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Hey all, haven't posted in a while and kinda felt like sharing something I "actually" do.

These are some comics I did for a humour newspaper, and it was my first time trying anything with serial plot and characters.Ã,  I got to 10 episodes, which was pretty exciting.Ã,  It's called "Casa," and it's about student life in the same way that Terminator II was about a boy looking for a father figure.

Don't worry, the art gets better as you go.Ã,  Enjoy!Ã, 



I introduced the prospector ghost for some spunk.Ã,  It quickly escalated.



Wanton destruction, when used properly, is comedic "gold."



A personal favourite for some reason.



This is the last appearance of the ghost.Ã,  Don't mourn him too much, he was already dead to me.



Check out the viagra ad in panel 5.



Inspired by a true story.Ã,  Kind of.



Now look back at what Steve says in the first panel.Ã,  Oddly prophetic, eh? :-,



Aww, Steve's so cute when he's bitter, i.e. always.



No idea where this one came from.Ã,  Maybe because my family was visiting that week.



A good solid finish.Ã,  I kinda like how the last words of the series are "I hate you."

I hope some of you managed to read through all those...you've just been exposed to a whole lot of awesome.Ã,  Uh, actually...you might want to get tested for awesome, just in case.Ã,  Play it safe, kids!

[The Ivy]

Hello everyone, my game Spooks is now completed and ready to play!Ã, 

What started out as a little MAGS game quickly took on an afterlife of its own, becoming an 8-month project and a totally original medium-length adventure.Ã,  Thanks to the support of everyone on the forums, I didn't give up after a hard drive crash and a few other setbacks along the way.Ã,  This is my first game, so I hope you all enjoy it.Ã, 

In the Land of the Dead, a day at the Carnage-Val usually means games, rides, and putting up with the rather defective employees.Ã,  However, for a little ghoul named Mortia, things are about to take a dive out of the ordinary.Ã,  When a smooth-talking skeleton convinces her to try a game of darts, she wins the most amazing prize she's ever seen: a live goldfish.

The moment before he disappears mysteriously, the skeleton tells Mortia that her fish won't stay "alive" for long if she doesn't help him.Ã,  So, naturally, Mortia names her new companion "Spooks" and sets out to find him someplace safe to be "alive," although she has no idea what that word means.Ã,  Little does she know that her task will take her from the Land of the Dead to places even more bizarre.

Here are some of the haunts in the Land of the Dead:





Features:

• Innovative use of colour (you'll see)
• A classic point-and-click experience
• A hilariously defective cast of characters
• Hours of gameplay
• Death
• Destruction
• Goldfish

Design, art, and writing by me, The Ivy.

Music and sound effects by The Scorposer

Scripting, debugging, and now hosting provided by the illustrious Vince Twelve.

Word to my beta testers Erenan, Fawfulhasfury, Mordalles, SteveMcCrea, and Venus.

Download Spooks now! (.rar)

Mirror (.zip)

Visit the Games Page!

Check out Vince Twelve's website: http://games.thexiis.com

Thanks once again to the AGS community, I couldn't have done it without you.Ã,  Enjoy, I really look forward to hearing what you have to say about the game.Ã, 

Cheers,

~The Ivy~

Psst...check out a game-related comic here.

I was just curious about whether any of you would publish a game with your real name, first and last, in the credits.  I've seen a few people do this, but lots of others just stick with their forum names. 

A big part of the whole internet safety thing is not disclosing personal information, but are names such a big deal?  Other than being google-able, can someone really do you harm if they know your name and happen to live in your area?  Also, what if you wanted to prove to someone that the game was yours?

Hey all!

I'm glad to say I've been able to work on "Spooks" again, after a few setbacks and a particularly evil bout of exams.Ã,  This is part of the background for an underwater scene:





It's supposed to look like a cave, but I'm out of ideas for how to improve it.Ã,  I feel like I need to add a few more shades of blue or something to the back wall to add "depth," or maybe try a different shading technique.Ã,  Any thoughts?Ã,  This is the last background I need to finish for the game.Ã, 

Oh, and just in case you're confused, that red thing is a kind of portal.  Portals are very colourful, evidently.

[Edit 2/7/06]

Edit 2/7/06: Many thanks to those of you who replied quickly about the beta testing.Ã,  I've now got my crack team assembled to whip this game into playing shape.Ã,  If everything goes according to plan, everything should be wrapped up within the next five days or so.Ã,  Soon, folks! :)Ã, 

Old stuff: Okay loyal Spooks fans, I've got some good news for you!

