Shapes and Lines

With turkey day just around the corner, November is almost in the bag, and a new year is rapidly approaching. Round and round we go.

On Saturday I bumped into the local group I used to run with, which brought back some memories and reminded me that this time last year I was gearing up for the Eugene Thanksgiving Day Turkey Stuffer 5k. What a difference a year makes.

I’m still running, but with a very different attitude and for completely different reasons. And I’ve never run better or with more satisfaction.

On a related note I strongly recommend reading “Born To Run” by Christopher McDougall, even for the non runners out there.

It’s a great book and a hell of a story that happens to be true. I read it earlier this year just as I was getting back on the trails following a nasty leg injury. That book caused me to completely reexamine everything about how I ran and why.

In other news, I may be holding an art show in December. I haven’t made committed to it yet but I’m getting a lot of push in that direction.

My apology to the friends out there that I’ve neglected to stay in touch with recently. I’ve had a pretty full plate these past few months, but you know the back story.  I am thankful for your friendship.

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My recent contract work has me developing a lot of urban themed environments, which is a nice change. But I can’t seem to think cityscape without thinking Zombies lately, Not sure if this is due to too much L4D or not enough.

Here’s a quick concept painting to exorcise it from my brain. Rendered in the same style I’ve been exploring recently, it’s yet another napkin doodle while having dinner at the Vintage. …stay away from my steak zombie, it’s mine!

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…while my dinner’s in the oven.

I was chatting last night with one of the ladies from the Vintage about a philosophy course she’s in and a class debate about obligation toward future generations. That brought to mind a bit I read in Bill Bryson’s “A short history of nearly everything”.

I’ve taken a little creative license, but it’s a more or less faithful retelling, so here’s a scary little story of mad scientist and how their own creations always seem to be their undoing.

Once upon a time (in 1921) there was an engineer named Thomas Midgley. One day he decided to go all mad scientist and turned to industrial applications of chemistry. Sure it doesn’t sound very mad scientist like, but like most things, you get out of it what you put into it.

His first big success as an Evil Genius was in using Lead Tetraethyl to reduced engine knock in the increasingly popular automobile contraptions that everyone was so interested in.

Even though Lead was a well known neurotoxin a.k.a. a really bad thing for the villagers to be in contact with, it was used in all sorts of stuff. Get too much lead in your system and you’re on your own personal roller coaster ride of horribly entertaining side effects, like brain damage, blindness, cancer, convulsions, and terrifying hallucinations…until you die that is.

Lead …a known neurotoxin was used to line water tanks. It protected fruit from nasty bugs as pesticide spray. It even kept your tooth paste safe. What could go wrong? ..and it was crazy profitable, so that balances out right?

In 1923 Mad Doc Midgley’s Lead Tetraethyl gas additive gave three big corporations a big idea, they formed a little company called Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, later shortened to Ethyl Corp because it was easier for the villagers to pronounce and sounded friendlier I expect.

They began to mass produce the newly dubbed Ethyol as an additive for gas. This was good all around, Ethyl Corp was making lots of money, and engines made less noise, which seemed like a good deal.

Unfortunately people working to produce the additive were getting sick and dropping like flies. But Ethyl Corp pulled a Jedi mind trick and denied any connection. “..this additive is not the one you are looking for …these guys probably went nuts and died from working too hard …nothing to see here, move along”.

Even the best Jedi can’t keep that up for long, and as the villagers began to get restless Midgley went total dark side. In and effort either show how bad ass he was or that Ethyl was safe, Darth Midgley held a demonstration where he washed his hands in it and inhaled it, insisting that “you could do that every day ..no problemo”.

Mad Darth Midgley knew all too well the true dangers, having gotten seriously ill from exposure once before, and had avoided going near the stuff ever since.

Intermission… and obligatory pic. It’s a day late, but here’s a Halloween sketch. More doodling on cocktail napkins. I spent a little longer on this one than I probably should have, but still got it done in about three hours.

Back to the story… Like all good evil scientist, Midgley moved on to top his previous work by inventing Chlorofluorocarbons, that’s CFC’s for the typing challenged (me) or the environmentally minded. CFC’s, the dreaded scourge of the ozone layer were used even more widely than Ethyl. It wasn’t until much later that the destructive genius of CFC’s became as obvious as a pink elephant standing in your living room.

Midgley wasn’t around by the time the uber nastiness of his  CFC’s  were realized, having been strangled to death by a mechanical contraption he designed to control his bed after being crippled by polo.  …Ta Da!

What’s the moral of the story? ..you don’t know what you don’t know? The dark side works in mysterious ways? Take your pick.  My personal favorite is, Don’t bite into a fresh made donut 30 seconds out of the fryer, it’s too damn hot!

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…Then stagger down the street and fall asleep in a bush.

