Alternate Future

I've always loved how Japan seamlessly blends the the traditions of the past and the ambitions of the future.  This is my humble attempt at combining both.  I think I'm getting the hang of watercolors, but I'm not ultimately satisfied with it, and I'm planning a redo when I have time.

This piece is available as a print on society6.  Society6 is running a promo for till December 8 that gives free shipping and $5 off for any order of one of my prints.  You have to specifically click THIS LINK to take advantage of it.  Additionally 50% of all revenue generated in December will go to Typhoon Haiyan victims, so get some nice art and help some nice folks out.

Prison Architect Pop Culture Reference Maps

My last blog post about my favorite prison Architect Maps got a bit of attention, so I dug into the Steam Workshop again this evening to pick out some interesting maps.  The sheer creativity of our players is still amazing to me, and this time I decided to pick out the maps that had some sort of pop culture reference to them, starting with...

The USS Enterprise Prison Map

I love that this map comes with a background story:

In the year 2344 while protecting a Klingon outpost the U.S.S Enterprise C (NCC-1701-C) was attacked by four Romulan Warbirds. It was assumed the ship and all crew perished in the battle. The once thought destroyed USS Enterprise Recently Reappeared though a temporal rift. Due to the current conflicts the severely damaged Enterprise was decommissioned and sent to an outer laying planet to be used as a penal colony. 

The Shawshank Redemption Map

It's gotten a little hokier upon multiple revisits, but the Shawshank Redemption was one of my favorite movies when I first saw it.  Now I'm wondering if I can sneak Morgan Freeman's "Red" into the game somehow.

Fox River (Prison Break)

Steam user stubby looks like he's making a habit of recreating pop culture prisons, seeing as he was also the man who put together the Shawshank Redemption Prison above.  I never got into Prison Break, but I'd love to hear what fans of the show think of this prison.

Kestrel (FTL)

FTL is a game I've never played (for lack of time, not interest) but even I instantly recognized the Kestrel prison since it's so prominent in FTL's PR stuff.  Seeing this just makes me want to play FTL all the more.

You can check out my original list of my favorite Prison Architect maps here, which include a Panopticon and someone who mistakenly thought PA was Sim City.

Elevator Joe icon redux

Elevator Joe launched to pretty dismal sales last September, and it's taken me a while to come to grips with the realities of releasing a game as opposed to simply creating the art and moving on.  I'd considered writing about that, but I'm not sure I have it in me to go through that process just yet.  Instead I'd like to be a little positive, and talk about one of the ways we're thinking of to increase our downloads, and that's by updating the icon.  All of Kuyi Mobile's have a built in ticker that lets Erick (the owner of Kuyi Mobile and my partner on Elevator Joe) cross promote through his library of games.  We were hoping that this would provide a constant stream of downloads for Elevator Joe, since Kuyi Mobile's last game, Streetfood Tycoon, has amassed quite a few downloads.  Unfortunately this wasn't the case.  We're not sure why, but people just weren't clicking on the icons like they did Erick's other games.  There was ultimately no way to find out why this was happening, but one of the things we discussed was redoing the app icon to try to visually entice more people to download the game.  The above icon was our original app icon.  We're both satisfied with it, but it since there was nothing to lose by trying, I went ahead and redid the icon.

Here is the new icon.  I used some of the same color schemes Apple is using in its new UI as well as retaining Elevator Joe.  the colored bars are a reference to the new minigame that we added to the game, and the buttons are obviously in reference to the nature of the game, which is to simulate (in a really cute way) being an elevator operator.  If the original icon had one drawback it was that it didn't really explain the game in any way, and I was hopeful this new design would do just that.

So did it help?  Well, ultimately yes, although not as much as I would have hoped.  There was a small uptick in downloads after the update went live, but not enough to really change things.  We're hopeful that the new icon and other changes we made to the game have made it that much better, and that all it needs is some more marketing to push it over the edge.

I'd be very pleased if you could try out Elevator Joe and vote for it to be Coronalabs' November App of the Month (we were recently chosen as app of the week).  Also, if you think that the icon layout I used here is cool, head on over to the awesome appicontemplate.com and give some kind words (or better yet a donation!) to Michael Flarup.

Urban Sketching : Bali

Some of the sketches here are now available as prints on society6, as well as other sketches I've made over the course of our travels.

"Look, just give me 100k Rupiah and I'll leave." (said in bahasa Indonesia, which I can still speak conversationally)

The shady money changer furrowed his brow for a moment before putting 100k on the table.  I shook my head and looked at him with the defeated resignation of a foreigner who knew he'd been screwed but didn't want to bother with making a fuss over it.  I was only happy that I managed to get back at least half of the money that was owed to me, and chalked it up to experience.  In any case, I was getting a terrific deal on the room I'd found on Airbnb, so how could I complain?  I wasn't about to let this first experience with Bali sour my opinion of the island. 

And what an island it is.  My wife and I barely scratched the surface of Bali's beaches, only choosing to stay in the touristy Kuta beach area.  We were having renovations done in our condo while we were away, we'd decided that the short respite would be spent lounging around on the beach instead of running from one tourist destination to another.  We'd found a room at a steep discount in the Aston Kuta, a relatively older but well known hotel that was just about perfect for us.  It was near enough to the touristy areas if we wanted to do a little shopping or browse the numerous restaurants, but far enough away from Kuta proper that the beach area was relatively quiet.  In the afternoons locals would come out by the beach to relax and have some sate babi (pork sate, only common in non majority muslim Bali) and kelapa muda (coconut juice and meat straight from the source!) or a Bintang beer.

I was enchanted by how Bali's Hindu religion still permeates society.  Little shrines are attached to every house and store, with offerings laid there every morning.  I've always loved the contrast between antiquity and modernity and seeing them side by side on almost every street was a joy for me.  I wandered around the Kuta market area for a while before settling in front of this temple and beginning to sketch it.  While the temples of Bali are beautiful, they are a nightmare to sketch because of the sheer complexity of their designs.  Picking a smaller temple was a matter of practicality, and even then I had to go back the next day to finish it off.

High resolution Polaroids for Prison Architect

In the game Prison Architect there's a main story arc that introduces the player to the key components of running a prison.  In those story arcs PA's cartoony characters act out different scenes, while illustrations in the form of polaroids fall out of the sky to depict the same scenes in more realistic detail.  

For reasons of efficiency those polaroids have been drawn at pretty low resolutions, meaning they can't really be blown up and used for promotional purposes (say, in posters or possible boxed sets).  However since we had a bit of down time in terms of art needs Chris asked if I could redo some of our favorite polaroids to be hi-res. I jumped at the opportunity because some of those polaroids are at this point 2 yeas old, and reflect my skills as an artist back then (ie they look terrible to me now).  Giving them a fresh lick of paint made me feel a whole lot better.  We're not sure what these will turn into eventually, but it's possible that they might become prints or some sort of merch for fans. 

The image you see above of Edward (bit of trivia: Edward's character design was very much influenced by pre-Heisenberg Walter White) in cuffs should be familiar to anyone who's ever played Prison Architect.  The other two polaroids? I think I'll leave that open to speculation.