Month: January 2010

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Bebbeh?

The first of 2 paintings for Jude’s baby room is finished and the second one is on the drawing board.   So that’s progress.

Hang the Stars from the Moon

Freelance work has actually been pretty busy so that’s been sapping a good bit of the ol’ come home from work and work on pet projects enthusiasm.  However I’ve got a good chunk of time mentally set aside here in the near future to get to grinding out the updated art for the cards.   So hopefully I can get the Mutant Sheep out the door.  And start one of the other two game ideas that have been percolating for a couple months. Very exciting stuff.

But right now, it’s pretty much all baby all the time.

On the games front there’s a couple little tidbits worth sharing.   I finally beat Mirror’s Edge which was surprisingly good and different, not sure why it go panned so bad when it came out.   Metaplace, Raph Koster’s mmo brainchild, closed down, which isn’t entirely unexpected since it felt so un-rooted and essentially wound up more of a chat room than it did a fully customizable world.  It’s still kinda sad after following his blog and twits for a couple years and knowing how hard those guys worked for it.  Dragon Age, is deep and spectacular, and definitely not default to easy mode, which is nice.   Solium Infernum, is mind bendingly complex and looks to have the award for best Play By Email game of the decade wrapped up.  (anyone up for a game? email me)

Board game wise..

My copy of Pandemic has arrived and we’ve played a couple games.  It’s a bit of a mental twist to be playing cooperatively against the game, but very refreshing.  So far we’ve mastered easy mode and haven’t lost yet and need to kick it up a difficulty, the awesome thing is that you can play a game in about an hour to hour and 1/2.

Also glaring evilly at me from my shelf of recent aquisitions is a copy of Arkham Horror, also an entirely cooperative affair we’ve yet to play it, as it looks to be a 2-4 hour thing and we havent had that kind of time (and go figure it’s gonna take longer for the first game).  Interestingly enough, it allows 1 player games as well.

And we need to play more Decent while we’re at it.

Hmm wonder if we can mandate a monthly game day in the house?

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Tales of puppets, babies, games etc

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So here we are, another year is already on the way and it’s time to get busy.

As of today baby Jude is ~45days out and counting, lots of house prep is being done and more still to do.  Excitement is high and nesting mode is in full swing.  The home office has been moved into the game room and the new space works well and the start of a dedicated baby room is in progress.  Super Awesome GFW has got her etsy store up and running, and a whole kitchen studio full of paint and canvas.  90% of all pictures on the walls in the house are now original art, and man is that nice.

Christmas came and went in a blur of cookies, candy, family and food.  When it was all said and done my very own muppet Whatnot was here to stay.  He’s pictured above, and it’s very very cool.  I have plans for him.  Big plans.  But first I’m gonna need a couple mutant sheep puppets.

Speaking of Mutant Sheep.. With the death of my POS Kodak all in one printer I no longer have a scanner.  So I’m having to switch to an all digital pipeline.. which may be faster once I get rolling on it.. but it does mean that I can’t doodle out the roughs at work and then take em home and ink em.  Other than that, it’s back to grindstone and get em finished asap!  Progress on it has been pretty abysmal lately and I’m not exactly thrilled with that, not sure what the mental block/holdup is but it’s time to work through it.

That is, just as soon as I wrap up a bit more paying design / web work.  The freelance developer & designer side of things is really picking up lately and I hope to keep it rolling throughout the year.  So naturally that stuff comes first, before Sheep.

Gaming

The holidays were full of super end of year sales, the most impressive was probably the insane Steam sale, lots of awesomeness was picked up at a pittance.  So here’s a list of the gaming highlights.

  • Dragon Age: Traditional fantasy RPG, polished like nothing else.
  • Kings Bounty: Insane Fantasy turn based combat with a happy disregard for tradition.
  • Mirrors Edge: First person runner.  Not sure why this wasn’t a bigger hit.
  • Garrys Mod:  A multiplayer physics based playgound, had a lot of fun building airships with kiddo an just doing strange stuff.
  • Left for Dead 2: Better than the first one, more zombies, more guns, for when you just want to shoot.
  • Machinarium: A beautiful hand drawn adventure game with so much character its hard to believe.
  • STALKER – Clear Sky: Post Chernobyl fps world to explore full of mutants and more.

And in board games:

We have played the first game of Pandemic.  A co-op board game where you have to work together to save the world from 4 diseases, HIGHLY recommended.  And I have a copy of Arkahm Horror sitting on my desk waiting to have a day dedicated to it.