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Well, I've been working on a library-background recently, and even though it's not completed yet, I thought I'd post it here to get some pointers and tips on how to improve it as much as possible...
I'm mostly concerned about the perspective and the shading(Heh, I never learn anything...), but also about the choice of colours - Anything you react to that looks odd? Just tell me.  

Hehe, Malevolent Dragon - I like those. That's the kind of things I'd like to hear as well.

I just can't enough of the one in Sam & Max, where if you continue to use the pick up-command on some item that can't be picked up, Sam starts crying... Brilliant...

My humble contribution:
"I assume that was some kind of joke from your side, so I won't perform that action."

Great job, Neole - As usual.
Maybe her face looks a bit flat compared to the rest of her body, but otherwise it's awesome.

And btw, how's the cover coming along?

Well, I'm no huge Sierra-fan, but I can say that I love all three of the Gabriel Knight games. Just incredible.

Oh, very nice pictures - I can tell you've been doing this for some time...
And since I love manga/anime, I'm very pleased with the choice of style...
More big ears to the world.

Apart from the bad .jpg-quality, I can't find anything that looks really wrong. Maybe his pants looks a bit out of place, but I'm not sure...

Yep, I am.  
And thanks for the tip - We might just do that. It could be fun to play there sometime in the future...  

[Nightmares and Gameplay]

Hehe, good one, Ghormak!
Although I didn't really realize we were to post it here... Silly me.
Allright, here it is, then, not really inspired by anything, just sat down and wrote whatever came into my mind... Oh well...
Hope you like it.  



                                 

Nightmares and Gameplay

Slowly, and with the artistic grace of a daydreaming hippo, I reached for the mouse and made the final clicks. There. It was done. Deep within me I knew that a long period of stress and woe was over. I pressed “Save game” and then turned off the program.
My mind was still humming with the endless tune from the game - A silly, insignificant little melody, just made for someone to go humming on. But even though the tune was humming on inside my head, and my eyes were hurting from the intense staring at the screen, I felt like I needed to do something. Just something. With a few rapid clicks, I had opened up the file that said “dott.exe”, and the screen was once again, like so many other nights filled up with a colourful, cartoony screen, filled with the many joys of adventure gaming.
I didn't know why I continued staying up that night, despite my tiredness. I still don't know.
In the end, when I had both broken a piece of gum off the floor with a crowbar and frozen down a hamster, my eyes couldn't stand it any more. Neither could my brain. Nor my ears.
I shut down the computer and made a hasty exit to the bedroom.
It was empty. As usual. Now you might think that I'm about to write “A bit too empty”, but that would be wrong. It was absolutely, and completely ordinary empty. Whatever that means.
I faced the cold, white sheets on top of the bed, and sat down for while to think. The tune was still humming in my head. Humming like a crazy mockingbird on ecstasy. I just couldn't get the tune out of my head. Usually, it would stick around in my mind for a little while, but then leave after a few minutes for something else to appear instead.
But this time it didn't. No matter how much I kept trying to think of something else, it kept going on in the background. I started thinking. Was it because I finally finished the game? Was that the cause of this tuneful haunting?
No. No, it couldn't be like that. If it was like that, that meant I was stark raving mad, and I knew I wasn't that.
In a desperate attempt to shake both the thoughts and the music out of my head, I sprang into bed like an ostrich on a trampoline. Now I felt another feeling coming â€" Sleep.
For one of the first times in my life, I actually felt happy when my mind suddenly blurred away into a black daze.


