Random sicko

Shadowman

Just lately, in the few hours between going to bed and actually falling asleep, I’ve been reading a series of books by Charlie Higson, a well-known UK writer and comedian (The Fast Show and others). This particular series starts with the first instalment “The Enemy”, the premise for which is basically that everyone on earth over the age of 14 becomes afflicted with a mystery illness that devastates the body and the mind.

The only people unafflicted are kids younger than 14. With all adults horribly diseased and insane, and feel a little better if they catch and eat some kids, civilisation crumbles quickly.

So far, the three books are: The Enemy, The Dead and The Fear, with the next instalment The Sacrifice due for a UK release in September.

It seems to be written for mid teens, kind of like if Harry Potter was zombie horror, but it’s absolutely compelling reading for anyone (though I’m not sure it’d be a good bedtime story for toddlers.. just saying).

Anyway! The reason I’m telling you all this is because I was inspired to do a few drawings from the third book (The Fear) in what Charlie recently announced would be a seven book series.

I’ve used Autodesk Sketchbook for all of these, and each took roughly an hour. If you are squeamish, these may be the first step in conquering your fear. You’re welcome.

The Collector

St. George

Shadowman again. Excellent character.

Dashkin Progress

Last month, Dashkin was put on hold in an effort to continue getting those Kickstarter rewards out. Earlier this week however, we made some more progress on the game itself. I know I’m being too hard on poor old Bitey, but for some time I’ve been concerned that it feels somewhat repetitive. So while we’re aware of the dangers of “feature creep” we’ve been discussing one or two additions to avoid making a boring “dash-mash” game that’s too much of the same thing. We’re not giving anything away just yet but we think it’ll make a better game without causing much more delay.

The Dashkin Facebook page now has over 5000 subscribers! Check it out for the latest updates and screenshots. Isn’t that what you want?

BCA FX enters Month 7

The BiteyCastle Academy FX course continues to grow, now in its 7th month with over 260 members. Interested in joining? Sign up HERE and if you bring some friends with you, you can get free access. Conditions apply and details are in the course forum.

Designs for a serpentine fire style

Kickstarter Rewards

Three exclusive Dashkin wallpapers have been sent as rewards to all our beloved Kickstarter backers. The high resolution wallpapers are currently only for those who pledged to our campaign, but here’s a low res thumbnail at which you’re welcome to squint. At some point in the future (probably to coincide with the game’s release) this, and other goodies, will be available to anyone who plays the game.

Wallpaper #3

Drop me a comment below! What would you like to see at the next update?

oh look, here’s 2012! First I wanna say thank you for the outpouring of support and encouragement since my heart surgery. The past couple of months of recovery has not been difficult. Sure there’s been the pain of a split sternum, but I actually feel like I’ve got off very lightly, as if escaping some kind of punishment. I guess that’s mostly because I sit in a chair drawing pictures for a living, and I can do that whatever the weather, whatever my health.

FX

The FX course is doing well with 217 members. If you want to learn 2D FX animation, you can join us at any time for immediate access. Check out the course page for info on how it works, what you can learn for a measly 85 cents a day and of course, how to sign up.

All course participants start at Week 1, with a new article/lesson coming every week thereafter. I plan on continuing this course until my brain dries out, so there’s plenty of content to keep you going. Here’s part of a splash animation lecture from the course:

Work

I’ve been working on a lot of things. Sometimes I think I have my schedule under control when suddenly, in the shower or drifting off to sleep at 3am my eyes will snap open as I’m reminded of another deadline that’s looming. I work up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, so my working week consists of about 14 ordinary work days. Lately I’ve spent a lot of time working on the BCA FX course, maintaining the site and being active on the BCA FX forum. Each week’s lesson takes between 2 and 4 days to write and prepare.

On top of that I have two freelance commitments, together taking up about 7 more days. The rest of my time is spent working on Dashkin’s rewards and catching up on the game art. Speaking of which, here’s the first of the Kickstarter Dashkin wallpapers. The high-res versions of these are exclusively for our backers. If you’re one of them, all three of these new images will be completed very soon and delivered to your inbox in glorious MD (Massive Definition).

The main Dashkin focus right now is the Kickstarter rewards and the art for those. This includes wallpapers, posters, postcards and collector cards. The sketchbooks are still under construction but I intend on having the pages finalised and sent to the printers before February turns up.

