong when I started laying down colors. It didn’t flow well, the look and feel were very one-dimensional. Also note that I removed the figure because she doesn’t fit in to the new perspective anymore.

Still I wasn’t happy. I took a day break and went off to some self-improvement seminar in Holiday Villa.

Stage Five: Color and compositional correction. Hi-level details.

When I came back to work feeling totally refreshed, it put me in a new perspective. I cropped the image as the swirling clouds are eating up too much attention, overhauled the color to make it more immersive, spent some good few hours polishing up details, made some final changes and…

This is final.

So this is a brief overview of one of my painting style. As you can see from the progress, the removal of the female figure deterred the artwork from its original meaning. Other changes were made to the composition and colors, eveything just to accomodate the goal, whether it’s immersiveness, eye-candy or whatever, you name it.

The original written concept would need a new piece of art. As for this one, it has found another concept.

All artworks by Moy

Encephalon in Production : Day 4 , 5, 6, 7

2nd of February 2007

Sorry for not posting on the production for four days. There was someone who took a dump in the toilet but not in the toilet bowl. I was shocked looking at the disgusting scene of crime. It’s weird that some people can be so careless. At least, clean it for God’s sake!!

In these four days of production, the designing team are brushing up their skills in order to help out Slade in the web designing part of the project. The game design team comprise of Nowing and Iris. The both of them are learning Ruby On Rails (ROR) under the guidance of Slade. They are learning fast and determine to master it in 1 week. For the four days, Slade, Nowing and Iris has been busy reading.

On last Sunday, we had a general meeting which went according to plan. Everyone was there except for Kuan, who fell ill after a long journey back from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. We had a short ice-breaking session for all of the new members to blend in. Discussion were made mostly on the programming part. That was the last day of talking and now it will all about doing it.

Eventually, the programming team have their own agenda. Since, most of the programmers are working at home, I could only get a minor report on what is their progress. Currently, Sufiyan, our lead programmer is collaborating with Leng, our Flash programmer to complete the Client and Database of the project. Kuan is also contributing his skills to help Sufiyan. Our lead programmer once said that “Kuan has potential. He learns very fast”. Most of us are relieved with the fact that we have very good programmers in hand. Sufiyan will be reporting some progress to us by tomorrow most probably. We communicate mostly using BaseCamp by 37signals.

In the Art department, eMoysh have been doing his task pretty well. Magnificent artworks are produced. As shown in Freedom of Expression – Concept art pt 2 article, he displayed another set of his latest art to be viewed by the public. Drops some comments for his art if you think is appropriate.

Two days ago, we went for a press conference for winning the Game Pitch 2007 organized by MDeC. Although, the conference was a very good exposure to most of us but that event took up half of our day. It’s one of the reason why there was no article on the fourth, fifth and sixth production day. Atti, one of our new member fell sick and advised by the doctor to take a few days of rest.

In the upcoming post, I will focus more on the programming team. That’s all for now. Thank you.

Regards,

Roshan.

Related links :

Freedom of Expression (Concept Art, Pt 2) by eMoysh

Concept Art, Pt 1 by e-Moysh

Concepting Encephalon by Nowing