The following morning, I woke up with a headache from hell â€" I had no idea why, but my guess was that the idle staring into the screen hadn't done me much good. I decided not to touch the computer, and just relax. After all, I had no deadline to follow, and no duty to fulfil.
I could just sit down in the couch, listening to music and watching TV.
Then, like a bug creeping up on your sleeve, that little tune came into my mind again. Like the sound of jungle drums, the tune just kept hammering on inside my head.
Now it was louder than ever. It was like someone had left the stereo on, with the volume on the maximum â€" Except that this time, I wasn't able to change it.  
I started to hold my hands against my ears, in pure panic, but it didn't help. I tried turning up the volume on the cd-player, but it was no match for the extremely loud tune that was playing inside my head. Now it wasn't a charming little melody that stuck in your head anymore. It was the most irritating sound I had ever heard in my life. I finally was able to make it stop by just screaming out loud in thin air â€" Then it magically vanished for a while. I was relieved, but my joy did not last very long. After a short walk down to the local pizzeria, ordering in some fast food to soothe my empty stomach â€"the tune came back.
This time on a lower volume, but more distorted than before.
I couldn't help myself, but I started humming to it, just to make it go away. I didn't realize at first that my humming was quite loud, and that people around me looked suspiciously at me.
One of the guests whispered something to the waiter, who than walked up to and asked me if I could please stop my humming. I told him that I was sorry â€" But that I couldn't stop it, that I had got the song stuck in my head and that I couldn't get it out.
He looked at me like a man does at someone who's just told them that their last name is Jellybottom, and that they run an Eel farm off the coast of California.
In the end, I felt too embarrassed to stay, and cancelled my pizza.
I ran home, both frightened and angry. Frightened of why the tune couldn't stop playing and of what it was doing to me, but at the same time very angry at it for ruining my day.
It was then that I suddenly saw what you might call the ultimate shock.
In front of the computer stood a small, colourful creature, staring at me. It wasn't as much that he was small, or that he was standing on my desk, but rather the fact that I had created him!
He was Horace, the main character of the game I had made. A small, almost oafish fellow, who gets lost in the forest and has to rely on what he see and hear to get out again.
Suddenly he pointed at me, and I swallowed quickly.
“Me?” I asked, with a rather stressed voice.
He nodded. I asked him what he wanted, but he didn't answer me. He just pointed at the turned-off computer behind him. I started walking closer, since it was in fact in front of that screen that the whole thing had started. I don't know why, but I reached out a hand and touched the screen, as if in a trance.
And in a second, my whole world turned into a blue-green blur of sounds and smells. I could see what I ate yesterday and my mother's lawnmower behind a great mountain of soap.
Horace jumped around in front of me, as if he wanted to lead the way to something, but I couldn't move. My legs were nailed down to the ground, and my muscles all had cramp.
Suddenly, that tune appeared once more. But this time not in my head. It came walking in front of me, in a visible shape. It wore a black robe, with a golden note on the side, as if to represent music of some sort.  
How I knew that was the song, I don't know â€" I just knew instantly that that was the tune that had haunted me all day. I tried to open my mouth to scream at it, but even my mouth was paralyzed.
It came closer, and in one move, both the tune and Horace had moved and now stood in front of me, with their palms on top of my head.
With one last chant they opened their eyes and everything turned white.

“Let there be death.”

Fire. Fire... Fire. Fire!
I woke up in my apartment, with a dunk of gasoline in my hand and with a half-blurred vision.
I heard people screaming outside my door, and I suddenly saw in front of me, my whole living room and kitchen on fire. In the middle of this burning inferno there was a sort of epicentre, where my computer stood, bursting out green flames. I took a last glance at it, before it exploded in a great cloud of smoke, and the firemen knocked down the door and dragged me out. The last things I heard before I fainted was from the steady voice of my neighbour mrs. Grahams:

“Oh, it must have been ‘im â€" He was always up all nights, working on some sort of project, he said. But I know that he was doing something else â€" Somethin' illegal! And now he's burned his own apartment down! Just yesterday, I saw someone leave this package outside his door, labelled C.J! I'm sure that's one of them new illegal drugs!”

MachineElf:
Well, I sing in a stoner/doom-metal band with some psykedelic and progressive influenses, called Fuzzed Out... (We have a homepage, but under our old name, Creepshow. We'll change it soon, though.)  Heh, it's so hard to place bands in a genre nowadays...
Me and the guitar-player also have a small sideproject, called The Last Sunday, where we play depressive and acoustic pop-songs... It's rather fun, actually.

Yeah, this looks really good - I'm downloading the demo right now, so I'll get back to you with some comments...

And I also recognize myself in not being ready to make a game... That's why I've put JTR on ice(And because I seriously screwed up the script and a lot of other stuff... Me stupid.) and started to make some smaller games to learn some more scripting before I start doing my serious project... Heh.
 

Ooh, this is really, really hard to decide... I don't think I've seen this many good entries in long time.
Plasticmans hand-drawn one was great, it had an original and cool style,
and both Evilspacefarts and Witchsmellers were awesome, but I cast my vote on Wanderlady - funniest idea, and curliest clouds.

Hehe, your friend is really evil then, is she? I mean, if she deserves horns...  
I'm glad you are looking forward to it. This is one of two smaller games I'm doing right now, besides my main project, so it shouldn't take too long. (I hope.)

