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The art itself - technique-wise - is awesome. I certainly can't see any problems with it. The colors and lines are clean and certainly seem to achieve the effect you're shooting for. Once I read that you were using your own hands as a reference, it did start to look to me (unfortunately) like a man's hands on a woman's body, but that's hard to correct, and probably just me thinking too hard about it. I certainly wouldn't have thought so unless told.

One thematic nitpick I do have is that she's holding the sword the wrong way. I studied Kendo for a fair number of years, and regardless of handedness,  when using Japanese blades (as the reference material is pretty obviously a katana) the left hand should always be gripping the pommel area of the hilt tightly, and the right hand holds the grip close to the handguard more lightly, like so:



The strength and 'chopping-power' of the sword is carried by the left arm, and gripped most tighly with the pinkie finger of the left hand (Which is why in disgrace, traditionally, members of the Japanese mafia have their left pinkies cut off). Even southpaws are taught to hold the sword in this manner, so someone who has some swordfighting knowledge is likely to pick up on this pretty quickly.

Even in wakigamae - the low stance where the blade is held horizontally to the side/behind the body, this is maintained:



Of course, as it's a piece of art, it's not like you need to be 100% accurate, but I thought I'd point it out.

Arboris - it's a dismal time for anyone on a contract. Everyone's cutting corners, and external resources are usually the first to go, unless you happen to be one of the unlucky in-house developers for product houses that are going the outsourcing route. People are really adhering to the old "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage these days, so things are getting tougher and tougher for the ever-changing IT business world. That's what screwed me over as an IT headhunter, ultimately.

Agreed, it looks awesome, Kastchey. I'd love to see this game built up further - the setting is really unique as adventure games go, and I could definitely see it being very well received.

And to keep on track, I'm adding a piece that I did a few days ago for a project I'm not sure will see the light of day, since I'm having way too much trouble with the backgrounds - incidentally planned for the current MAGS competition.


The F-191 "Minogame" powered EVA armor. It wasn't going to play a huge role in the game, but I designed the main character wearing one of these babies.

I've been putting a lot of thought into a story for the game, but I really need to focus on Kinky Island again.

I was going to suggest VNC as well, though it looks as though Leon has beaten me to it. I may have gotten your intention wrong, as I honestly have no idea what a 'dumby' computer is, but through using VNC, you can remotely access your desktop and control it (albeit with a little lag) from another computer on the network.

The largest benefit of this is that you can have a fully functional second computer with only the tower. All inputs are controlled remotely from your other workstation, so if you want a computer to do a lot of grind work without slowing down your game terminal, or whatever, it's a great solution to break up the load. Of course, it works quite handily as a remote server for your larger files as well.

Aye, I thought it was him, but for some reason when I went to check to be sure it wasn't loading from my cache, so I couldn't see it in his sig when I wrote the post originally. It is indeed Dualnames. And apologies to Dualnames for being forgetful as well.

And just to keep on topic with the thread, yes, I love the orange tones as well. Though, if you're going for 'old skool computer screen', Apple 2e Green is probably the most common choice. Regardless, as I said before, It's awesome as-is. I say no need to keep working on it, it looks fine.

Blake and the Seven?

I only noticed it myself because it's on someone's signature (I forget who, sorry). Honestly, I see no problem with the image the way you have. If you're concerned about doing something 100% original, I'd say you're pretty much SOL, because nearly any insignia you could likely come up with has probably already been done. Especially with the proliferation of Sci-Fi, the 'ring around a planet or planet analog' is nearly a universal concept these days.

Besides, the way you have it designed right now represents your name nearly perfectly, I'd say. I like the way you have it, and as long as you keep it with the 'fingers' outside the paw as you had originally designed it, I don't see an issue whatsoever.

You've done a good job on the Logo. Finalize it and use it, and stop worrying about other peoples' opinions so much.

