William Thorup

Illustrator, Motion Graphics Designer, Animator, and VFX Artist

Category: BitJag

Atari Jaguar – Cover Art & Packaging for Last Strike
With customers on the verge of finally getting their copies of Last Strike, I thought I would do a post on a bit of the background on how the packaging for this great piece of Atari Jaguar homebrew came together.

Digging through 3 years of emails, it’s interesting to see how much you tend to forget on these long term projects. My involvement with Last Strike started with helping Albert at AtariAge in 2018 with some banner artwork for his booth for Portland Retro Gaming expo.

I have actually never see these booths in person, and with the lockdowns, that chance may not come any time soon. Based on pictures posted by AtariAge though, it’s an honor to have some of this quick graphic design work show up at conventions where thousands of people get to see it. Along with the banner, I had put together a flyer that was available for pick up by potential AtariAge customers. Last Strike was printed back-to-back with the flyer for BitJag’s Crescent Memories game. The sprite artwork for the spaceships is from https://opengameart.org/.
After the convention wrapped up, along with the holidays, work started on the cover art for Last Strike. April 2019 is when the emails started, along my usually first step for work like this. Thumbnail sketches.

I decided to bypass pencil sketches and go directly to color sketches. A couple reasons for this. Reboot didn’t have much in regards to direction except for pointing me towards previous content generated for marketing and assets for the game. This makes picking a color palette fairly easy. Just stick to what is used in the game and the banners/flyers that were used for Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

For the content and composition of the boxart, I decided to take inspiration from other shooters. One in particular was used as inspiration, and that was the cover art for Raiden on the Atari Jaguar.

Raiden’s box art takes a very simple but effective approach of extreme perspective to create a good sense of depth and movement. With the nose of the aircraft pointed towards the obstacles that the player must face in the game they are about play, we are given a good tone for the game without needed to plug and play.

With these thumbnail sketches I decided to take the compositional ideas and translate them into something new for Last Strike. I also decided to play with a few different camera angles to see if the client might want something not quite on the beaten path.

After a few suggestions for changes the first thumbnail was the direction chosen. Before moving onto the final illustration, and because of the feedback, I decided to do a one more thumbnail sketch. Working in the adjustments and to refined the composition accordingly.

Along with this new sketch, I was also needed to look forward to how this might look on actual product packaging. I had developed some templated 3D renders for testing artwork on for previous projects I have done for Jaguar games. I felt that we were far enough along with this final sketch to get a good feeling of what the final cover art and overall package would be like.

With a go ahead for the artwork and confidence that the cover art would work well for box, manual, and cartridge label, I moved forward to the final illustration.

I decided not to go with a strictly painted process and instead decided to use Blender to generate a pre-rendered base to work from. Building the models for the ships, the corridor, and other objects ended up taking up as much time as it would have taken just to paint them from scratch in Krita. But I believed that starting with a very clean and synthetic base to paint from would lend itself to the sci-fi feel of the game, while still giving me the freedom to add more organic edges here and there. Organic things like the people, blasts of energy, and the moon, contrast in form and silhouette with the more refined edges of the walls, floor, and ships. Creating a nice tension that plays well with the action of the scene.

I want to avoid posting final artwork here, but here is a render of that same 3D template that was used in previous steps of this process along with a time lapse of the process after the final thumbnail sketch was produced. Along with the box and cartridge label, I also assembled the manual for the game along with some basic cover art for the CD soundtrack. Also below are some pictures taken by Albert of AtariAge, Lawrence from Reboot, and a few people on Twitter who have already received copies of the game.

I did have the opportunity to play the game during play testing. I want to avoid doing a lengthy review, since I am sure the game has gone through some changes since then, and my unavoidable bias due to my involvement. I do highly recommend the game if you like shooters though. In regards to variety it is much better than Raiden, but it is not quite as serious in tone. Having a fun edge to it, along with some good boss fights, it’s definitely worth adding to the collection. It gave me strong vibes of Blood Money for the Atari ST, one my childhood favorite games. Reboot knows how to make fun, high quality release, and it was great to be a part of that.
May 2, 2021
Cutter Portrait | Timelapse

Over the last month or so I have been collecting my digital artwork and sketches into a collection of books. I will do a post specifically about this soon, but going through the process of laying out the last decade of my artwork has been thoughtful process.

