Prison Architect Alpha now Available!

I've been working on Prison Architect for a year and a half now, so it's great to finally see it out in the wild, even in alpha state.  Comments and reviews have mostly been positive, with the majority of naysayers complaining about the high price (something that I tend to agree with, though I understand Chris Delay's reasoning).  Regardless, at least one of each tier of this Kickstarter type launch has been bought, including the $1000 create a warden tier bought by Colin Northway.

If there are folks in the Philippines turned off by the high price, you might want to attend an art talk I am going to give next October on the art of Prison Architect.  We will be raffling off some free copies of the Alpha, and I'm hoping to tie that in somehow to a donation to prison reform in the Philippines.  No details yet, but stay tuned.  Till then, thanks to anyone who bought the Alpha, and I hope you like the game!

Digital Criminal : A Sneak Peek at Prison Architect

I'm just gonna leave this here and let the speculation begin.

Car Repairs

Car was leaking engine oil, so had it repaired last Friday.  Mechanics quoted a price and time, and when all was said and done I waited twice as long and paid twice as much.  At least I was able to sketch a different locale than I usually would.

Daidoji Tametaka Sketches

So it's been a couple of weeks since I submitted my L5R remakes to Alderac Entertainment.  Since I haven't heard from them at all I have to consider that experiment a bust.  It's obviously a little disappointing since I poured a lot of time and effort (hence the sketches seen above) into those artworks for no pay, but at least I have a few nice new portfolio pieces to show for it.  It's hard to be too sad though, since I'm consistently getting work offers and will actually be working on a couple of fun things in the next couple of weeks, including a LOT of work for the alpha version of Prison Architect.

To Save the Realm ebook Cover

I had a conversation with an author friend a couple of months ago who related to me that some of her friends were making a pretty penny writing erotica for online book stores.  It was an interesting story and we all chatted about what kinds of erotica we'd like to write (none of which would have sold well at all), and by the end of the night I'd totally forgotten about it.

A month ago I had a dry stretch during my off-month of not working on Prison Architect, and the conversation came back to me.  I decided to do some research on ebook authors, and see if there was a market for cover artists, and it turns out there's a pretty big market out there.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, especially since I'd already previously  been approached by an ebook about doing his cover (time was a little constrained back then, and I made the decision not to pursue it).  

I failed to realize it before, but now I understand that the Kindle and similar ebook devices have created a booming market in self published books in the same way that the iOS devices created a new market for indie game and application developers.  Of course books have become such a niche that this market is inevitable much smaller than the app and games market, but this was still an untapped market for me.  After a week or two of posting on kindleboards and other forums, I finally got my first assignment.  I was hired by author T.B. Crattie to remake the cover of his book "To Save The Realm", a cold war spy novel with just a dash of fantastical elements.  It's definitely not perfect, and I had some trouble with the vehicle in particular, and I think I went overboard with the fog (the author specifically said that he liked how I made clouds and mist, so I figured I'd give him that!).  Hopefully I'll get more projects coming in soon, and this will become another steady revenue stream for me.

Shrine to Hachiman Final

Barring some last minute tweaks, this will be the final version of my Shrine to Hachiman remake.  What was supposed to be a relatively easy image took me far longer than I had anticipated.  I wanted to make sure this image was the best I could make it at this point in time, because it will be the final artwork in my L5R set of remakes. I'm still going back to the old artworks and cleaning things up here and there, but I should be submitting sometime next month, crossing my fingers and hoping to at least get some feedback from their art directors.  Wish me luck!