Unfortunately a BiteyCastle holiday card wasn’t squeezed into the schedule this year, so what I started in October 2010 may finally see the light of day in December 2012.

My heart surgery’s over. It was just 19 days ago that I was on a table with my chest opened up to the eyes and fingers of surgeons but here I am, back at the computer with a mechanical part ticking away inside. I feel surprisingly normal, though it will take a while for my arms to be properly useful again. Right now they’re only good for drawing and typing (and Skyrim). In other words, I’m well and truly back to work and will be doing little else for at least 6-8 weeks.

Here are a few things about my experience that I won’t easily forget. If you’re easily scared, please read on.

Images

I had horrifying visions and dreams in hospital. Mostly whenever I closed my eyes I had flashes of decaying faces with terrified expressions, or extreme close-ups of open, dead eyes or ruptured skin. Occasionally something beautiful but oddly disturbing would play. One of these was a sheet of floral fabric billowing slowly in bright sunlight, but a hellish choral soundtrack gave the scene a nightmarish ambience that I’ll remember for a long time.

These were always slow and clear, as if 1000 fps in HD. Just a series of slow motion scenes that sat behind my eyes, waiting for me to blink or doze.

My guess is that the drugs had something to do with this, but they weren’t nightmares and I never woke in fright. Even when I dreamed that I woke in a mass grave, my own face tightly surrounded by blood-drenched soil and other dead faces.

Even though I haven’t painted in many years, I find myself inspired to create a series of paintings, based on these images which are still vivid in my head.

ICU

The ICU staff were incredible, though I was generally uncomfortable and in quite some pain. There were tubes and needles hanging out of my arms, chest and neck. There were monitors and cables all over me so I could barely turn my head without pulling some device across the bed and setting off an alarm. My room in ICU had no windows, no TV, not even a picture on the wall. After 3 days I was ready to risk injury and punch through one of those walls to get out. Without my visitors (Jeanette, Mum, Dad) walking into the room every day with their familiar smiles and normal clothes, I would probably have started flinging food and singing loud, angry songs like some insane prisoner.

The nurses in ICU told me they had always referred to my room as the sensory deprivation chamber. Thankfully, once out in the ward, I had more freedom and I did a lot of walking.

Night walks

My imagination has a life of its own but I’m not easily frightened. Even as a little kid, I was more fascinated than scared of what might be lurking in the dark. I always considered myself the scary one, rather than the one who’s scared.

In hospital though, I did something I never thought I’d do. A couple of nights, unable to sleep, I wandered alone through that huge maze of a hospital between 2 – 4am. The corridors, some of them easily 100 metres long were dark and empty, lit only at the ends.

Wandering out of my own ward, I felt invisible as I passed the nurses stations. The one or two nurses on each station peered into charts, or computer monitors and didn’t see me pass. I passed a security guard in one of the wide corridors and he didn’t even look me in the eye. I felt like a ghost as I wandered into areas of the hospital I shouldn’t have, all the dark doorways along the way gaping at me as I passed; the tiny red and green lights of monitoring devices sparkling within, sometimes the sound of a rattling breath, rising and falling, or the hot, heavy smell of a person who’s been in bed for too long.

All this time, I was wearing a wireless monitor that sent my vital signs to the nurses station. I was told those monitors only have a range of 30-50 metres but as far as I know, I set off no alarms on my long night walks.

The Prisoner

Just down the hall from me in the same ward, two policemen sat guarding a room, drinking coffee and reading books. “Just like the movies, huh?” I quipped as I passed, and they both laughed. They were guarding a prisoner who they said had survived being stabbed in prison and was recovering from the surgery. The next day I saw them walking him in chains. The guy was monstrously tall. Easily 7 feet. I’d love to have made some witty remark to him but in my fragile state, feared being lunged at by a proper criminal, even if he was chained up.

Back to work

I worked hard to convince the doctors I was ready to go home. They wanted to keep me in for 9, even 10 days but thanks to all my walking and “enthusiastic” recovery, they allowed me to go home on the 7th day after surgery.

