Self Portrait of The Artist as A Spastic Gamer

This is pretty much how I look on the weekend. And weekdays.

CK

It was free

I've been doing enough non-game stuff lately, I figured I'd just start another blog. I can easily ignore two blogs for the price of one, thanks to the fine folks at Google.

This is where I plan to post pictures I've been doing in a semi-diorama style, hence the name. Other pieces may show up now and then too.

CK

Resume In T-Shirts

The game industry isn't as full of excitement and romance as some may think. The hours are long. Stability isn't always that great. Royalties and riches exist only for a lucky few. One thing we do get is a crapload of t-shirts.

There are two big reasons for this. First, it helps companies to identify and collect their employees when they go astray in the wild. Second, we don't get out to the local haberdashery all that often while crunching for months at a time. I was looking at the ever-growing pile in my closet the other day, and thought it might be fun to make a visual survey of these garments in all their nerdly glory. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Besides highlighting my desperate need for an iron, it was way more work than it was worth. But here it is. I tried to stick with shirts related to companies and product I actually worked on, otherwise there would be another 20-odd shirts.

CK 

So Many Years, So Few Bits

So, you may be wondering, "How did Clayton learn to do that crude, crappy style of animation so wonderfully showcased in the last post?" This may give you some perspective on that. In my never-ending quest to reduce clutter and bring screenshots from games nobody ever cared about to light, I offer the following.

I stumbled across an old portfolio floppy containing a bunch of goofy little animations. These are some background and characters I did way back when for Pink Goes To Hollywood, one of the Pink Panthers darker, more confusing chapters. But it was the 90's -- Pretty much everybody got a sidescroller then.

Funny story... The folks at TekMagic got so used to just calling the game "Pink Goes to Hollywood" instead of the more accurate "Pink PANTHER Goes To Hollywood," it ended up on the box that way. Hilarious. I mean, who needs to know the name of your main character anyway?

Yup. They pretty much crammed the word "Pink" into every sentence they could. The results were sometimes a little unsettling.

We did all the "cut scenes" like the one above in three days. This was back when everybody was still amazed by blinking lights, telephones and whatnot.

The original format for these files was .ANM from Deluxe Paint Animation. The movement is so choppy because I did very few frames, and kept things to an 8 pixel grid. The actual game moved much more smoothly. It's funny what passed for a portfolio back then... or talent.

CK

Just Because

Being a mighty game designer for all these years can leave a man hollow. Hollow and empty. What fills this vast, desolate void? Animating dancing hippos and rhinos, of course. I did this for HBO's Flight of The Conchords Fansterpiece contest (love those guys), though it may not be quite what they're looking for.

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 Why? CK

Character Generation

Ron just posted some concept art I did for DeathSpank over at his Grumpy Gamer blog. These are two of the many characters we created to populate the game's world. The pieces portray Ms. Heybenstance, the demon witch and everyone's favorite stoner merchant, Bong The Potioner.

CK

UPDATE: And just to prove I can put hands on my character's correctly, here is a revised Bong, with everything pointing in the right direction. Let this be a lesson to all you youngsters: Don't drink and draw.

TA-ncient History #11: Around The World

This is skipping ahead a bit, but I always liked the visual simplicity of this French box that bundled Total Annihilation and the Battle Tactics expansion pack.

One of the last tasks as production nears completion on a game is translating the game into various languages. Humongous Entertainment always took a very aggressive approach to translating its games. When most companies in the US seldom went beyond FIGS (the oh-so-hip developer acronym for French, Italian, German, Spanish), HE was regularly releasing their most popular games in a dozen or more languages, including Hebrew, Dutch and Norwegian. That attitude carried over to Total Annihilation, though we settled for just doing FIGS. I like figs.

It's always interesting to see what issues arise during localization. For instance, in the UK I just misspelled the word "localisation." It's crazy... or mad.

Anyway, Total Annihilation was relatively easy to convert to other languages. The bulk of our in-game text used the same tools Humongous used, including their in-house animation tool, Splat, for the 2D artwork (this is what created those .gaf files you 3rd party folks know so well). It only took an artist a few days to replace the text seen in the interface and other parts of the game. Most of TA's movie sequences intentionally contained no speaking parts for cheap translation reasons. We made the game for a mere 1.1 million bucks, so we had to make decisions like that on a regular basis.