It’s all Hallows Eve, but the only things going bump in the night around here are the roving gaggles of drunken college students haunting the street below my window. And they’ve apparently acquired to ability to converse with friends half way across town without the use of a cell phone. Where’s a zombie Apocalypse when you need one.

When I was a little boy, my older brothers would tell me a scary tale about an evil thing called Mister Rattly Bones. Mr Rattly Bones ate children the story goes, and collected their bones which he carried in an old sack. You see, it was the rattling of the children’s bones in that sack from which he got his name, and was the sound you were warned to listen for when you were alone in the dark.

I never saw Mr Rattly Bones, but I’m sure I heard him on occasion. I always imagined him to be very tall, gaunt, and bone thin with long fingers and a lipless grin.

I’m gonna go hide under the blankets now …and load my shotgun. Y’all have a Happy Halloween.

Oooooo  …scary flowers. Another quick (obligatory) pic in the style I have been working in recently, and yet another in the growing line of illustrations that started as a doodle on a cocktail napkin at the Vintage restaurant downstairs.

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..For a change.  See my previous post “KISS“

I was having lots of fun with my old WordPress theme, making custom navigation bars and such to match the header image, but while out of town for a few days I visited my site and it felt a little overworked and not very clean.

So I grabbed a new theme and tweaked it a bit. There’s more work to do, I don’t like the sidebar spacing and cloud test colors among other things, but I do like the cleaner layout and navigation.

What do you think?

Not much time to post today, but there’s lots happening.

Notable is that the Unity Team announced today that a FREE version of the Unity Game Engine was now available. It is essentially equivalent to the Indie license version, which is now discontinued as a product being sold.  Read more HERE.

Obligatory Pic . This is a concept I did some time back for the crew at Mad Otter. It’s one a several similar concepts I had to develop in very short order. You can see more of them HERE.

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…the man who buys it doesn’t use it, the man who uses it isn’t at all happy about it and would really appreciate it if the guys who build those automated form pages would actually try using the things they build.

You know the sort I’m talking about, the customer complaint and tech support form pages. Those perfect walls of anonymity and indifference that have taken the place of any real or tangible customer support for most businesses these days.

A week or so ago I spent the better part of my afternoon trying to purchase the update to a high end modeling program I use. It was a small update for the full version I bought about six months ago, and assumed it would be as easy at visiting their site and purchasing it like I had before.

To make a long story short and get to my actual point, three hours later I gave up in complete frustration and bewilderment. I was standing there, a returning customer with cash in hand, but due to lack of information on the web site, broken, buried, and obfuscated links, invalid support email addresses, and form responses that didn’t answer my question or point me in the right direction, I gave up.

Apparently I spent so much time on the site that I triggered a user feedback study that offered me the chance to “help improve the user experience”, so I opted in and went through the thirty or so questions. I expected I’d be contact after giving the site what I was sure was the lowest possible rating. But I was wrong.

I should say however that the study I opted in to was very nice indeed, and I would be happy to recommend it to others…

I reminded myself that I should try to be part of the solution, rather than just bitching about the problem. So I clicked the link to submit a report via their automated form.

After typing it out in an email as concisely as possible and spell checking it ..then editing out the more frustrated language, I tried to paste it into the form only to be greeted with an error message that I had “exceeded the allowed number of characters”, which was so woefully low I may as well have tweeted the damn thing to the company

God knows the 140 character limit of a tweet would’ve been more verbose.

Intermission and obligatory pic. this one is a follow up to my last posted image and a little bit cleaned in the execution I think.

A short time later while I was going totally Hulk and rampaging through my two peanut butter sandwich lunch, I received a form email response that was Identical to my previous ..and had nothing to do with my submitted report.

That is what I call a defining user experience. A mental bookmark that you revisit, consciously or unconsciously, every time the subject, in this case a particular software producer, is encountered. Sort of like the first time a little kid touches something hot, or you eat a whole box of Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch Berries in one setting. It’s and experience you won’t soon forget it.

Today was another roller coaster ride with automated forms. This time it was one of the biggest game developers in the business, and I have to say that their form system was better than my previous experience, but sort of in the way a poke in the eye is better than stepping in a bear trap.

As a guy I use to work with like to say, “lower your expectations and everything will be kick@$$”. Which I suppose if fine if that’s what you’re going for, but I’d suggest “removing the suck” as an alternate approach.

-Todd
www.shapesandlines.com

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..Glorious Spam!

To my loyal army of subscribers, all 3 of you, I wanted to give a heads up that my spam filter is apparently eating some legitimate post.

Novak (Quite possibly my first subscriber) recently posted and I never received any notification, it just got flagged as spam. Fortunately I caught it an am now trying to keep an eye on things until I puzzle out exactly why a repeat poster would get spam filtered. I suspect it’s due to recent plugin updates or some such.

So, if any of you comment and don’t see it show up, email me directly and I’ll take care of it.

