Team Voodoo!

I got an email from an American Flag Football club in the UK last year called Team Voodoo. Their team President asked if they could adopt Vince as sort of unofficial team mascot and maybe put him on some shirts for the team. I passed his request on to the powers that be at Microsoft (they own the Vince intellectual property) and they were nice enough to consent.


Maybe I felt a special affinity, having broken a wrist playing flag football in junior high. I offered some of my nonexistent free time to make the art and the end result is at the top of this post. I'm reasonably happy with it. I can't wait to see and wear the final product.

CK

ps: Hey! I noticed a YouTube clip of Team Voodoo in action.

I'll Just Have The Salabog

I didn't expect to post much about Secret of Evermore but it seems to be enjoying a small rebirth as a cult classic. Don't ask me why. I'm as surprised as anyone. I hear the new issue of Game Informer lists Evermore as their third most anticipated pick on their "top 10 retro game we can't wait to download on our Wii" list. That, plus the fact that folks keep posting clips of it on YouTube make for a quick easy post on a lazy Sunday. So, yay.

This clip is of the third boss battle in SOE, the big swamp snake thing, Salabog. I did the background art and Salabog himself (based on a concept painting by our art director, Daniel Dociu). The big critter himself contains very little animation, at least by an artist. The movement of the head and the body were all done with programming (I keep thinking it was Jeff Petkau). The neck is just made of a small overlapping sprites. The sections of the monster seen in the background got their motion from good old fashioned color cycling.

Below is another craptacular doodle from the notepad I had on my desk at the time.


As I said in earlier posts, lots of people who went on to Cavedog (and Beep, and later ArenaNet) worked at Square's Redmond office. The main character and dog were animated by Rebecca Coffman. TA fans might be interested to hear the score by Jeremy Soule, who accomplished some amazing things with the limited audio palette available on the SNES.

CK

Slighted Over Germany

A friend of a friend snapped this picture. The elusive Voodoo Vince plush has been unceremoniously strapped to a rope and incorporated into a display on the suspended lighting at a Saturn store in Frankfurt, Germany. It doesn't look very comfortable, but it probably offers Vince a fine view of the tops of German shopper's heads. I can only approve of his proximity to that giant bag of coffee, even if it is just robusta.

CK