FMyLife

by Sandy on October 24, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Posted In: blog

What? You’re not over at FMyLife.com? Oh, it’s open in another tab! That’s cool, then.
Well, as long as you’re checking it out, let me point out that I’ve illustrated an FML, and you can find it here. I must say, it was really fun to do, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Special thanks to Alice, who had some great advice about how best to approach illustrating an FML.

Check out the Illustrated FMLs!

Much to the shock of everyone who knows me, I chose to illustrate an FML that’s about hockey.

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Winnitron 1000

by Sandy on October 24, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Posted In: blog

Robin and I have just spent the weekend at that Winnitron game jam, and it was a total blast. Nothing like being in room with so many smart, talented developers to get the creative juices going. Huge thanks to Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo and everyone else involved for organizing the Jam, it was a crap-ton-o-fun.
For those not familiar with the Winnitron, it’s an actual video arcade machine, which will be housed at the Red River Community College, filled with games made by local developers. The beauty of this machine, though, is that it will be accessible by wireless network, so it’ll be really easy to update and add games to it. You can learn more here and here.

The Winnitron 1000


Here’s a few screen shots of our game as it currently stands. We hope to clean it up and add it to the Winnitron this week.

Title courtesy of Harrison Hnatiuk


Screen shot of game play

Again, thanks to Alec, Noel, and everyone else, it was really great to be involved!

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Very First Version of Crowbar

by Sandy on October 7, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Posted In: blog

This animation was the very first iteration of Crowbar Benson, it was done in like 2002 or so. As you can see, the characters have evolved a lot, which is normal I guess. I still like this animation, though.

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‘Sleepwalker’ on Xbox Indie!

by Sandy on July 13, 2010 at 8:31 am
Posted In: blog

Big news!
Our first XBox Indie game is now live and available for purchase! Hint hint! It’s available directly through your XBox, or through the Xbox Live Marketplace. We’d love for you to check it out, or even play the demo and let us know what you think.

Sleepwalker Box Art

The heart of this game was built over a weekend at the Winnipeg TigJam, with a bunch of tweaks and improvements added later. The reason we were able to build it so quickly was that we were using Robin’s SWFtoXNA tool, which allowed us to do a lot of the visual development in Flash, and then very easily port that over to the XNA development environment. (Here’s me, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about, I just did the drawings. But it’s pretty cool how it works, and if you’re interested in all in making XBox Indie games, and you know Flash, you gotta check out the tool).

Again, the game is available on your XBox, just go to the Game Marketplace, Indie games, and find ‘Sleepwalker’. It sells for 80 Microsoft points, which is about a dollar, and you should get a good half hour of fun out of it. It’s designed to be REALLY simple to play, with only a single button for controls (suck on that, Wii controller!), but still challenging.

Stay posted for more games as they become available!

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‘Woody After Hours’ Guest Spot

by Sandy on June 14, 2010 at 11:19 am
Posted In: blog

Woody After Hours

Woody meets Crowbar


For the next few weeks, Crowbar Benson will be the guest in the ‘Woody After Hours’ webcomic, which is pretty cool. ‘Woody After Hours’ is the work of Ben Carter (writer) and Paul Westover (artist), and they’re both super-talented guys. I’ve always been a big fan of Paul’s artwork, and working with Ben on the writing of the strips is giving me an even greater appreciation of his talents. He’s fun to work with, and an excellent collaborator (I mean that in a good way, as in ‘shares ideas well’, not in a bad way, as in ‘works well with Nazis in occupied France’.)
I had the chance to meet them both for a brief time in Seattle during the Emerald City ComicCon, and despite that, they still wanted to work with me. Go figure. So I’ll keep you all posted as the new strips come out, and I hope you’ll take a look!

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