Something that became obvious quickly looking at my artistic habits over the years is that I love to do full color, highly rendered illustrations, but there has been a fear, doubt, something holding me back from doing more of that kind of work.

So, in response to that, I have made what you might call a late New Year’s Resolution. Simple to paint more, as opposed to line drawings, and treat it as an education instead of “sell-able artwork”.

In an effort to satisfy this goal, this portrait of Cutter, from BitJag’s Flappy Bird Clone, Flappy McFur, is the first fruits of that effort. Also, I recently re-coded Flappy McFur from the ground up, so this piece is a way to celebrate the nearing end of that work.

Portrait of Cutter from Flappy McFur

Along with this, I want to setup some criteria to reexamine myself after I finish a piece. So, I’m approaching more time lapse videos for each piece I produce. I want to do a written examination through blog posts, focusing on specific things I learned or practiced, and how I might do things differently if I started over on the same piece. Lets do it.

Things I Learned or Practiced

Defining My Process

I recently watched this video by Marco Bucci talking about painting greyscale and then moving into color after you have the value painting established. The primary idea that Marco presents that this process actually removes some of the benefits that can come to your artwork if you start with color from the start.

Working in greyscale is something I have done in the past, and I plan on using this approach in the future. But he does make a convincing argument for why you should not do this all of the time. When starting this portrait of Cutter, I paid special attention how I pick colors, and how I could use a variety of colors in skin tones to enrich the piece. Especially for areas in shadow. Using a diversity of color in the shadows, along with ambient reflective color created more richness than I have experienced in my work before.

Start By Anchoring Your Values

If you watch the timelapse, you will see that I do make some dramatic value adjustments using some global color adjustments to brighten the image. I started this picture far too dark. What I learned from this is that when starting a piece, I need to keep in mind that whatever values I start with become the anchors for any new values that I introduce.

This means that when starting a piece I need to determine one thing. If I have any direct lighting, I need to properly determine the mid tone for that light as first value that I add to the canvas. This approach can be applied to ambient lighting and any light in the piece.

This anchor value will help determine the proper contrast between light and shadow that I may be looking for, for any future pieces that I work on.

Work With Reference

Probably the most embarrassing part of the timelapse is how many times I make adjustments to Cutter’s face. I have heard from many experienced artists that spending extra time on the face is natural, and important because that is what people typically focus on first when looking at artwork. I would like to hide behind this reasoning, but I don’t think it completely addresses why I came back to the face to adjust overall placement and shape of the face. What is really sad about it is, even though the end result came out good, I am still not completely happy with it. Why did this happen?

First, proportions were off from the very beginning. And adjusting proportions later in the process is almost always more time consuming when compared to properly establishing proportions earlier in the process. I believe the root of this problem is because I am not practicing from reference enough.

Even though Cutter doesn’t exist in real life, therefore there is not reference to work from for this piece, by practicing more from reference in my studies, my “imaginary” artwork with be better informed. Having an appropriately oriented visual library established in my mind, I can better extract from that well practice to better in form my ideas in my imagination.

Conclusion

Cutter’s portrait is attractive, but took longer than needed to paint, and shows a lack of foundation in my visual library. What are some things I can do to improve?

The obvious solution is practice with reference. This will solve both the problems of appropriate proportions for whatever subject your are painting, and it will help me become more efficient in my painting process. Resulting in saving time, and creating more attractive pieces.

February 12, 2019
Tales of a Jaguar Head | Flappy McFur Atari Jaguar Homebrew

Three years of learning. Three years of programming. Three years of drawing. And it all should have taken three weeks. Flappy McFur is finally in the hands of the masses, or at least the 80 or so individuals that were actually interested.

The beginning

Atari Jaguar programming has been something that my brother and I have been interested for years, and ever since returning from my church mission from Taiwan, I have made it a primary goal.