The main issue that I would see with having the paw image display as a 'hole' in the planet image is that it would look like a ripoff of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy logo:



I do understand that the image is a slight bit lopsided with the 'fingers' of the paw extending outwards like that, but I don't really see any need to draw it in any further - looks just fine the way it is, in my opinion. Also, working with too many tones or transparencies, it'd take away the simplicity of the image, which can currently be represented in pure B/W tones and look just fine. My vote is to leave it as-is.

Congratulations, Ivy,

It's really great to see talented members of the community getting the recognition that they deserve. Your creativity is pretty obvious, and now you have a huge media whirlwind to prove it. I actually heard about this story a little while back, but didn't realize that it was you. Awesome.

So now it's your responsibility to keep the momentum going. Since you have some clout now, people are going to be keeping an eye on what you produce for a while, so let's hope that this newfound fame keeps working out well for you.

It's simple but effective.

The perspective in the room is off in a few places, but stylistically I don't really have much problem with it. I'd say your walls need a little bit more definition, as at the moment it's hard to tell where they separate - the pattern on the z-axis walls also don't really follow the direction of the wall. If you're making the images in Photoshop or the GIMP, I believe it's easy enough to skew them so that they fit your edges a little bit better.

The room could also use some more 'clutter' as it were. At the moment it seems really bare, and though it's functional, it's not very engaging. You might want to add a rug, perhaps, or something else on the shelf above the bed. Also it could use maybe some sort of foreground element to break up the bottom edge a bit. Aside from that, if you fix up the linear perspective a bit, it should be A-OK.

Here comes the color police again.

Hi Revan - The biggest problem you're looking at at the moment is a kinda messy color palette. You're using a lot of colors that you don't need to when you can be reusing. There are even two different tones in your pants I didn't even see until I started adjusting the palette just to find where everything was.


Yours, then my edit, for comparison

So I knocked a few unnecessary colors off of your sprite, and gave him a pretty standard top-down shade. It's far from amazing, and more reflects my style than your own perhaps, so feel free to take and leave whatever parts of the paintover don't seem to work for you.

I also edited a few features - made his head a little thinner (Sorry if you were going for a more bobble-headed sort of look, I'm always more focused on keeping anatomy relatively accurate). I think I've maintained most of the 'bedraggled' kind of look that you seemed to be going for, and by upping the contrast, and making more 'blocks' of color, the individual features come out a whole lot more.

The main issue is that you're trying to alias every line. You can actually achieve the look you're going for without increasing your color count by actually leaving some of the edges jagged. This isn't perfect, but I fiddled around with the image a bit and moved a few elements around. I had to completely redo the planet ring.


No Scanlines


With Scanlines

The top one without scanlines comes across as a touch more jagged, but with scanlines, I think it masks it rather well. The bottom edge of the ring could use a little more work, but this might give you an idea of the technique at least.

Right here, brother. I was working for a headhunting firm here in Japan for a year and a half doing corporate facing solution sales to the FMCG and pharmaceutical industries. The thing is, if you're a headhunter, your job is completely based on whether your clients are hiring or not. Eventually, the big heads upstairs decided downsizing was in order, and chopped the workforce by 30%. That was back in December.

It has given me the push needed to really actively search for work back in the gaming industry again, though, so though it's been a tough few months, I'm focusing on that silver lining. As a professional headhunter and a firsthand-witness of the recession, I'll tell you now that the current situation is grim - fewer companies are hiring, and those that are are very picky about who they take on, but as long as you keep your wits about you and keep on applying for jobs, and maintain momentum, work is there to be had.

Hey SpacePaw,

That's entirely up to you, I imagine. There's never been a rule saying that you aren't allowed to advertise the project that you're working on for a MAGS competition, though since it's a competition, sometimes it's more interesting if you play your cards close to the chest, as it were.

I've seen plenty of MAGS competition entries end up in the Completed Games section after the competitions have ended - I'm still doing some work to improve my last entry, so I haven't yet, but that's all - again - up to you.

Boyd: I'm fine with it.

