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.
The Jag stuff still goes forward. Project 3 final has a name, “Brawl”, and a start on the box art.
This was an awesome piece to work on. And I first need to thank Michael Buhler for his input on some final decisions on the background and title text. He is an amazing artist and you should check out his portfolio HERE.
The lighting and color were my favorite parts of this piece, and all the pieces seem to fall in place, when I need them. Something that I should have spent some more time on, before starting this piece, was draw up some concepts for the male character. I like the way he came out, but I think a bit of forethought would have saved me some time in the long run.
Again, enjoy the time lapse video, and check out the new update video at http://bitjag.com/. There are some updates to concept art on that page as well.
Please excuse my silence over the last few weeks, but I have been involved in some fun projects, and one of those is my brother and I have officially started our Atari Jaguar development.
Our dev name is BitJag, and we are using the JagCorner name for our YouTube videos and other media. I have mentioned in previous posts about the project that we have been working on for the Jag, but we have expanded, to three separate projects.
We often find ourselves way over our heads, when it comes to the scale of projects that we do. So the other two projects, which are nameless right now, are much smaller, but will be used to stretch our abilities considerably. Check out the Projects page at http://BitJag.com/ to see some of the details for those projects.
We also have our first development journal posted. It isn’t much, but there is some cool footage of an animated sprite character test on the Jaguar console. There is definately more to come. I have been working on some visual design concepts for the battle system, and working on story as well. We will be talking a bit about this stuff in the next dev journal entry, along with some more details about our other two projects.
The last week I have been working on some initial marketing stuff for Armored Empire, our next app project at Thor media. If you want to learn more about the game, and take a look at the wordpress site I put together for it, check out the official website.
This is another Blender and Gimp project, with audio done in Audacity. The one thing of any real note it the imitation of an old CRT monitor. This was the challenging part of this little project. I wanted to simulate a zoomed in shot, so using things like the scan-lines and dust on the glass seemed to pull off the effect well. The flickering of the text and the diagonal line that passes by make it feel old and worn a bit.
Overall I think that everything about this small teaser fits well with each other, thanks to some initial story boarding. The visuals and audio fit really well and help make the view curious. The doors closing are a good surprise, and just about everyone that has viewed the teaser liked the feeling that it makes.
My brothers and I really like video games, and we are trying to get to the point where we can bring our creative visions to life. The process of learning, building, and refining has been great for us, and it’s not as easy as some may think.
The project “Josh the Whale” started soon after trying to land another app project for another children’s story book and not getting it. We thought that kids books might be the way to get the attention of local children’s book illustrators and writers, and so we began the search for a story. We wanted a project that we could use, not only to attract clients, but to also use as a template for future projects. We also wanted it to be something that we really cared about in order to motivate ourselves to create a good finished product.
This is really the reason that we chose Josh the Whale. Originally a short illustrated story that our older brother, Aaron Thorup, wrote when he was in the third grade, we thought that it wasn’t just a good story about self-worth and perseverance, but it also had a good selling point. Whales and underwater stuff seem to go well with children, so, not only were we planning on entering the kids entertainment market, but we also had an attractive theme that should sell.
So we started. The first step was to get a solid script, based on the original story, written to base all the programming and visual aspects of the game on. The rewritten story, and the script, came together pretty fast, and with Aaron’s approval, I was able to begin on visual concept, and Bryce was able to start working with Shiva 3D (our 3D engine).
Mainly because of a lack of experience on my part, we planned to have a finished product by December. Basically, we did not take into account the learning curve Bryce would have with Shiva 3D. Bryce was picking up the new API, which was quite a bit different from what we were using for our live wallpapers. So, it turned into 6 months instead. We also had other video projects mixed into that schedule, but overall it was just the amount of learning needed that extended the schedule.
Concept work began, assets were being built, and Bryce began building code to use those assets with. Some specifics of that work can be viewed in previous posts HERE and HERE. Though progress was slow, it was steady, and from the beginning to the end of the project, there were no real stressful moments in the production. Just allot of trial and error in figuring out workflows in relation to the programming and asset creation.
Only minor changes were made to script and the original sequence of the game during production. In fact, only one scene was taken out of the game for programming reasons. Here is a really basic concept image of that scene. It had to do with the whales jumping out of the water at night, and the player helps Josh jump high enough to touch the moon.
Recording the narration was fun. Bryce and I decided that we wanted to have Aaron do the voice acting for the narration. This was a great choice because Aaron’s voice seemed to fit right inside Josh’s world, and complements the whole feeling of the book very well. This also made the project feel allot more personal to me, turning it into a family project. Jacob helped us out with the recording in a quite room over at my Grandma’s and Grandpa’s home. We used Audacity for the audio, and it all came out beautifully.
A little side note about the audio recording, most of the interactive moments of the game were conceptualized when I was preparing a script for lines that needed to be rerecorded or new lines, our second recording session. I felt that the game wasn’t quite balanced enough between the strictly narrative moments and the interactive moments of the game.
The music was done by April Thorup. She is not a professional composer, but she did a wonderful job on the music. Her playful styling fit into Josh’s world so well, and keeps the app interesting for kids. When we first started to drop the music into the app itself, the feeling of Josh’s world completely changed. Suddenly this small lonely whale had a story to tell, not only by the narrator, but by the music as well.
When it came to testing the app during the project, we usually just had one of our nieces or nephews take a peek at what we had, and payed attention to their reactions. Because of this “bug testing” we knew from the start that children responded well to the visual style and game play. And, towards the end of the project, we had an official bug testing session, that also brought back good results from children, and assured that we had a solid app structurally.