With the formation, branding, and online presence establishment, all that was left was for me to learn a bit of programming, and start making games. To help facilitate the programming learning curve, we took on a request from Paul Westphal to put together a demo specifically for his booth at the Portland Retro Gaming Convention.

Programming at this time wasn’t completely foreign to me, but C programming was. So this little demo was a great opportunity to start my C coding adventure, and it led well into Flappy McFur.

Development

Version 0.3 was the first fruit of my efforts, and the fruits were bearable. The gameplay was there, but it was far from enjoyable. McFur moved around more like a horizontally locked fly than a disembodied Jaguar head falling in style. But, the core gameplay was there, and this little demo was well received by those out there who look out for anything new for the Jag.

After the demo though, there was polish. I planned out menu systems, with a simple achievement system. Worked out four different play modes that changed the speed of the game and how the pipes behaved. With Bryce’s help, a simple text engine was implemented to facilitate menus, and he also implemented the save code system. All of this along with an end game made Flappy McFur a much more noticeable product and a more enjoyable experience overall, with a bit of depth to the gameplay.

Development also included some play testing. Usually I would setup our Jag-In-A-Box at family parties, Draw Nights with friends, or just let all the nieces and nephews have a go at it. It was interesting to see how some people caught into the gameplay really well, while others found it impossible. It made balancing the difficulty a bit of a challenge, this is one reason why the additional play modes were added. To try and accommodate a wide spectrum if players.

Even though the game overall is fairly simple, there was a massive learning curve for me to overcome. Overcoming that learning curve has had its payoff though, and I feel much more prepared to takle our next project.

Art

Sprites and Palettes

Though few, painting sprites for this game was a highlight if the whole experience. Working with reduced color palettes and putting together simple animations like rotations of objects and the achievements, to more complicated animations like Cutter’s run cycle, all were a joy and remind me how much I love animation in general.

We used the Gimp primarily for sprite work. I have been using the Gimp for nearly two decades now, and it is great support for paletted graphics with a more than adequate tool set. I did use Krita for Cutter’s run cycle animation because they had recently implemented a basic 2D animation tool set in Krita, but with the lack of palettes graphics support, I still needed ti pump those graphics through Gimp to prep them for Jag. Krita is supposed to have palettes graphics support in the near future, and I am looking forward to using Krita exclusively in my pipeline.

With all that in mind, when I actually started putting together Flappy McFur, I was a bit lazy in figuring out how to do 8-bit paletted graphics. So, for a long time, I was dealing with performance issues, especially when music was implemented. It wasn’t until late in development that most of the graphics were converted to 8-bit paletted sprites for 16-bit sprites. This was a good switch though as it allowed us to do fade transitions easily.

Box and Manual Art

I initially wanted to do more artwork for the game, but the 3 primary illustrations ended up working really well for our needs.

The first illustration was used to establish the character relationship and heavily influenced the game in both tone and narrative. The colored pencil and crayon look of the artwork was intentional as well. It gave it an elementary, non serious feeling throughout, inviting everyone to come and pick up the controller and play.

Video Content

I tried to keep any video advertisement minimal since the beginning. Primarily because if how time consume it is, but also because of the uncertainty of actually releasing the game.

When we decided to actually finish up the game and release, effort was spent to get a good video for advertising the game, and a good gameplay video. At the end of the day, I am not too sure how much these videos helped at the end if the day, but they were nice to have, and will be good to have for history’s sake.

The release and marketing

Newsletter

In and effort to reward our mailing list subscribers, we made sure that everyone that had signed up knew about the game first, we also provided a small discount for them as well. The discount was taken advantage of by a handful of our subscribers, and is something that we will definitely do in the future.

Press Release

It was fun to actually learn how to put a press release together for news websites. I distributed to a handful of people, with little response. Again, this was good to get familiar with, and it serves a good historical purpose. You can read the press release here.

