Sweet Shadowy Dreams

Bartek Kielban sent me a picture of his bedroom. He writes: "After being inspired by your work we want to send you a photos of my room painted similar to your arts from Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet."

Nicely done!

Back From PAX

Joe, Andrew Scott (sound maestro) and I had a lot of fun in Boston at the PAX convention. The reception to ITSP was incredible. The booth stayed completely busy the whole time with lines of anxious gamers waiting patiently their turns to experience ITSP. Everyone was so excited and positive towards the game, it really warmed our hearts.

Joe and I did several interviews and answered a lot of questions. We were given the go ahead by Microsoft to reveal that the game will be released this summer and that it will feature a coop version.

Observing people playing the game was very insightful. We took a lot of notes and will make sure to use the knowledge we gathered to make the game even better.

Here's a sample of the reviews we received from journalists who got to test the game for themselves:

IGN
Critical Bits
Indie Games
Gay Gamer
Platform Nation
Horrible Night
Armless Octopus
Game Rant
Rax Dakkar
Side Questing
VGrevolution
My Gamers
4PlayerPodCast

PAX East Gameplay Footage

We'll have more on our visit to PAX East in the coming days! Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

PAX East, New Website and Press Release

The past few months have been quite a marathon, to say the least, with Joe and I, as well as members of our team working into the wee hours of the morning. We're approaching the completion of the game and we're all dedicating ourselves to make ITSP as memorable as possible.

Joe, Andrew Scott (our sound maestro) and I will be flying to Boston tomorrow to unveil the game at PAX East on March 11th. You can read our press release here.

I've also designed a new website that centralizes everything about Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Even this blog will now be readable within the main website. Go check it out at www.InsanelyTwistedShadowPlanet.com.

The website is going to keep growing with artwork and videos added periodically until the release date. Check out the art gallery for a peak at what's coming!

Last but certainly not least, we're going to release a gameplay video with 10 minutes of footage to coincide with the PAX event. Make sure you check out our video section on march 11th when the videos go live.

Coverage from Montreal

Insanely Twisted shadow Planet has caught the eyes of La Presse, Canada's largest francophone newspaper. They did a video interview with me a few days ago, and today, they published a cool little article in both the printed and on-line version of the newspaper. Here's a link to the article.

My apologies to my partner, Joe Olson, who gets referred to as Joe Wilson in the article.

Prelude to Eden

We're going to have some big news about the game very soon. We're all working around the clock as our completion deadline approaches. We're asking everyone for a bit more patience. I guarantee you will all agree that it was worth it when you see the finished game. In the meantime I thought I'd post my 1995 short film, Prelude to Eden, which I just uploaded on YouTube in full HD 1080P.

Videogames as Art

I recently became aware that the famous movie critic Roger Ebert wrote,"videogames can never be art". I find it puzzling that he could make such a statement, since what attracts me to videogames, as an artist, is the unlimited potential for art. The cinematics are one of the many aspects that get my creative juice flowing.


While building the cinematics, I've been forced to constantly use my imagination to solve creative and technical problems while remaining on target for our milestones. It has been challenging and exhilarating at the same time. One of the thing that Joe and I agreed upon right off the bat was to keep them short and sweet - focus on quality rather than quantity. I'll take two great minutes of animation over twenty minutes of average any time. We want the cinematics to feel like rewards, not something you want to fast-forward through.

The next challenge will be to make the transition between cinematics and game play completely seemless. I look forward to that!

Dimmu Borgir

We're very happy to officially announce that the music of Dimmu Borgir, courtesy of Nuclear Blast and Prophesies Publishings, will be featured in our game's cinematics. The music is beautiful and epic and really adds power to the images.

A bunch of us from the studio went to see them in Seattle the last time they were in town and we loved the show. We’re delighted to have them be a part of our project.

My New Short Film, Sensology

We're going to be posting some updates on the game soon. In the meantime, I thought I'd share my recently finished short film, Sensology. Enjoy.

Let's Paint An ITSP Stencil

Our trailer for ITSP inspired Ian Fagan, an artist from Portland, to create a stencil painting of one of the creatures featured in the game. He posted a video on YouTube demonstrating his technique. Check it out.

30 fps vs 24 fps

When I started doing animation work on ITSP, Joe told me that 30 frames (or more) per second was standard for video games. I've always animated at 24 frames per second, that being the standard for the movie industry. Since a lot of the animation I do is hand drawn, increasing the frame rate by 20% meant a lot more hours to produce the same lenght of animation.


And so, Joe and I decided that I would animate at 24 fps and the game engine would adjust its playback speed when displaying my animation.

But then, I saw how smooth and silky my animation looked when we mistakenly displayed it at 30 fps. I was immediately hooked. I love how animation looks at this increased rate, especially when it's hand drawn!

So no worry, all the animation in the game will be at a minimum of 30 fps. No cheat!

Fixed Fragmented Fluid

Just thought I'd let everyone know about my upcoming animated project which will premiere in Vancouver on June 25th, 2010. I've wanted to do a project such as this for many years, ever since I discovered the abstract work of Oscar Fischinger, Norman Mclaren, Kandinsky and Yves Tanguy. I got started in 2006, and now, four years later, I'm finally going to be able to share this work with an audience.

Using cutting edge technology, I will be performing the animation with the musicians, creating a dialogue between music and images that should be quite exciting. I would like to point out that the seven musicians involved in the project are all fantastic and are worth the price of admission all by themselves. So if you're in Vancouver on June 25th, you might want to check it out! Tickets can be purchased here.

You can read about how the project came about here.