All over the place

Whoa, I totally missed the update last week in more ways than one. Moving office is tiring... Ofcourse this means I am again behind in where I had hoped to be which is annoying but I've no one to blame but myself. This week I finished colouring the bad guys for flash game #1, next up is backgrounds then AI/gameplay I think. Still managed to pull off two more Mabinogi drawings too, and I am planning to participate in another Mabi-related comp in the next week or so:

As a reward for the second one I received the cutest version of my character ever (drawn by Emeris)! :P

Seems everyone on Mabinogi NA is getting premium service for the next month or so as well so hopefully this means my guild can finally setup a stone in-game somewhere. I don't think I've spoken much about my guild here have I? Well, we are a small group called Dragonarm and we traverse many games. You can find out a bit more in an old interactive movie I did here - Dragonarm: Chapter 1. :)

Also, if you enjoy Neverwinter Nights my brother made this campaign for our guild but it's free for anyone to download and play. Be warned it is designed to be played in a (large) group and uses the hardcore ruleset. Porting in a high level character to solo is possible but could be frustrating if you use a mage as it isn't geared for that.

As for the mysterious book I'm considering trashing what little work I've put into it and starting again (changing first POV character). Sigh.

Lastly, Junior Masterchef has started up showcasing another load of talented kids in the kitchen! It's really good stuff. For those who feel this isn't mature enough for their tastes may enjoy this hilarious Nigella Lawson mix instead (warning: not for kiddies :P).

Project Status:
Flash game #1 - 13% (enemies all coloured)
Mysterious book - 0% (restarting)
Mabinogi: Forum Signature comp -due Oct 8th: 1% (have an idea, need to study reference)
Mabinogi: Keenejl art comp -due Oct 20th: 100%
Mabinogi: Emeris silly sprite -100%

Artistic Deviation

Managed to pull off two Mabinogi related works this week, unfortunately the Mighty Mugg one is not one of them. Simply didn't have enough time nor motivation to win the chance to "build" a mighty mugg. Especially as I'm trying to concentrate on flash-based art where as that one specifically was looking for real world works.

Both pieces were for player-run things and I used them as exercises in changing the cutesy anime style of Mabinogi into "altered" versions.

Really happy with how the second one turned out, especially as it was a last minute thing I decided to do. Also worked on Flash Game #1 briefly, but still no word from Mike at Newgrounds about API's for flash 5 which is a bummer. Must follow that up this week. I intend to hammer out game #1 to at least half way by next week because it's really getting in the way of the second one I have in mind. :P

The mysterious book laughs at me again, as instead of having any progress I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 with my brothers. Incredibly fun game. I wonder how Dead Island compares to it? I'm sure Juris (one of my guildies) is finding out right now.

Speaking of artistic deviations, what about Scarlett Johansson ey? The incredibly stunning actress has been in the news recently as she has supposedly set the FBI to track down whoever it was that hacked her phone as she doesn't want you to see her "comprimising" pictures. Ironically, the majority of people now looking for said photos would not be doing so had that article not been published in the news. Also, I would be more concerned with what other data could have been pulled from the phone. Pictures are a good distraction, but birthdays, addresses, private messages and the like are more useful to creative minds.

Were you looking for a link to those leaked Scarlett Johansson photos? Try google. :P

Tribute to Equilibrium

Alright! Using a trial version of a later flash I've managed to upload my "Tribute to Equilibrium" movie up on Newgrounds where it is doing around about as well as I suspected it would. I've PM'ed Mike over there who is working on a mini-ad thing that should hopefully work on Flash 5 but we'll have to wait and see how that turns out.

Why Equilibrium? Well, because I liked it! It's certainly my type of movie - a solid story with a good amount of action and a high body count. It helps that Batman (Christian Bale) and Ned Stark (Sean Bean) are in it too. There's also a really adorable puppy. If you haven't seen it yet then I highly recommend it. ^_^

Also in other fan-based things, there are two on youtube that I found very well done - Portal: No Escape, and Fallout: Nuka Break.

I'm continuing to work with Flash 5 while looking out for anything that remotely supports AS2 - seems Flash MX 2004 is the closest but it's not longer available from Adobe. I did see they have a semi affordable "subscription" version of the latest flash, but that means I should really have all my stuff (or a bunch of stuff) done ahead of time since I only want it for the AS2+ component. I'm just hoping porting AS1 stuff to AS2+ is not time consuming. Also was researching Bandcamp a bit, as it may be a good place to put up some of my music later on. :)

Lastly, the mysterious book now has one page. At this rate, its going to take forever!

I guess it doesn't help that I've been concentrating on Mabinogi this week, training up my brother's dragon. :P Which reminds me, there are two art comps over there that I should really participate in too. Really need to get back into creative mode in the next few days!

Project Status:
Flash game #1 - 9% (no change, was lazy this week :P)
Mysterious book - 1% (going slowly, now I have one page)
Salvage mission 2: "Equilibrium" - 100% (Done and up on NewGrounds)
Mabinogi: Mighty Mugg Contest -due 13th Sep: 0%
Mabinogi: Fan Contest -due 18th Sep: 2% (have an idea of what I'm gonna do)

Bumps in the Road

Focused on the salvage missions this week; unfortunately I could not find the source fla for my "Hellsing: The Anderson Alternative" clip that I did ages ago for my old Hellsing Crucifix site, so for now I am cancelling it back into the void. I did have better luck with Equilibrium though as I still had the source for that. I figured it would be a good test of the Newgrounds CPMstar API as that is the only one I have found that you can put with movies but was severely disappointed when I found that it is not compatible with Flash 5 (more specifically, AS1). Due to this I've held off on uploading it until I get my hands on a later version where I can plug it in. I think there are later trial versions I can download but that's going to be a once off thing. :(

The mysterious book now has a 3 paragraph prologue as it continues to laugh at me. :P

Lastly I did a mini-project to make a sig for one of my guildmates, Niamh!
Turned out quite nicely I think... :)

Project Status:
Flash game #1 - 9% (few backgrounds props drawn)
Mysterious book - 1% (woo, 3 paragraphs? Lol)
Salvage mission 1: "Hellsing" - cancelled (fla lost)
Salvage mission 2: "Equilibrium" - 95% (all set, but need to upgrade base flash to test API stuff)