AtariAge post

We had a great response from the AtariAge community. With part of the press release and other details about the project, including videos, we began selling the moment the announcement hit the forum. AtariAge Forum Thread – http://atariage.com/forums/topic/258180-flappy-mcfur-homebrew-now-available-to-order/

Before people actually had the game in their hands, many of the comments were about the pixel art, and general support for the release. Responses to gameplay have been… mixed, maybe. Its hard to tell if people don’t want to say anything bad about it, or they are just a bit frustrated about its’ difficulty. Either way, below are a few reactions for the AtariAge forum thread.

Hyper_Eye

My wife and I enjoyed spending the evening playing Flappy McFur a couple nights ago. It’s certainly addictive. I found myself getting the controller back less and less. My wife and I probably haven’t played Jaguar together in 10+ years. She buys me Jaguar games as gifts and watches me open them. Maybe she’ll watch me play a bit. It was nice to actually play together. Thanks for the effort you put in to it!

Swansea_Mariner

Wow this game is hard, I just can’t get past pipe no. 9! I really like the dogger mode.

Saturn

Thank you (all) for this wonderful addition to the Jaguar library. Hope to see more.

Reviews

By way of reviews, we did have one website review and one YouTube review. Both favored the game. Thank you for the reviews! Links below.

A small mention on the Retro New Roundup – https://youtu.be/FfeYMKsktFM?t=3m22s

A more full written review on a more official news website – http://thegg.net/retro/atari-jaguar-gets-a-brand-new-homebrew-game-called-flappy-mcfur/

A fairly thorough video review done by crusherbad64 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lo5AHXrhCU

A nice little mention of Flappy McFur on a French Jaguar fan blog – http://jagfan.canalblog.com/archives/2016/11/03/34517203.html

Other Social Media Posts

Links

Flappy McFur BitJag Project Page – http://bitjag.com/project_5.html

December 15, 2016
Atari Jaguar | McFur & Friend 3

I haven’t had allot of time after Inktober, and getting my Inktober book together, to draw and paint. But I was able to squeeze in an hour here and there on this illustration for Flappy McFur, BitJag’s Atari Jaguar homebrew game.

The idea was simple, I wanted to depict Mcfur and Cutter moving forward together, enjoying the journey. The idea of them stepping out of the frame of the game’s world, and into another, I believe helped to convey the message of moving onto new things together. Obviously they are depicted very happy, as they always are, with McFur having his usual free spirit attitude, and cutter having a feminine but adventurous attitude about her. I feel the composition came together well, due to spending time on thumbnails, and most of the pieces fit well.

Again, I stuck with the crayon/pastel look, as the game is very elementary and happy in nature, and the rough feel of crayons along with the bright saturated colors help bring the feeling of childhood to the piece. Krita has a couple of pastel brush I really like to use with my work, and they work perfectly to get the look I want for Flappy McFur.

I took some time to review the other drawings I have done for Flappy McFur so fare (McFur & Friend 1, 2, and the box art), and it is interesting to see the evolution of the character design of both Cutter and McFur. It is almost like they have both grown up a bit as they have floated around mind. Subtle facial changes to Cutter, Mcfur’s shape is more worked out as well. I am sure if I ever do more drawings for them in the future, there will be more subtle changes to their designs, but for now, I do like the way they look.

December 20, 2015
Atari Jaguar | Flappy McFur | Box Art Illustration

This one has been a long time coming. I have always intended to update the original box art, done in Inkscape, with a nicer looking illustration. I just thought I would have gotten to it sooner.

I keeping with the overall design of the original box art, I maintained the perspective, composition, and other key elements of the original, with only a few changes. The biggest change, and naturally the most obvious is that it isn’t vector art anymore. To compensate for the lack of scalability, I doubled my usual working resolution in Krita. I usually work at an A4-300dpi (2430x3508px). This time I basically doubled that resolution (4400x6218px), to help future proof the piece, in case we wish to do posters or banners.

The other obvious change was the inclusion of the second character in our game, Cutter, McFur’s lovely companion turned human. Currently, Cutter’s part in the game is purely aesthetic, but there are plans in having her be a larger part in all the flapping the player will be doing. Something like dropping bonus coins or removing pipes for McFur every once in a while.