So here I am! It will be approximately 3 months before I can draw a longbow, dig a hole or climb a tree. Work-wise though, I’m almost back at full speed, ready to finish Dashkin and finalise the Kickstarter rewards. I’m extremely grateful for the patience of those waiting on their stuff, and touched by all the messages of support from people I know and even people I don’t.

If we all survive the apocalypse in 2012, I plan on making it a big year for BiteyCastle and Brackenwood.

The BiteyCastle Academy 2D FX animation course is now open! The place is all warmed up with almost 140 members (update: 300), throwing back tankards of piping hot secret knowledge nectar and churning out their effects assignments.

It’s $24/month for a course that animators would elsewhere pay through the nose. In fact, if you’re a passionate animator, you may have indeed paid big $$$ for a workshop that, I have no doubt, you wished went for longer.

For $6 a week (!!) at BCA FX , here’s what you get in your first month alone; bearing in mind that each of these articles is packed with instruction, illustrations, examples and videos and several assignments to choose from.

 By month 2, you’ll be ready for something a little more advanced with 5. Water Ripples, 6. Flag Motion, 7. Impact Dust, 8. Droplet Splash. On top of all this, of course, you get access to the BCA FX forum where animators of all experience levels are helping one another, sharing their work, reference links and software and animation expertise.

Incidentally, you may remember Shape, the big fella from hitchHiker 2. He dropped in a couple of days ago and did a guest lecture, belting out this quick 12-minute dust animation demo.

WLM

In case you were wondering, to turn BiteyCastle Academy into a membership site I installed a WordPress plugin called WishList Member. Being a plugin, it’s incredibly easy to set up and if you’re interested in creating a coaching or tutorial site, I cannot recommend it highly enough. On top of that, the technical support and training videos are better than anything I’ve ever dealt with. Thanks Ryan Allen for putting me onto it.

Now available at Newgrounds!

Bitey Shirts

The Brackenwood shirts are back up in a range of sizes, colours and designs. Check em out on the NG Store, thanks to the hard work of those excellent people at Newgrounds.

Dashkin is coming along. When I return from my little adventure we’ll apply some finishing touches and get the beta out there for testing. In the meantime, here are our Kickstarter backer credits. If you’re one of these people, check to see that we’ve spelled you correctly. If there’s any problem, please drop us a line through Kickstarter so we can fix it ASAP.

 

 (btw, yellow names are those backers who chose no reward)

The other rewards are slowly coming together. Plushes are packaged up ready for post, the BCA FX Course is in full swing, the prints and digital rewards are on their way. Thanks for your patience and again for your fantastic support.

Here’s something I did almost a year ago (Oct 2010) but somehow forgot to mention here. I guess it’s because it was all very hush-hush at the time, but Dragon Age: Legends has been played by a zillion people on Facebook, and was one of the first games on Google+, so I guess it’s safe. From memory, after the storyboard was approved, the animation took me 48 days.

I was only given a loose description of events and characters to adhere to, so I had free rein to do my thing. Using ToonBoom software I designed, storyboarded and animated everything from scratch. The sound was done by EA’s audio contractor. Hope you like(d) it!

When it was released, one particularly violent scene was cut out. This is the uncut version complete with all the gore of flying organs and bone shards.

edit – thank you everyone for the wishes! I feel like I’m already in a room up to my neck in flowers and cards.

Short version - I was told today that I need to have open-heart surgery as a matter of priority, which means in the next couple of weeks. Yeah I know, it sounds like a joke and I kinda wish it was. I’ll be in hospital for a week and the recovery process will take 3 months but I could be back on the computer as early as 4-6 weeks after surgery. I will be preparing enough content for the BCA FX course to auto-release while I’m out of action, so that’s going ahead as normal.

I’ll do my best to get the other Kickstarter rewards out but chances are that shipments for physical rewards will be delayed by 6-8 weeks. I’m really sorry about this but I’ll do what I can before the big day.

That’s the gist of it. For a longer version, read on..

How?

OK so I was born with a faulty aortic valve that hindered the proper flow of blood through the heart. No big deal really, heart murmurs are quite common and I had an active childhood. When I was about 14 my chest tightened up, vision clouded over and I collapsed on the sports field at school. To cut that story short, I underwent surgery to push the faulty valve aside (effectively destroying it), allowing blood to move through the heart a bit better. That surgery was done entirely via a small incision in the main artery above my right leg.