The app icon and other graphics were interesting to put together. The original thought was to stick to the same icon template and banner styles that we had used for our previous live wallpapers. As you can see from the images below, they weren’t the most impressive images to look at. But, after sifting through Google’s and Apple’s quality guide lines, we decided to redo all of the graphics for the app, creating a simpler style for the icon and banners.
For the final steps of the project, like marketing, I was put in charge. Gathering information on review websites that tailor to the audience we wanted to reach was important, and putting together a trailer and other material to show the app in action was done as well. This moment was probably the most educational for us as a company, mainly because I had never really done any marketing before, and because we have learned that hiring someone to handle the marketing is probably the best way to make sure that it is executed effectively.
One of the huge pluses to this whole project though, was the cost. I believe that the cost for a Shiva 3D license was $200, which covered porting the game to bother Android and iOS. Marketing was about $1000, but besides that there was no additional cost to the project besides our time. We used open source software for all asset creation and editing. This includes Blender, Gimp, Audacity, and Inkscape. Software that we have allot of experience with, and are all great programs.
We have only just released this app, and we have had a really good responses from reviewers, family, friends, and strangers, so far. We are proud of Josh the Whale, and so thankful for everyone that helped make it a reality. It represents our commitment to making products that we can be proud off and that others can enjoy. It represents our first step into the game development realm. And most of all, it shows that even a small whale can do great things, our goal for the future.
Thor Media has just released their latest app. Flowering Vine live wallpaper. This one has be a long time in the making, but it has been worth the effort and time. There truly isn’t anything on the market like this.
Let me give you some of the details.
The big thing that really sets this live wallpaper apart is the random vine generator. The vines are completely random. In fact, the only structure that the vines have is the way the branches grow, and sprout flowers. We decided that we wanted them to do a curling shape, which adds to how attractive it is. An artistic choice. Other than that, the vines are free to roam your device’s screen.
The other huge thing that sets this live wallpaper apart from others of its kind, is the way that the options are set up. The end user can modify just about any aspect of it. All the colors and opacity of the vines, butterflies, and flowers can all be changed. There are a slew of background textures along with the ability to change the background color. Not to mention a vignette option that you can adjust the color and opacity of. There are a few more options that I won’t mention here, because I want you to find out for your self.But because there are so many things that can be manipulated in this wallpaper, we ran into a problem. Live wallpapers are kind of a novelty and people like to look at them, not mess around with a bunch of options. So, me, Bryce, and Eric discussed the possibility of having a theme option. At the top of the options list there is a “Theme” select option, which lists 40 plus predefined themes to choose from. It guarantees a good look. I want to thank Julie, Jacob, Eric and Kathleen, for helping us get those themes together. They really do look great.
In the future, we hope to add the ability to save your own themes to the list, along with a bunch of other options in relation to how the vines look and grow.
We have high hopes for Flowering Vine live wallpaper, and I encourage you, if you have an Android device, to download and try it out. There isn’t a free version this time. But remember, if you don’t like it, for whatever reason, you can get a full refund within 15 minutes of the purchase. Try the full version out for a few minutes then decide, I know you will like it. And don’t forget to rate and review the app in the store, every review/rating makes a huge difference in how our app sells. Thank you!
My involvement included art direction, asset creation, and graphic design. Bryce was our programmer behind this, and he did an amazing job. Check out his site to see what he says about our work.
This one has been one a while in the making. And I am very happy to post about it.
Thor Media was approached by Josh Lee. Someone who we have done work for before. Specifically some CG work for a short film based on the book “Alliance” by Gerald Lund (I posted about it here). And Josh asked if we could put together a logo and a bumper for Empowered Life Solutions LLC.
It was slow going, because of different scheduling difficulties. But, so far, this has been one of the best work situations I have been in. And learned allot on how to deal with timing and other issues that may arise with a client.
Here are some of the process sketches and other ideas that we played with. Also a shot of website with the new logo.
Another Live Wallpaper out. I did the concept and did most of the asset creation in Gimp and Blender. Kudos to Bryce for all his hard work on the programming end of things, and getting it all put together. He is a freakin genius.
We at Thor media would be very grateful if you would go out of your way to purchase the app and review it. Or if you want to check out the free version and just review that, that would be great as well. Here are the links for the PAID and the FREE versions.
Also, if you are interested, been doing some really simple web design on the the Android Development page on thor-media.net. Check it out!
Well, it has been out for well over a week now, but I thought I would still post about it, since version 1.5 was just released.
I have had the opportunity to take charge of the art direction and do allot of the modeling and texturing for the wallpaper. This specific live wallpaper is directed towards anyone who is passionate about music. The wallpaper showcases different instruments and objects related to music and was built to be very visually appeasing. So if you are interested and have an Android phone, click here and get your copy of one of the best live wallpapers for Android today.
Here are some stills of a few of the objects I modeled. All objects are under 2000 faces and textures are 512x512px or less.
Low-poly modeling, with a limit, is a challenge. Especially when you are dealing with n-gons. I discovered that when baking textures, n-gons are your worst enemies. But overall it is fun to try to push your models and trying to figure out where you need detail and where you don’t, to get the most out of your models.
Another note about this stuff. I recently switched over to Kubuntu to see what kind of perks it might have. I am falling in love with it. Visually speaking it is quite appealing. I am not sure if it has any performance advantages over other distros, but it does have really nice tools for Wacom tablets, and has other perks, if you are working with Krita. I am hoping to do some time lapses in the future, and they will probably all be in Kubuntu. Keep and eye out for that.
One last thing, if you haven’t tried the recently released 2.8 version of Gimp, I highly suggest it. Its really nice.
Here are a few pamphlets I put together for marketing. I really had the chance to dive into Inkscape and enjoy the vector “landscapes”. It makes page layout much faster and easier.
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