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Ok, I've done one more edit, had a go at that arm, virtually redone all the shading and added the ear Babar suggested. Since then I've had a go at her back. Again I'm having difficulty with posture and shading, though I don't think its too bad. Any more comments, thoughts or suggestions?

 

The guy in the last picture looks like he's got a straw...

I deny religion because much things in its structure don't make sense to me. Like preachers/priests/pope/etc. How can a  sinful, unworthy human being decide that he has right to be an ambassador of the almighty? To speak in Lord's name, to rise above the masses and act as God's secretary? To actually imagine that creator of world needs HIM to spread his word, orders or love? That's a blasphemy!

It's probably not true for everyone in the church, but all of the church leaders that I know are in the job because they feel called to it. They don't just sit down and decide one day, "I know, I think I'll be a vicar. I always wanted a dog-collar". In the churches I've been to - certainly the ones that are more alive - the focus is very much on listening to God, and even when the vicar gives out a message for the church that they feel has come from God everyone is encouraged to think about it, pray about it and weigh it against what they know of the bible to decide if it is from God and they should follow it or not. The church leaders don't choose the job, God chooses it for them, and generally speaking they are fairly 'in touch' with God and wouldn't last long if the job wasn't right for them.

As for why God decided to work through humans, well that's a bit harder to suggest explanations for. He certainly doesn't need us. Maybe its because He loves us and wants to spend time with us, and wants to let us do something important. My brother and I built a sort of den area in the top of our garage with our dad, even though he could have made all the decisions and done all the building work himself, and probably to a higher standard. Yet he let us help as a bonding exercise, and so that we would grow in maturity and knowledge and skills. Maybe that explains it a little. Sinful and unworthy we may be, but God didn't make us just to run around on the Earth randomly like any other animal. He loves us and wants us to be a part of what He's doing. That at least is as far as I understand it.

I think I'll go burst into tears now

Anyway, that's all a bit off topic... but then again so is the situation in Sudan

Mine is Dollar the monkey who has been my character for many years. First started when a friend and I were playing with toys (as opposed to on computers or consoles, this was a long time ago), and we had a monkey puppet running an airline business that only cost $1 to fly on, but would take you to some country you didn't want to go to where you would have to pay one unit of another currency to another similar monkey to fly somewhere else. I'm British but one dollar had a nicer ring to it than one pound.

Then I was introduced (by the same friend) to a game maker called O.H.R.R.P.G.C.E. and I made my very first game staring Dollar in "Dollar's Quest" - I knew nothing of the Sierra games back then. Since then I've tried out lots of game making programs and Dollar has stuck with me, although only making it into one other finished game (and several games which were mostly finished).

More recently I've tried my hand at Flash animating, and have 95% finished one with Dollar in it. The picture in my avatar is taken from that animation.

There you go, my forum name and avatar for the price of one. (Avoiding the ridiculously obvious pun)

But then the joke wouldn't work. Hmm, this is a little tough and I have no time. Looks like spending 10 days working on a game rather than my exams, then giving up again time!

For an example, I'll try to explain my idea for my Surrealism game...

That sounds a really good idea, and if you got it right you'd have quite an interesting 'experience' on your hands. It sounds rather hard to pull off though.

Something I'm wondering about, how do you define 'game'? Something interactive that follows a set of rules and is designed to be played by one or more people for the purpose of entertainment? In which case MS Paint could be called a game based on art.

I keep hearing about The Last Express, I really will have to get the demo some time. As far as I can remember (and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm far to tired to refresh my memory with a Wikipedia article) Art Nouveau was about creating art based on the flowing forms of nature, and returning to more traditional hand crafted ways of making it. Does that come into anything other than the artwork?

Now that I think about it, there are a lot of games out there that could be called 'arty', though they're often simple and short Flash games in which the object is to explore a world, and I guess you could even say something like Myst was art, the game being portrayed through the use of pictures and sounds. Okay that sounds like any game, but what I mean is that the vast majority of the game was static artwork and sounds, rather than text (looking at items, getting response from using things, dialogue) or animation. But no, I really can't think of anything that was specifically made to encompass an art movement or the principles behind one, right down to the story and gameplay. Maybe I just don't know enough about art (GCSE made me rather cynical towards a lot of it).

How would you do it Oddysseus?

Most cat's roll around in catnip, but mine just eats it. We had a bottle of catnip spray that was great fun, even though she's fairly old she'd beat up anything you sprayed it on. Then lick it. I've never seen a dog take drugs though

Now that's scary. Why is nobody demanding that the kid who chose the name be shot? I'd be interested in seeing some newspaper reports from Sudan, but I don't speak Arabic.

Would you count comics as art? If so there are quite a few games based on both the visuals and on the ethos of the comic era (Freedom Force being a good example of one based on the silver age of comics).

As for other art forms, I can think of several games taking inspiration for graphical styles, but not really story lines, or game play. Blue Ice was very 'arty', I guess, but I don't know much about it (I had the demo but never finished it).