Now compared to the first and second illustrations done for this game, I decided to take the rough colored pencil and crayon look further, and I really liked the final result. I used two pastel brushes primarily, but I also used a couple of pencil and standard brushes when I needed a bit more detail in places. I am not worried about reworking the previous illustrations, because I feel they feel great for what they are, but finishing this piece makes me feel like doing one or two more new illustrations following this pattern. We’ll see.

Enjoy the time lapse video I put together, a few close ups of detail, and have fun commenting on the differences between the old and new box art. I am also thinking about doing an extended cut of the time lapse that is about an hour long, so those of you who like to see more of my process in detail, you may have the opportunity soon.

August 10, 2015
Atari Lynx | 3D Printed Lynx Cartridge Shell

A little side project. I was digging through patents for old Atari stuff and noticed that the original cartridge shell’s patent was never renewed. No big surprise really, but I thought I would take advantage of the situation, and try my hand at some 3D printing.

I dissected a California Games cart and did all the measurements I needed with a pair of calipers. After double checking my measurements, and making some slight adjustments to the original design to accommodate thicker walls that the 3D printing process required (and adding our BitJag logo in place of the Atari logo), I modeled it in Blender, and sent it off to the printers. Below are the results, and if you would like to purchase some, I have made them available on Shapeways for the cost of printing. I hope this might help others to replace damaged shells, and maybe even use them for a future Atari Lynx homebrew release. Enjoy!

BUY HERE

February 23, 2015
Atari Jaguar | Mcfur and Friend 2

Went on a vacation to California, and had allot of time to do some thumbnails for a variety of things. I got a few together for Flappy McFur as well, and I am planning on taking those thumbs to finished pieces.

Not much different with this one. I approached it in a similar fashion as the first McFur and Friend. I really like the playful look of colored pencils. I wanted to do a similar background as the first one, with pipes and everything, but I was having a difficult time getting the composition to work. So, my inner designer kicked in and decided to simplify it. Taking a more abstract approach to the background, I decided just to show a sliver of the McFur’s world, as the focus should be mostly on McFur and his friend. Because I still wanted the pipes in there as well, I did a simple stencil shape of a pipe, and used that to balance the composition a bit. I really like the stencil idea, and I will probably be using it in the future illustrations.

This is a new step in my artistic progress. As this is the first time that I have planned out a series of illustrations for a project, and carried it out. I wish to do at least a couple more illustrations for this project, to round out this series. It has been an awesome experience, planning out design elements, colors, a bit of character design. There are a couple other personal projects that I will eventually approach and hope to approach in a similar manner.

December 28, 2014
Atari Jaguar | McFur and Friend 1

So, during my long hiatus from posting, many projects, many new pieces of art, have been brought into existence, through the sacrifice of time. By myself and others. Unfortunately, this includes the time that is spent putting together videos and posting on my blog. If you are consistent to my blog, or my YouTube Channel, thank you, and sorry for not being more consistent. But enough of the excuses, lets get on to the good stuff.

This time around more Jaguar projects, and this will be the first of a few posts. As you already know, my brother and I are involved in homebrew development for the Atari Jaguar. One of the projects we are working on is a Flappy Bird clone called Flappy McFur. There is more information on the project page, if your interested. In a nutshell, we are about halfway through development, and I am in the process of getting some art together for packaging and inserts, while my brother closes in on our end goals for the game. This is the first piece of official artwork for Flappy McFur.

Before I get started though, just a thank you to everyone in the Thor Media office for feedback on the piece. It is always great to get feedback on my work, when I am too blind to see the mistakes.

Because of the light nature of the game, certain design choices for maintaining a consistency across the artwork became apparent. First, match the saturation of game. Simple enough, yellows, greens, and reds are saturated, while everything else not so much (I guess that leaves my blues…) Which medium to use was a simple choice for me as well, colored pencils. I love working in colored pencil, probably the first medium I truly dove into and experimented with. Because of it’s affinity to the the look of crayons, but still maintaining the ability to create the detail I want in my drawings, I feel that it will match the mood of the game well. Also, Krita simulates pencils pretty darn well, and it feels almost as good as the real thing.

