Cat M's Blog

9/15/12

Figure Drawing!

I did some figure drawing this afternoon! I hadn't done it in 'awhile' - when I looked it up, it turns out the last time I went was in August 2010!! Shameful...

1min:

30min:

15min:

30min:

9/4/12

Every year that there's a presidential election (for the last 3), I've been "required" by my mom to draw something political for her birthday - so I drew these two pictures this year. These are just iPod Touch pics... I didn't think to scan them. ;)

They're sharpie + watercolor pencils.

Here's some process - I didn't take a picture of the donkey sketch.

8/1/12

Marathon Runner Updates

More updates over on our Trouble Impact development blog!

Also I finally wrote a Game Journal entry about Dustforce.

6/14/12

Character Updates

Stuff is happening over on http://www.troubleimpact.com!

http://www.troubleimpact.com/blog/2012/6/14/marathon-runner-main-character.html

5/31/12

Spotlight on Women in Games

Check it out, I'm in this article!! http://geeksdreamgirl.com/2012/05/31/industry-spotlight-part-i/

5/7/12

Fez Journal Entry, Marathon Runner

Posted some new stuff over on the Trouble Impact blog & Game Journal

- E-Sports Game Idea Pitch

- Avengers Comic

- Super Crate Box Game Journal

- Marathon Runner Game Idea Pitch

- Fez Game Journal Entry

4/11/12

4/10/12

PAX East 2012 Recap - Saturday

Posted over on the Trouble Impact site: http://troubleimpact.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/10/pax-east-2012-recap-saturday.html

PAX East 2012 Recap - Friday

Just wrote the inaugural entry for our Trouble Impact blog & website about PAX East: http://troubleimpact.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/9/pax-east-2012-recap-friday.html

I will slowly be moving over to posting exclusively on that site, but don't move your bookmarks just yet, since we'll be changing the url. :)

4/5/12

Kotaku: Molyjam Highlights

Our game, "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" got featured on Kotaku's Molyjam Highlights!

Also Molydeux tweeted this - you can all appreciate the irony ;D

Exciting!!!

4/1/12

Molyjam 2012 - Dance Like There's No Tomorrow

The 2012 Molyjam is complete!

To reiterate, we started from this tweet:

We made a sort of endless runner style game where in order to keep going, you have to press DDR buttons to the beat (and sometimes doubletime). At the same time, you must also jump over, slide under and shoot your way through obstacles blocking your path.

You get three mistakes - counted by either colliding with an obstacle or missing the beat.

You can download the game to try here: http://www.whatwouldmolydeux.com/display.php?GameID=158

Music is from http://www.shockwave-sound.com/

Here's a video showing the game in action!:

And here's a video capture of the game itself, to give a better view of what was happening on screen.

Video showing failure:

If we were to work on it some more, I'd like to have segments devoted entirely to dancing - either freestyle (probably just requiring that you're hitting on the beats or quarterbeats), or perhaps a DDR-style 'guided dance section' where you have to complete a sequence. It would also be pretty sweet to have a section where you have to jump up & down to the beat with a crowd of people (would require pressing both foot buttons). Also we originally talked about having aiming to go along with your shooting, but we didn't have time. Note: I recognize that this is technically not an FPS. ;)

Team:
Cat Musgrove
Issam Khalil

Screenshots:

Molyjam - Saturday Night

Here are some images from the day!

First screenshot - trying to prove out a concept for the environment:

This is how Issam sits while working:

Here's a lovely shot of some early modeling: ;)

Animation!:

And some screenshots from the end of the night:

3/30/12

MolyJam - Friday Night

Finishing up night 1 of the Molyjam!

There's a good article explaining the jam here. It's a 48 hour game jam, running from 7pm Friday night (03/30) through 7pm Sunday night (04/01). The idea is to take one of @petermolydeux's many game idea tweets and use it to create an original game from scratch.

After brainstorming our way through 4 pages of choice Molydeux tweets over dinner, Issam and I zoned in on these two tweets:

And the brainstorming began!

After some refinement, it's not going to be an FPS exactly - but the idea is to make more of a 3rd person endless runner w/ some shooting involved. You will need to move to the beat to keep running.