That fixed things in a way, but throughout my life at the peak of exertion my heart would tell me when to back off, and I did. Even so, I’ve always stayed in shape, been very fit & active, competed in martial arts tournaments, loved walking, running, playing squash, climbing, hitting and throwing stuff. Even 3 years ago I was at the gym 3 times a week and in pretty good shape.

However, in the past couple of years there’s been sharp decline in my cardiovascular system. It’s at the stage now where I can’t even walk 20 metres on flat ground without stopping to recover for 10-20 seconds. Anyone who saw me at ComicCon last year might have noticed that instead of marching briskly around from booth to panel to pub to hotel, I was frequently pausing for breaks. You know something’s wrong when octogenarians surge past you in the street.

Today the cardio specialist at the local hospital showed me the differences between my heart and a perfectly healthy one. He carefully explained how my aortic valve (the ruined one) is now all crumpled, complicating the flow of blood. After walking for 30 sec there’s not enough oxygenated blood being distributed around my body and I get an overwhelming feeling of fatigue and that tightness in the chest from so long ago.

Anyway the long and short is that they’re going to split me down the middle and replace the shitty valve with an artificial one. Blood naturally sticks to metal bits so I’ll be on blood-thinning medication for the rest of my life. The upside is that after recovery and rehabilitation I’ll finally be able to run, hike and cycle again! That’s something I’m really looking forward to. Anyone for ComicCon 2012?

It took 3 weeks but BiteyCastle survived its enhancement surgery and is once again fully functional. The changes were entirely under the hood so there’ll be very little, if any noticeable difference for visitors. The main problem was outdated system components and redundant software so there was an increasing number of errors and only a matter of time before it died like a rockstar choking on its own vomit.

Now then, we’re getting ready for the Fifth of September when the BiteyCastle Academy FX Course opens its doors. Thanks to the success of the Kickstarter campaign, the FX course will be off to an explosive start with 110 members. They’re the quick-fingered folk who made that $39 pledge to be first to get their spoons into the golden nectar of FX knowledge sweetness.

If you missed out on pledging for the BCA FX course reward, don’t worry. Space is not limited. The course officially begins in September and anyone can subscribe, but you should know: the course assumes some knowledge of basic animation concepts. You may feel a little left behind if you’ve never picked up a pencil or tried to animate.

Brace yourself! September 5th is the day we’re aiming for.

This site is currently being overhauled so you may see missing bits, some slow loading times, etc. When it’s complete, you’ll see a few changes, but best of all I’ll teach you FX animation!

In the works there’s an ongoing 2D FX Animation Course, but for Kickstarter backers, there’s a special deal. There’s only 2 days left in the campaign so rush over HERE to check out the details.

And now the personal explanation:

BiteyCastle will be undergoing some maintenance over the next few days, throughout which the site may be down intermittently or loading slowly. When we’re done, it’ll be extra super fantastic and there’ll be a few new additions that will ripple your face with awespasms.

Be assured that in true Bitey style, the Dashkin game has lost no momentum and the new Kickstarter backer rewards will coincide with the new stuff on this site when we return.

You can’t wait but you must!
In the meantime, I’ll post updates as regularly as possible on Twitter and Google+

I was recently given an opportunity by Wizards of the Coast to come up with my own ideas for a DnD-themed webcomic. I’m not sure exactly what their plans are for this new section but it appears they’re simply getting a bunch of artists together and gauging which makes an impact. Here is the full list of artists and comics published so far.

The idea I came up with is a small group of wannabe heroes who sit in a tavern watching adventurers coming and going. They’re basically dumb, unskilled villagers who dream of glory but have no idea where life is leading them. The strip is called “Life at the Top”, though I neglected to incorporate the title on my pages.

My first two pages introduce two of the main characters (a gnome and a dragonborn), setting up their relationship and personalities. Each page is a simple standalone gag but if this continues, I’d introduce their peers and a few storylines.

For what the commission called, I spent far too long on these (about three days each). As you can see, they ended up more like graphic novel pages than syndicated strips. Time will tell what comes of it (if anything) but as comics were my first love, I really enjoyed doing these and hope something happens. In the meantime, you can help out by using the Tweet and Like buttons at the bottom of those pages.