Obligatory pic. this is a rework of a concept sketch I started some time back, but didn’t finish. This style I’ve been playing with is probably not the best suited to this subject matter, but it was a fun exercise.

Cheers.

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..on the big white phone.

Alternately titled “October Surprise”.

My coffee has the sharp tang of tomato paste, definitely not my preferred blend.

I was up until after 3 am last night thanks to an impressive bout of food poising ala the salmonella lunch special I had yesterday.

What made it so bad was that a few hours after lunch and shortly before I became aware of the evil brewing in my intestines, I added an obscenely large plate of pasta to the mix. In black powder enthusiast terms, this was the “wadding”.

While I was curled up on the tile next to the big white phone lamenting the loss of my tasty pasta dinner, It occurred to me that this was a classic example of bad timing.  If my meal had been delayed just twenty minutes, I would have realized I was sick, gotten it out of the way and then been able to enjoy my dinner …just once.

Timing is everything as the saying goes. Since this is more or less and artist and developers blog I’ll keep it in that context.

Being in the right place at the right time, or having the right idea or product at the right time is often as much luck as design. And that is certainly true for the macro and micro view of development and production.

But wait, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” you say? Or maybe you lean toward “if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have not luck at all”.

Either way it’s certainly a factor.

I once had a studio director describe his game development approach to me as “slinging spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks”. While that makes great visual for my perpetually growling stomach, from a business development perspective, it makes about as much sense as Russian roulette. And when you are talking about millions of dollars in operating cost, not to mention the careers trajectories of the developers under your watch, it’s more a road map for disaster than a recipe for success. In my opinion.

I was gonna continue this with a more specific look at how I approach design and development, and how those practices apply to timing and being able to answer the door when opportunity knocks. But all this talk has my belly grumbling, so I’m gonna go eat.

Fell free to post you thoughts on the subject and maybe it will motivate me to finish this post.

I’ll leave you with a little different take on luck.

There was once a boy who came from a poor family in China. One day his horse ran away. The villagers all said “what unfortunate luck”. The boys father shook said, “Maybe good. Maybe bad.”

The next day, the boy went to find the missing horse and found a herd of wild horses and caught a strong steed to bring them back to the village. The villagers exclaimed, “Isn’t this wonderful luck”. The boys father again said, “Maybe good. Maybe bad.”

The next day the boy went to try to break in and tame the horse, but the horse bucked him and crippled his leg. The villagers all proclaimed what terrible luck is was. “Maybe good. Maybe bad.” said the boys father.

That same day the army marched through town taking all the able-bodied young men away to war…

Luck is like the weather here in Eugene, it changes every hour, so don’t bank on it holding.

Obligatory Pic, this is a new treatment on a sketch I did some time ago.

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I’ve been listening to Craig Ferguson’s “American On Purpose” on audio book, so if you want to hear this the way is sounds in my head, read the following with a thick Scottish accent.

Something like this  …A coople O week agoo Ah posted bark ‘at Madge Otter hud acquired th’ rights tae th’ Red Baron Gam IP, puttin’ it back in th’ hans ay some O th’ original creators efter mony years in th’ wild. …Get the idea?  Awe rite reid oan!

This week the crew over at Push Button Labs got their very capable hands on The Incredible Machine IP, which is fitting because Jeff Tunnell was the one of the original designers and producer on the game. PBL has released a bundled pack of the various incarnations of the game on GOG.com

Here is another quick sketch in the same style as some of my recent color concepts. This one was about two hours, but I spent way too much of that screwing around with the ground around the base of the rock.

Autumn has arrived in Eugene and the trees are beginning to drop their leaves. Time sure does slip by fast when you’re having fun.  I’m gonna a have to switch to more appropriate subject matter or at least a Fall color palette, as the season is beginning to grow on me.

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It has been a busy month.  I’m finally catching up on a few things that have sat idle for too long.

Fall has landed on Eugene and even though the sun is warm and shining, the air is crisp and the wind is already beginning to blow the leaves from the trees.  I’m no fan of the cold but I am looking forward to some long runs in the cool air, and hikes in the woods among the fallen leaves.

On the art front, I’ve finished up a lot of contract material recently and will post some of that soon,  stay tuned.

Also still waiting on the launch of the Enchanted Forest Environment Pack.  I’m not going to draw any lines in the sand, but think it will go live this week, now that GDC Austin isn’t filling the publishers attention.

Here’s a landscape painting I just wrapped up.  I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on this rendering style and have been putting in some effort to refine the process.  This one was about 4.5 hours, not counting the Corona and 15 minutes or so I spent working out the sketch.  The creative process aside, I’m aiming to get hands on rendering down to about 2-3 hours for this level of complexity.

This painterly look isn’t appropriate for every subject matter or project, but it is a nice contrast and change of pace from more gritty “core” styles.  Being able to work in either of the two pretty much cover the spectrum, and server the purpose of communicating an idea.

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