Honestly, I'm kicking myself for wording it as 'unable to move'. I wonder if we could broaden the scope to include both ships and space stations, and not require that they be immobilized, but just to be unable to function normally (So can't move, life support systems failing, whatever)? Basically, I think if you can justify it, it's not a big deal.

I've been thinking, how difficult would it be to implement an 'If you liked this game, you'll also like...', or just a 'similar games' reference in the new games page? I think that it would help people find games that are of interest to them that they may not find through a word-based search.

Basically, my thought is to group games with a similar theme - medieval comedy with medieval comedy, sci-fi suspense with sci-fi suspense, etc. For example, someone who's played them both may draw a parallel to The Vacuum and 7 Days a Skeptic, since they're both sci-fi suspense thriller type games, but unless I knew about both, it'd be hard to know that one is similar to the other. It could help some less well-known games get a little more recognition.

I know that we already have games sortable by genre, but oftentimes people search for specific titles, and some cross-promotion could certainly help, I think. If not specific games, even a button to 'Find more Sci-Fi Horror titles', for example, may be handy. Does anyone agree with me that this might be a useful feature?

Max Dangerous and the Adventurers.

Thank you very much everyone for your support and interest in my remake of Red Flagg. It was a lot of work in a very short period of time, but it was all worth the effort. I've already given the next month's theme to Klaus, and hopefully everyone enjoys my upcoming MAGS theme. I really hope we get a few entries for the upcoming month, though I know a lot of you are really busy with your lives.

And to Nihilyst and Layabout for their kind comments - thank you very much. I'm really proud of the work I did on this game, and I certainly hope that Scid enjoys it as well, should he ever find and play it. Also, to Lord Hellfire: Great entry! You obviously put a lot of work into the 3D animation that went into the game, and it's certainly applaudable. I hope you'll participate in the next MAGS competition as well.

I intend to improve upon Red Flagg Redux as well, so keep an eye out for a deluxe version soon!

I think that the animation done by Kyrandiafan is great, and the off-perspective frames really don't matter, since they're displayed for such a short period of time - Kind of like skimping on unnecessary details on a character (unnecessary shading, etc) in a detailed movement animation.

However, I think you should keep on doing your own, Jakerpot. It's tempting to use the resources of people that have offered you assistance on these threads, but if you keep on just using whatever's handed to you, you won't progress as an artist yourself. I noticed that you used the bookshelf that I created in my short animated tutorial pixel for pixel. It's not a terrible slight on me or anything like that - I created it basically for you, but I did it to show you how to do it - not to give you something to use and move on.

I'd like to see what it is that you've done so far - learn from all of these very useful and informative responses that you've been getting, and make something that you yourself can be proud of. I believe you have a lot of potential to be very talented - you did a great job with the book faces, and much of the other room elements you've made, so you shouldn't be riding on the coattails of other artists.

Now, that said, maybe Kyrandiafan's happy to have you just take the sprite and use it - but make sure of that before you just take it. I still think you should try your own, though. You'll be surprised how much you learn by studying and trying to recreate, instead of just taking and using.

Time spent improving your game is never time wasted. A rotating door, if you intend to have proper perspective maintained in the room, is going to be far more complicated than one that slides down into the floor. If you don't want to put in the hard work, then your best bet is to go with using the different shelf fronts as a guideline, and removing them one-by-one from the top down, and changing the 'books'. It shouldn't take too much time, and will achieve the look you're going for.

The 'slide back into the wall and off to one side' idea works well, as would (in your current perspective), just sliding off to one side.

When you're a one man show, you really need to juggle all aspects - I wouldn't call any one of programming, designing, art or QA any more important than any other. They're all essential to creating a good gaming experience, and you should put as much effort as you can afford into each and every one of them if you really want to make a good product. I wouldn't hold your breath on finding someone else to do your animating for you - it's one of the hardest parts of the art process and very time consuming, but at the same time rewarding.

But it all comes down to 'how much of yourself are you really willing to invest in this project?'. Decide what level of quality you want in all of these, and what you're willing to sacrifice. As they say - 'if you want something done right, do it yourself'.