With these few design choices, I believe the next 3 or 4 pieces will maintain a consistent feel.

Speaking of the next pieces. I want to go with a cute and sometimes funny theme for each. Where McFur and his friend are in a playful mood. We might be incorporating McFur’s friend in the game some how. I like her design so far, but it may need a few tweaks for the game. I am hoping to put together a small comic for the game manual as well, but we we’ll see what happens there. Stay nearby, I will have a few more of theses over the next few weeks.

October 19, 2014
Atari Jaguar | Flappy Mcfur Pre-Release Box & CD Art

My brother and I have been working hard on the Atari Jaguar stuff, and new ideas, art, writting, and code, trickles into each and every project everyday. Flappy Mcfur is the first fruits of our efforts.

Obviously a Flappy Bird clone for the Atari Jaguar, this program really was just a training ground for me in C programming. It was fun getting the basic assets together, and code the various aspects of game. From menus, to score keeping, and movement of Flappy McFur. Speaking of movement, it is very rudementary, and the next version will have movement more akin to Flappy Bird.

The box art and CD art were both put together in Inkscape, with screenshots from the actual game. Currently we are not sure if we will actually be making and selling physical versions of the game, but I though it might be nice to give people who download it, the opportunity to put together something nice for it if they wish.

The Pre-Release trailer was a blast to put together. I wanted something that would build up, and then let the viewer drop, realizing it isn’t anything too amazing. I really like the way the fly around with the console came out. I haven’t used lattices in 3D animation for a long time, and they poved really effective for bending the flowing text around the various contours of the Jaguar console and controller. The footage of gameplay was captured using the Virtual Jagauar emulator, and it plays almost exactly how it does on the actual Jaguar hardware. It’s such a simple game, why wouldn’t it? Also, this video, and the next one, were both completely done in Blender, with 2D assets in the Gimp.

On another small note, Bryce noticed that out YouTube subscription counter, on the JagCorner channel, was almost to 64, and he came up with the idea for a little video to celebrate the 64th subscriber and the 64-bit glory of the Atari Jaguar. Check it out, and subscribe to our channel to keep up with other video content we will be producing in the future.

July 2, 2014
Atari Jaguar | JagCorner Review | Iron Soldier

Another JagCorner video to talk about. We have kind of been all over the place with the kind of YouTube videos we would like to do. We know we will continue to do the BitJag Development Journals, and we are pretty sure we are going to keep doing the JagVirgin episodes as well.

I guess the reason why we are jumping all over the place is because we are trying to counteract all the negative coverage of the Atari Jaguar. Lets just say, this console doesn’t get the highest score on most gamer’s Hi-Score lists, but it’s unfortunate that there is so much negative for a system that has so much positive. I guess one of my personal goals with doing these JagCorner videos is to promote the great things about the system.

Moving on, what I really wanted to talk about was the opening skit for this review video. I am taking these videos as an opportunity to build a portfolio and push my visual effects skills, and I was glad to see that this shows well in this video.

Jacob and Bryce helped me come up with and execute the concept and it came together almost flawlessly. Everything was done in Blender. Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Camera Tracking, Compositing, Editing, and Rendering of the entire video included. I love the Blender tool set, and it never seems to fail me.

The hardest part about this video was the camera tracking. There were no purposely place tracking points in the shot, and the one section I had trouble with was when I stepped out of TV Specialists back door and then the camera swings to the left, revealing the Iron Soldier. I had to manually track 20 or so frames to get the camera swing, simply because all the information in the show was too blurred to track. Other than that, the track was fairly easy, with just a few minor slides and jitters in the final result, almost noticeable. At the end of the day, the entire production was 30 man hours. I wanted to spend more time, but we set a goal to have it released by Thanksgiving.

The end card is a bit special. To achieve a more nastalgic feel, I rendered it out at 320×180 (a 16:9 resolution) and then scaled it up to 1920×1080 with no filter. This maintains the jagged edges on the polygons making it still feel like a low resolution, up-scaled to a high resolution.

Overall, the result was almost exactly how we imagined it, and I love it when that happens.

December 5, 2013