Then again I can't remember much about the different art movements. I studied art nouveau way back in GCSEs (at about age 16), and while its obvious how to design games visually around it, I wouldn't have a clue where to start with basing the game on the movement. (Matching the setting and making the characters artists?)

TILT!

Homework, coursework, exam revision... I'm always at my most creative when I should be doing something I don't want to. It's a little annoying; I'm currently writing the plot for a game in my head when I have exams approaching on subjects I know very little about, yet whenever I can justify working on the game (like finishing work for the day), I never quite feel like it. Hence why the game is still in my head and not appearing on paper.

Maybe its a commentary on the state of the forums, what with this 'Forums not what they used to be' thing?

-Susy doesn't seem to talk all that much to the main characters, just a few words here and there, but without her and her house nobody would have been brought together. CJ and AGS?
-Joyce would be a person who invests time they don't have into making games and contributions to the community, just to be accepted, but ends up with too many projects and the pressures of real life building up.
-Gavin is the person who is secure in their knowledge and abilities, churning out art, music, games at what they see as top quality, but other people might not always think the same as them...
-Jan has talents, but is afraid to show them lest she be squashed by other people.

Or alternatively it could be an account of a real life situation. Were any of the guys wearing too much make-up last Mittens?

Before I cause offence, this post isn't intended to be serious. I don't have any particular members in mind for any roles

Aware of The Last Express?

Yeah, I think I read a pretty positive review of it on Home of the Underdogs, its something I'd be interested in playing but not buying

That really sounds like Warthogs.

Its on my list of games to play when I have time, which probably won't be for a while. Was that made with the Character Control mod, I'm not sure how I'd go about giving lots of NPCs their own lives in AGS.

There's also the great-looking Orion Burger (awesome with a walkthrough):

Looks interesting, I'll have to read up on that one sometime

The idea seems to be a fairly popular one, still if it ain't broke, rip it off, right?

As long puzzles and important characters remain accessibles 99% of the time, an adventure game could take place in an urban or populated area where every 2 minutes spend make the clock advances by 1 hour. Parked cars cycles as the clock progress. Stores could close at precise hours, characters you met somewhere could be seen at work, shopping, relaxing in a bar or called on the phone at different moments of the day. Each day could have a different weather, generating different reactions from the pedestrians. Headlines on newspapers and TV stations could change too.

Pushed to the extreme, this idea could be extended to seasons as well. Let's say every 30 days a new season begins, there would have a 5 days gradual transition, trees would gradually lose their leaves for autumn, water would freeze, snow would slowly stack on the ground for winter and melt for spring, flowers would bloom for summer, snow and wind would replace the rain, fog and thunderstorms. Clothes, characters' and animals' activities would changes according to the seasons. On certain days there could be festivities, with decorations appearing in the trees and windows... It would be insanely difficult to implement, but even for a 1-5 rooms game, it would make a pretty unique gaming experience.

Sounds exactly like Shenmue to me.

I always wanted to make a game set over a short period of continuously running time. The protagonist is supposed to accomplish something by the end, but can only do it by being in certain places at certain times because of how the game world is constantly changing. I think change is the way to make a game feel more alive, I always love it in adventures when you come back to the same place but somehow its different. I don't necessarily mean things like 'this person will only appear when you obtain this unconnected item', but more of a 'after returning from completing this task, you notice the bar is now open and many of the NPCs are now sitting in there', (or, in a fairly old game of mine, the protagonist travels through a teleporter and finds himself in a future version of his town where everything is deserted and falling apart, and the central part of the town is now a graveyard).

On a smaller scale its nice to change the NPC reactions, so different conversation topics or comments as the player progresses through the game, based on what the player (or NPC) has experienced. You could also try and put in smaller subplots between NPCs, and generally hide things in the game for the player to discover, to make the game seem bigger and like there's more going on in the world than just the central character and their story.

I'm guessing the only time you see the monster will be for quarter of a second in a reflection in a car windscreen, and that'll only raise more questions. There'll be minimal plot with a twist at least every 12 minutes and there'll be a cop out ending like "So what was the monster really and what was it doing?" "I'm sorry but that's classified". Just like Mission Impossible 3 and probably Lost.

Yay for JJ Abrams!

I have to admit though, it does look fun and I'm quite likely to go and see it

I'm assuming this breaks a law to do with acting disrespectfully towards the national religion or something (rather than a law that states no stuffed animals may be named after deities). Surely its obvious she didn't do it on purpose, wouldn't have done it if she had realised and hence it should result in a warning only.

...if I may state the case of Marx versus Lester, a sufferer of dyslexia and the unfortunate labelling of his toy Basset "Dog"...

The animation is awesome. The main question is do you have the time to animate everything else in the game at that level?

This reminds me of The Chub-Chubs.

Or the Wig-wigs from the Edge Chronicles books. If anyone has a clue what I'm talking about.

Right, I've now bumped the sprite up to 56 pixels tall, and yeah, it is a lot easier to work with. I ended up redrawing a lot, so her pose and shading have changed yet again. Here's an interesting progression so far...
       

Let me know what you think.