Stuart Maxwell, uber-artist at Relic was recently featured on ‘Will Work for Games’ on G4 where he talks about the job of being an effects artist in video games.
StuMax is an awesome artist, talented hacky-sack kicker and all-around incredible human being – it’s great seeing him get some time in the spotlight.
I did an interview with Indie Game News on Ray Ardent: Science Ninja and my decision to go indie.
You can check it out here.
Ray Ardent is up for bidding on flashgamelicense.com and I was given some very good advice from a total stranger. PJ Baron was nice enough to play Ray, and give me some very valuable feedback.
The crew at Flash Game License has been doing some research on the importance of the thumbnail image. It’s that little picture that tempts you to play the game.
Before seeing the results of the research, I believed that a descriptive image would be the best bet – show people what the game looks like.
The research that Flash Game License had done showed that games with a better quality thumbnail image regularly received more money from sponsors, received better editor reviews and were visited much more frequently. The research also showed that ‘screenshot’ thumbnails didn’t perform as well as a dedicated original thumbnail image.
With PJ’s advice and the research from Flash Game License in mind, I set off to redo Ray Ardent’s thumbnail image.
I’m really happy with how the reworked thumbnail worked out – I somehow managed to capture the retro/pulp feel that I’m going for with Ray.
Looking at these now, it’s almost silly that I thought that a screenshot would be sufficient. It’s the little things that matter people.
“The best education in film is to make one.”
– Stanley Kubrick
On Dec 1st, 2009, I hadn’t written a line of code since high school, way back in 1992. High School computer programming was done in BASIC and was taught by the drama instructor. It wasn’t exactly a solid programming foundation.
I knew that 2010 was the year I would go full time with Ninja Robot Dinosaur, making Flash games on my own. But without the ability to program, there wasn’t a lot I could do.
I needed to learn how to program Flash games – and fast.
Continue reading “AS3 Boot Camp – Learn to program Flash games in 30 days”
