I think I’ve been getting pretty cooked because most of my time these past few weeks has been spent learning all about various performance optimizations and graphical rendering methods in an effort to get Flash to run better on the iPhone via CS5 Beta.  I’ve learned a virtual truckload of information though and it will help to improve my games both in the browser on older computers and on mobile devices for sure.  This is information I’ll be sharing in a different post at a later date though.

As another way to wind down I’ve also been watching a good bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately as a few of my friends have been cranking through episode after episode–season after season.  I watched it back when it had originally aired but it has been fun to see it again years later.  The themes, scenes, and stories have rubbed off on my subconscious though and clearly inspired the above drawing from last night:

This drawing is from a week or two ago.  Just one of those drawings that is stream of conscious style.  You just let the pen flow and move and you try to figure out what you want to draw as you see it.  I find that is the kind of state I like to draw in when I am just trying to relax and day dream a little.

I have done a few illustrations for this game working through various game mechanics, styles, and ideas.

This is a useful creative tool for me to rapidly try out different concepts and see what they might look like before I even write a single line of code or start creating any game assets.

Creating concept art becomes a way I can immerse myself in the world and atmosphere of the game ahead of time because as I am drawing these illustrations I am imagining the various aspects of the gameplay occurring.  This can even include me making hand gestures and sound effects without me realizing it as I try out the game in my mind’s eye.  As embarrassing as that might sound for some people it has been something I’ve done unashamedly since I first started drawing as a child.  It makes the experience that much more involved and creatively useful for me.

The mechanics of the game are fluid and easy to change when I am prototyping with illustrations so I can work through many ideas quickly as I form my plan about what to implement in the first prototype. It also serves as a way to get myself psyched about the game and really feeling the emotion and experience I want to try and create for the player.

This latest game has been inspired by a specific title I came up with yesterday.  I’ve been brainstorming various game ideas for it and think I’ve finally settled on a concept I want to implement a prototype of. I’ll keep the title in reserve for now but I expect to make a few more updates along the development cycle.

If you are a game designer feel free to let me know a little about your creative process when you are beginning with a new game.  I have used many different approaches and there are obviously many ways to do it.  I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has used a concept art driven approach to good effect with their games.

Just a little drawing I did tonight while I was taking a break from a game project I’m working on.

I’ve been drawing a lot of variant image styles and slice types to use with the new puzzle game I came up with last weekend during the mini LudumDare #7 friendly competition.  I’m trying to explore the potential space of the game mechanic I created since it seems fairly original so far from what I can tell. It was also pretty well received by most people who have played it so far.

As opposed to a lot of the other image puzzles out there this one seems more rare.  I have searched around and I have found jigsaw piece image puzzles, find the difference image puzzles, and spin the 3d object till it matches a silohette type puzzles.  I have not found any slice based image puzzles yet.  I would guess they are out there but who knows?  My searching has yielded nothing so far. Perhaps one reason they are not as popular are they take a lot of work.  For the current version of the puzzle I have to first draw an overall image in Photoshop.  Then I use four more layers to break that image down into different image slices that will eventually interlock to form the original image again.

I am currently exploring all the ways I can vary the styles of the art before moving onto more slices than four.  I have been listing possible image genres as well for helping to inspire various drawings.  So far I have listed things like food, animals, people, places, scenes, machines, and architecture. It is a lot of fun to create these sliced images and then see them come together as people play the puzzle.

In the eight years I have owned this domain I have done very little with it.  In fact, that is a complete understatement.  I think until this shiny new year of 2009 rolled around it largely sat with the phrase, “Surely you are mistaken:”  It has had that phrase since 2000 when I first registered this domain.  That was long ago.  It sat so long in fact that I completely forgot why I had written that in the first place.  Anyway, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that I have finally decided to use this website to share my adventures, creations, and thoughts with the world at large.  I feel I am prepared to gaze into the abyss.  Will it also gaze into me? *dramatic pause*