After some pretty big setbacks, I'm happy to report that I'm now putting the final touches on this game.Ã,  I might have abandoned the whole thing after my hard drive crashed, but the enthusiasm and support I saw in these forums made me want to keep going.Ã,  Hey, you guys saved "Spooks" before you ever played the game.Ã, 

I re-did a lot of the old graphics to make the game work better, and I've lengthened the game from "MAGS" to medium-length.Ã,  The whole adventure should now take you several hours to complete, as you explore rooms from the Land of the Dead to places even more bizarre.Ã, 

"Okay, Ms. The Ivy, I think I remember this game, but what's it about again?"

Glad you asked.

You play as Mortia, a little ghoul girl with a wicked sense of humour.Ã,  While spending the day at the "Carnage-Val," an amusement park in the Land of the Dead, she wins a live goldfish in a game of darts.Ã,  At any normal carnival,Ã,  this would be no big deal.Ã,  However, this is the Land of the Dead, where there hasn't been a living creature since, well, an eternity.

Mortia has no idea what the word "alive" means.Ã,  However, she learns that if she doesn't find her goldfish a safe place to be "alive," and soon, it will die.Ã,  Apparently, this is rather unpleasant.Ã, 

So, she names her new pet "Spooks" and sets out to explore the rest of the fairgrounds for a way to save him.Ã,  She must gather clues from the many weird and wild characters she meets, even if this means heckling a cyclops, taking advice from a fallen angel, or bargaining with a 3-headed invisible monster.

Can she put it all together and discover a way to someplace "alive?"Ã,  Sounds like one Spooky adventure.

The game features 6 original (and catchy!) MIDI tracks by The Scorposer, with scripting provided by the marvellous Vince Twelve.

Spooky screenies!





obligatory w00t: w00t!

~The Ivy~

["Miniatures."]

Cheers, everyone!

The subject of this Background Blitz is "Miniatures."Ã,  The only rule is that the background's features must be made of everyday objects, as seen by someone very small...let's say, 6 inches/30 cm tall.Ã,  Imagine a dollhouse room where a thimble becomes a vase, a teacup becomes a bathtub, a handkerchief becomes a hammock, etc.

No restrictions on size or resolution, but let's say that at least 3 items in the room must be normal-things-turned-miniature.
The room doesn't necessarily have to be indoors, either.

Good luck!

Edit:Ã,  Darn, and here I thought I was being so original.Ã,  :PÃ,  Okay, let's make this a little different.Ã,  Instead of making a minature room, try making a giant's room.Ã,  My mind keeps going to Bugs Bunny cartoons, where the giant would use a pine tree as a toothbrush or something like that.Ã,  Hopefully this topic hasn't been done too...



Okay that was just fun to draw 

Hello everyone, thanks to a suggestion by plebeo, I put together this little tutorial on how I did my "Adelaide" sprite.

I don't use anything fancy to create my sprites.Ã,  Everything I do is made in Microsoft Paint.
For this character, I just started drawing with colours I thought suited the character.Ã,  The proportions are way off, but you have to have a starting point.Ã,  This is my first attempt:



Once I had the basic idea (far left), I moved a few pixels around to make her look more realistic.Ã,  I made her arms straighter and her chest higher, for example.Ã,  I also added some basic shading.Ã,  For this, I used 3 similar shades of brown: one light, one medium, and one dark.

I tried to imagine the light source coming from the upper right, and used the light brown colour to "highlight" where the light would hit.Ã,  This was mostly guesswork (I fix it later on), but you can see highlights on the chest and right sides of the legs.Ã, 

The shadows are in the areas opposite the highlights, where something would cast a shadow.Ã,  These appear mostly under the chest and on the left side of the legs.Ã,  You can see I also did a bit of shading on the hat and arms (2 shades of blue).

In the third image, I added her long hair and a few other props, like the scarf and the strap from her quiver.Ã,  I also added some boots.Ã,  Some people find shoes difficult to draw, but just remember that if someone is facing you, their feet aren't pointing straight towards you or to one side.Ã,  They rest naturally at a 45 degree angle, with the heels closer together.Ã,  A mirror is a really valuable tool as you're drawing.



From the front view of my character I constructed this side view.Ã,  The red lines show how I lined up important body features, i.e. the soles of the feet, the knees, the bottom of the waist, the neck, and the top of the head.Ã,  You may notice that the eyes and ears don't match up exactly, but I liked them the way they were.Ã,  It's not really too noticeable, right?Ã, 

The other pictures show little tweaks to the sprite.Ã,  I made her feet bigger, gave her a rounder behind, added her quiver, and added her scarf and long hair.Ã,  I did the highlights and shadows the same way as before, with the light source at the upper right.