Oh yeah, we've been making use of this free little BPM counter: http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

And are buying our music from: http://www.shockwave-sound.com/

Here is Molydeux's message to the world, just made public via Twitter. We will try to avoid having the player shoot at any aliens. :)

Announcement: Trouble Impact

After months of planning, my good friend Issam and I are starting our own COMPANY.

This announcement probably will not come as a surprise to anyone that knows us directly, or reads this blog!

I've spent at least the last 2 years desperately throwing all of my free time into trying to figure out 'what I want.' I slowly and inevitably moved from wanting to be a hardcore animator, to thinking that was boring and wanting to be an 'artist' rather than just an animator, to wanting to switch to design (I even interviewed at a small company as a designer!), to starting to learn some programming - to finally realizing that what I'd really like to do is just do 'all of the things.' If you've read my Game Journal at all, you can see that I'm one of those paradoxical people that simultaneously loves games, but doesn't actually like playing very many games - so my quest in life has become to "make a game that I want to play" and then hopefully some other people might also want to play it.

The plan is to stay as a 2 person team, at least for a long while. I will primarily be arting & designing, while Issam will be programming & businessing. My official last day at Vicarious Visions is next Thursday the 5th, and Issam is finishing up Friday the 13th (after which he may or may not stay on as a contractor while working with me on the side).

I hope we can make something cool for you guys to play!!!

We have a @TroubleImpact Twitter, but not a lot is going to go on there yet. Until then, follow me @Cat_Musgrove and @IssamKhalil! We will also have a real website at some point!

3/27/12

Space Circus: Idea Exploration pt. 1

Starting to kick around a new concept. These are my choppy brainstorm notes & some drawings and video from tonight. Issam is starting on a prototype. I think this is one of those ideas where you really need to start playing it to see what direction to head. I have some basic concepts I'm interested in - but I don't know if they'll be fun until I can play them. Then the rest of the game can be structured around that. :)

Brainstorm Notes:

Key Concepts: Physicality, joy of movement
Want player to feel exhilaration from success

Traversal
- think 'skateboard' - you swipe along the bottom of the screen to build forward momentum
- the character will continue forward, then lose momentum when you stop swiping
- (probably need to be able to stop suddenly - maybe you swipe backwards)
- you can go forward and backwards? (probably important for platforming, if you overshoot)

- swipe upwards to jump (keeps forward momentum)
- maybe you can hold to crouch for jumping - the longer you hold, the higher you can jump (seems like it might make it hard to be precise, since it would also retain forward momentum. could be really confusing, or break up action too much?)

- swinging on bars (think uneven bars in gymnastics) you swing around them with the momentum you had from running forward, but you can also swipe in a circular motion around your character to control their speed
- letting go: hold to freeze (visual filter effect on screen to show you are 'frozen'), draw a straight line outwards from your character, let go - you will have aimed the jump
- could also simply let go (more like classic game where you swing on stuff)
- could also not freeze, but let the path your finger takes aim your jump off of the bar

- tightrope section using the accelerometer? different game view (top down). might be too much of a break from the game, would need to see it.

Player Motivation?
- do we make the game competitive, show player trails/ghosts to compete with for timing?
- do we score the player based on how unbroken their traversal is, or is the speed at which you're moving its own reward? (I am going for the latter! I would like to avoid scoring at all costs!)

Quick video for Issam to explain a basic idea of what I'm thinking:

Draw over:

3/20/12

She's Skinned!

Just testing out the skinning with some weird poses. :)

3/18/12

Ico & Modeling Updates

New post over at my Game Journal about Ico: http://thegreatgameexperiment.blogspot.com/2012/03/ico-ps3.html

Also my model looks like this right now:

Somewhere halfway through modeling, Issam saw this sketch, and we both thought it felt a lot better than that I had, so I tried to push it more in that direction. I feel like her face is looking a bit 'porcelain doll' right now, but I want to see what expressions I can get out of her, which will only happen once I do some skinning. But first I'm doing some UVing! (soooo boring...)

I really hope I can get some personality out of her... it's like, the whole point. ;)