ITSP Gets Mexican Exposure

Here's a piece of coverage from south of the border. You can read the article from issue #46 of Gamers Magazine (if you know Spanish) in PDF form by clicking here.

Shadow Tidbits: Outlaw Social Zombies

Last November, I posted about a shadow puppet show I designed for the Victoria Philharmonic Choir in 2007, called The Spectre's Bride. The opening act for the show was a band called Outlaw Social. I was commissioned to do a zombie shadow puppet rendition of the band members for the event's press material.


...and here is the picture I had to work from:

ITSP Gets Russian Exposure

Last summer, we were contacted by the editor of a Russian gaming magazine called Igromania. They wanted to do a feature on our game and sent us a bunch of questions. We went back and forth with emails and phone calls and later, we were sent a PDF of the two-page spread layout. Looks like the issue came out last September. We'd love to get a physical copy of it if anyone has a spare.

Shadow Tidbits: Brett's Tattoo

Last June, my good friend Brett called from Iowa to tell me that he was going to get a tattoo of two of my designs that he had cobbled together.

When he sent me an image of what he had done, I almost got sick. I never do tattoos for people (please don't ask) but what he was going to have permanently tattooed on his body was so hideous that I had no choice but to agree to quickly come up with a better design. I fired up my Cintiq tablet and fifteen minutes later, I email him this design which he immediately got tattooed on his lower back.

Shadow Tidbits: ZED #8

As I mentionned in my last post, we're in serious negotiations to get the game signed. This means that until the signatures are inked on the contract, we have to stay quiet about ITSP. Fuelcell have been making lots of progress on the technology side of things and I personally can't wait to get back in the saddle in March 2010, when we are scheduled to resume full production. In the meantime, I'm going to be doing a series of post called "Shadow Tidbits", which will display some of my artwork past and present, that features shadow silhouette imagery. This is kind of a follow-up to "My History with Shadow Puppets" posts I've been doing these past weeks.

First up, is the cover of ZED #8, which came out in March 2007. ZED is a comic series I started in 2001, and I've been doing one issue a year ever since. I'm planning on releasing the final issue, ZED #10, in September 2010, exactly 10 years after the release of issue #1.

ZED is the story of a cute and adorable alien scientist who discovers a clean and efficient way to produce energy. When he demonstrates his invention , he inadvertently triggers a deadly chain of events - a monumental disaster that claims the life of his parents, the hierarchy of the galaxy, and 60 billion beings. Suddenly, his dreams of offering his society free energy become a nightmare as little ZED must come to terms with the knowledge that he caused the death of his parents and the annihilation of an entire planet; and now he's a pariah, hated by virtually everyone. As the story progresses, we realize that things may not be as they seemed at first.

Among the comics' recurring cast, is the Heavy Metal shadow band called Krah which is features here, on the cover of ZED #8.

More on ZED at www.zedcomics.com.

Update

We're in negotiations and are hoping to sign a deal soon. Our goal is to find the best home for ITSP and resume full production in March. In the meantime, I'm working on Fixed Fluid Fragmented, Flight 7, as well as a project with Electronic Arts, which I can't talk about at this point. To keep the blog going until we make an official announcement, I'll be posting artworks from my past and present done in a shadow puppet style.

Joe is also doing an interview and we'll post that as soon as it goes live.

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 7

In June 2007, I was contacted by Simon Capet, artistic director of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir. He asked me if I'd be interested in production designing a live shadow puppet theatrical presentation of Dvorak's epic masterpiece, "The Spectre's Bride". It didn't take long for me to agree to the proposal.


The two shows took place at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar theater in British Columbia, Canada on October 30 and 31, 2009. The sold out performances featured a 65-piece orchestra and 80-voice choir, along with soloists Ken Lavigne, tenor, Anne Grimm, soprano, and Bruce Kelly, baritone. It premiered a new English libretto by Mollie Kaye. Puppeteer Tim Gosley assisted by members of the Puppetry Guild of Victoria handled the choreography of the shadow puppets presentation.


My tasks included designing all the sets, characters and props. You can see some more sample of this work here.

New Studio Space

It's actually been a few months since Fuelcell moved into it's new studio space, but it's been such a busy few months I haven't had a chance to post some photos, until now. It features a covered entry with a better view, our walls are a bit thicker, and there's much more usable space than the last studio.


So much space in fact that we used a bit of it to house the classic 1988 Williams pinball: The Cyclone, one of my favorite tables when I was a teenager. Chris Eng, our junior programmer, currently holds the high score at 9,952,390.

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 6

In July 2004, I had a meeting with Anissa Dorsey, director of development at Cartoon Network. Anissa expressed her enthusiasm for my work and asked me if I'd be interested in doing shorts for CN. After a few weeks of brainstorming, I came up with a concept for a series: Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppet Show!


I proceeded to do a visual package demonstrating my concepts and pitched the project to Cartoon Network, as well as Disney and Nickelodeon. Cartoon Network and Disney both passed, but Nickelodeon liked the idea. After a few back and forth discussions, Nickelodeon decided to give me a budget to produce 10 short interstitials (the short pieces that go between the shows and the commercials) based on the idea.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets aired on Nickelodeon on Halloween 2005. You can view all the interstitials here, and read a production diary of the project here.

Bellingham Comicon

I will be a guest at the Bellingham Comicon this coming Saturday, October 24th.

A few days ago, I was asked to submit some artwork to publicize the event. To my surprise and delight, a still of our upcoming videogame was used as the cover of Take Five, the entertainment section of Bellingham's prime newspaper, The Bellingham Herald.


If you live in the Pacific Northwest, come on by. I'll be there with books, comics, prints, etc, and will be on hand to answer all the questions you might have about ITSP. Hope to see you there!

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 5

In 1993, when I did effects animation on Demolition Man (Check this clip to see some of the animation I did with John Van Vliet and James Mansfield), I had to ink all my drawings with black pens so that high contrast elements for the optical printer could be created. I thought the drawings all filled in with black ink looked really cool!

Once in a while, I return to that technique, and start filling in my effects concepts with black ink so I can get a stark silhouette of the design. Here are samples from The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones which I did while I was the leading FX designer at Warner Brothers Feature Animation.

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 4

At the beginning of 2000, after completing the effects work on "The Iron Giant", I joined the visual devellopment team on the movie, "Osmosis Jones" for which I designed and supervised the special effects.

One of my early assignment was to create a series of teaser posters for the movie.

For this, I decided to work in a shadow puppet and high contrast silhouette style.

Unfortunately all my posters were rejected in favor of a more cartoony approach. You can click here for a larger view.