The back view was made by painting over the front view.Ã,  I just used the hair colour over her face and changed the shadows on her pelvis to look like a back view.Ã,  I had trouble with the shadows and highlights on this view, so I did a lot of experimenting and finally got something I was satisfied with.Ã,  I added the same props as before, and changed her feet to look like they were pointing away.Ã,  The shading on her hair is minimal at this point, just some darker yellow wavy lines.



So now I had a decent sprite, one I had worked quite a few hours on, and no idea what to do next.Ã,  One problem I noticed was that the colours were too bright (too saturated), and that her face had no expression.Ã,  Plus, the colour of her skin made it blend into her hair.Ã,  I also didn't like the look of the scarf, or the bright yellow hair.

I tried to make a decent face by using several shades of the skin colour, but as you can see the results ranged from mediocre to downright ugly.Ã,  :PÃ,  Frustrated, I gave up on the sprite for a while and worked on other parts of my game.

A week or two ago I decided I'd take another swing at this character, saving along the way so I wouldn't be "scared" of making it worse.Ã,  Pixel art is all about making mistakes.Ã,  One of the first things I did was change the colour of her sleeves, since the only reason I'd made them blue was to make it easier to animate.Ã,  I thought that you'd be able to see them swinging better in the walkcycle, but eventually I realized good ol' shading will accomplish that just fine.Ã,  I also darkened the pants, and got rid of that pesky scarf.Ã,  The result was this:



You may notice the shading is a lot different.Ã,  This is because not all rooms have a light source at the upper left.Ã,  It's a lot easier to pretend the light source is right overhead, not to mention more versatile.Ã,  Thus, the highlights on her torso became blobs on her upper chest and stomach, and as lines on the outsides of her arms.Ã,  On her pants they are patches on her thighs and lower legs.Ã,  The shadows wentÃ,  inside her arms, and under her chest, knees, and the edge of her shirt.

The face problem was solved by using pinker tones, and not being afraid to use one very dark colour to do the shadows.Ã,  In all there are 4 shades of pink for her skin.

At this point I knew I had done as much as I could on my own.Ã,  I offered it up for comments and critiques in the Critic's Lounge, and you can read the thread here.Ã,  Thanks to many helpful observations and paintovers, "Adelaide" was finally done:



Hopefully you found this tutorial helpful, and don't be afraid to PM me with any questions or comments.

Cheers!

~*~The Ivy~*~

Hey all, here's a sprite for my game:





Her name is Adelaide, and she lives alone in the wild.  Hence, her clothes are supposed to look like animal skins and furs (with the exception of her hat, unless she killed a muppet). 

Any crits are welcome, although I'd appreciate help making her hair less "yellow" and more "blonde."  Also, I'm not quite happy with the front view of her face.  I kind of want her to be wearing a scarf the same colour as her hat, but I haven't found a way of drawing one that I'm satisfied with.

Thanks!

Hey guys.Ã,  Here's a walkcycle for "Jessie" that I've come up with:







I know the gif quality isn't the best...is there a better way to save little animations like this?

As for the sprite, I'm hung up on how to animate her hair.Ã,  I know it needs some little flippy motions when she steps, but I'm not sure when.Ã,  Any and all crits welcome!

Hey guys, here's a character from the game I'm working on.Ã,  Her name is Jessie and she's an angsty little punk.Ã, 





I know the shading leaves a bit to be desired, but I think I have her "personality" captured pretty accurately.Ã,  She's supposed to look about 18 years old, and if it's at all relevant, she's a fashion design student.

Hello everyone!

Here's a background I've been working on for a little while, lovingly rendered in 256-colour glory.Ã,  It's supposed to be a cafe on a street corner, with an art gallery in the background and some mountains on the horizon.Ã, 



Aaaaand a little bigger:



I can't seem to get the highlights on the glass right, so I'd appreciate any C&C on that.Ã,  The textures of the sidewalk, grass, etc. aren't really to my liking, but I'm not sure what to add to them.Ã,  I haven't had much luck with the shadows yet either.

I suppose I should make some comment about this being my first post, but instead I think I'll go celebrate with a bowl of ice cream.

By the way, I've been reading these forums for a while, and I know there are some amazing artists among you.Ã,  Thanks in advance for your help!