Don't believe I've posted in this one before. Well, if I'm gonna post all of my music favourites, it would be long as hell, but here are some of them:

AC/DC
Alice Cooper
Anthrax
The Beatles
Beach Boys
Black Sabbath (Brilliant. My favourite band.)
Blind Guardian
Candlemass
The Clash
Clutch
The Damned
Dead Kennedys
Deep Purple
Dysdain
Electric Wizard (Ver' Slow and ver' heavy...)
Entombed
The Grand Opening
Hawkwind
The Hellacopters
Iron Maiden
In Flames
Kiss
Kyuss
Led Zeppelin
Megadeth
Metallica
Nazareth
Ozzy
Queens of The Stone Age
Queensrÿche("Operation: Mindcrime" = Genious.)
Ramones
Slayer
Volcanic

Hm, I suppose that was rather long too... Oh, well...  
As you can see, I'm mostly in to most kinds of metal, punk, and pop/rock from the 50's/60's.
The only thing I've never been able to appreciate is Techno and silly mainstream-pop. I don't listen that much to synth or hip-hop either, but I have respect for the musicians that perform it.  

Well, it just said that the page couldn't be displayed. I'll try again, though.

And also, a tiny update: (I'll be doing some more work on it later...)

I listened to some of the songs, and I like it a lot. "Coma" is my favourite.
Don't know what else to say, except that it sounds much, much better than what our band has done so far...  

Hehe, I haven't been able to comment on FT before, since it's been nearly impossible to find the game in any shop I visit, but yesterday, I did an amazing find in a Music/Film/Games-shop in Sundsvall.
I was just walking along, thinking "They probably don't have any adventure games here... Oh, where is the world coming to?" when I suddenly see the name "Sam & Max" in front of my eyes. I quickly grabbed the game to assure myself that I wasn't wrong. But I wasn't - Just seconds later I found both Full Throttle and The Dig there - So I bought all three for price of about 300 swedish crowns...  
Oh, total joy and bliss...

Sorry about this rather unimportant story, but I can now say that I'm pretty glad that they decided to cancel FT2 if they didn't think it would live up the first game, because I really, really like it.  A very good mix between action and adventure, I'd say.

GinnyW:
Heh, the thing on her hair is some supposed to be a reflection, although it may not look like it...

About the sprite:
I know about the feet, I realized that after posting it here... But thanks anyway!
I'm not sure I'd be capable to change the pose like that, but it's always worth try.  (The link doesn't work, though - I'd really like to read the post.)
And it's not supposed to be a whole finger sticking out, but if it looks like it is, I can remove that pixel... Hehe.

Noed:
Perhaps you are right - I did use one of my male sprites as a basic model, so she still has some of the maleness, I suppose...

Thanks - I'm glad you like it.

I don't want her to look more sinister, I'm pleased with her expression as it is... But thanks for the tip anyway!
Make lips fuller - I'll do that.

Yeah, the new character is supposed to be a bit cartoony, and I wasn't really aiming at perfect realism...  But I know you're right about the eyes, I have been told that so many times by my old teacher... I just seem to forget it when I do a new picture...


I also did this sprite - Which will be how she will look in the game.


Too bad I'm really bad at animating...

Well, apart from swedish and english, I know some german too, a result of four years of studies... Still, my most commonly used phrase in german in "Die Mädchen sonnt sich."...

Some swedish expressions that you just have to know:

"Mitt spel kommer att rocka stenhårt" = "My game will rock hard."
"Jag ska rapportera dig till en moderator!" = "I'll report you to a moderator!"
"Varför har du kalsongerna på huvudet?" = "Why do you have your underwear on your head?"
"Jag vill bli en pirat!" = "I wanna be a pirate!"
"Ja, det är jag - Djävulshönan!" = "Yes, it is I, the Devil Chicken!"

There, that should be enough for you to communicate freely...

Sorry, AGA - I forgot about Alien Rape Escape...  I was too intrigued by the cursor to even notice the interface...  

Just some minor changes(Eyes, hair, horn, lightened the shading...) , but she looks a bit better now. If I don't find any more errors, I think I'm gonna go with this version.


And also, as a small bonus, I did this one yesterday, as the total opposite of the Evil Woman-picture:


This one isn't for a game, though - I did it just for fun.