We did replace the voice narration for the mission briefings and the intro cinematic. Gamers in Germany might have recognized the voice of the guy who dubbed the German voice of James Bond for decades: Gert-Günther Hoffmann. I'm told Total Annihilation was Herr Hoffmann's last project before his death in 1997.

The voice of Total Annihilation in Germany.

GT Interactive's marketing experts in some countries disliked the name "Total Annihilation." It can be difficult for many non-English speakers to say. Plenty of English speakers stuggle with it too.

The folks in France pressed us to change the name completely. They said they were concerned that "Total Annihilation" might sound too much like "Final Solution" to European ears. They suggested the name "Hegemon" instead. The folks at GT's French office also thought the Arm Commander on the front of the TA box was too similar to a character in Heavy Gear, so he was removed from their version of the box.

The strangely empty French Total Annihilation box layout.

The German box was somewhat different as well. They placed hash marks indicating the number five in the background. This tied in to their marketing campaign which used the number five to connote the five senses, along with the slogan "Use Your Senses." It's sort of catchy, but I don't remember how Total Annihilation smelled... or tasted. Anyone who does, please keep it to yourselves.

"Ich bin ein Riesen-Roboter."

Humongous was already established as a successful division within GT Interactive, so we were asked nicely about the the renaming ideas and not simply ordered to comply. We felt it was important to keep the name consistent throughout the world, so we did. It may be an awkward tongue twister, but it was awkward for pretty much everybody, including Americans.

CK

Below The Jurassic Strata

This should seal my reputation as a horrible pack rat.

I've been delving into heaps of stuff I've collected from past game projects. One recent excavation turned up an original animation cel from the Secret of Evermore television ad. This was the first game I ever worked on that had a "real" TV ad, much less something featuring old school hand-animation.

Here is the original. Spot the frame!

CK

Bad Drawings from A Good Weekend

L to R, upper row: Bob Bates, Gordon Walton, Tom Abernathy, Ralf Adam
bottom row: Rich Vogel, Lee Sheldon, Ken Rolston, Hal Barwood.

Every so often I try to attend an informal gathering of game designers known as the Game Designers Workshop. The most recent gathering took place last weekend in Seattle. It's a great opportunity to hear what game designers from all over the industry think about issues confronting our craft these days. It's a pretty amazing bunch of designers and creative types, so I'm always overwhelmed by the great ideas and immense perspective the group can bring to bear on a topic.

I'm an incessant doodler (which is illegal in 14 states), so I couldn't resist doing some crude likenesses of some of the other attendees while taking notes. A few of these are semi-okay, even though I'm pretty rusty when it comes to caricatures.

Apologies to my victims. I promise to be more flattering next time.

CK

Life Imitates Fiction Imitating Life

I think we may have a copyright issue on our hands. You Voodoo Vince players can vouch for me.

You might recall the boss battle at the end of the Bayou level where Vince pits his powers of running, jumping and Voodoo against a hurricane. That hurricane's name? Okay, ours was called Hannah, but we added the "h" so it wouldn't be completely like our art director's last name, which was "Hanna," the name of the hurricane currently churning its way across the Caribbean.

It's back. And this time it's personal. If it stops by, tell it I went to the store.

Between this and another odd parallel I posted about back in 2006, I'm starting to think that hurricanes and video games don't mix.

CK

The Spank of Death vs. PAX

I stopped by PAX today. I always enjoy seeing the unalloyed bedrock of the game biz in its natural habitat.

Hothead games was showing some teasers for DeathSpank. It's always amazing when something finally migrates off the drawing board and out into the world. Ron Gilbert and I dreamed up DeathSpank and spent years pitching it to publishers. Most were skeptical. Those who were not usually lacked the means to fund this little gem of episodic mayhem. I have to say, the folks at Hothead really get the concept, and these teasers show why. Things are still at a pretty early stage, but I'm thrilled with how DeathSpank is coming together. These bits only show personality, but a game like this lives and dies on personality. It sets the mood for everything to come.

Here are the three teasers for your viewing pleasure.

CK

More Juvenile Humor

I promised a Vince statue to Dave Halverson from Play Magazine longer ago than I care to remember. He was patience itself, and now he has this fine decoration in his lovely home. It depicts a somewhat off-model Vince reading Dave's excellent publication while sitting on the can.

Dave was remarkably understanding and has agreed not to sue me.

CK