Valentine's Day Double Feature!

Happy Extra Special Early Valentine's Day! As you should have watched by now, Valentine's Day 2011 has been completed and is online! As previously mentioned, this one is a bit shorter than normal because someone complained that it was really hard to match a gift that took several hundred hours to make, but someone doesn't realize that someone is so special that she totally deserves such a time consuming gift.

Speaking of Valentine's Day gifts, this year Danielle gave me a super awesome present in the form of an adorable flash game! I made some artwork for it and we added some extras and the result is a game by the title of Cardiac Snowdrift! (Click the link to play, or alternatively play it with medals on NewGrounds here)

There are a couple of neat features we're really proud of in this. Firstly, thirteen different characters from the Valentine's Day series periodically pop up and comment on your progress!

Next, in the past years I've gotten several commission requests to make Valentines for other people's significant others, which I absolutely refuse to do (paying other people to express affection for you is not expressing affection)! But this game contains a kind of compromise! By rapidly picking up hearts quickly enough, you'll unlock one of thirteen, downloadable Valentine's Day cards (although two are unlocked under special conditions)!

These were inspired by those stupid elementary school era, slip of cardboard style Valentines you glue candy to. You can download, print, email, send and/or creepily palm them to whoever you want!

There is also an easter egg for anyone who earns 99,999 points (we estimate this would require playing the game without dying for about 70-100 hours straight).

This is only a small beginning for BarfQuestion Games. As previous posts have shown, we're still in the middle of a much larger game called "Hitting Stuff at a Building." I can't give any estimates at all about when our other games will be coming out (they are really slow and unpredictable), but this is our tentative queue for game projects:

1. Hitting Stuff at a Building

Destroy a gargantuan skyscraper with a badminton racket, and of course, stuff.

2. The Adventures of Puddlenaut

The (hand drawn) 8-bit game featured in "The Faster the Treadmill" music video, including an open ended free will mode starring Fetusaur.

3. Orb of Sock

Burning victims and summoning giant monsters as Sock.. in a pinball machine.

4. SuperVillain Simulator (working title)

Could quite possibly be the most open ended game ever designed. Do everything you've always wanted to as our cardboard clad antagonist.

5. Barfnarök (working title)

A massively indulgent game. Not going to say anything else about this right now.

Anyways, that's more than enough of getting your hopes all up (just so I can dash them against the pavement later WAHAHAH). Next up is "Empire of Sock!" I'm going to be doing some animation experimentation on this one, so there is a good chance I'll be posting about it again well before it is released.

Inconsequential Swarm of the Tiniest News

Suddenly, there are lots of trivial updates to be sharing with you! I've been doing my annual site tinkering and thought I'd first run over a list of little stupid things I added for you completionists.
* There are 17 new animated gifs on the animated gif page.
* I finally fixed some minor site bugs, including upgrading the films page so that it's not tediously infuriating to navigate.
* There's fourteen new entries (in two directories) on the poorly hidden database section for those who have found/care about it.

Next up, the comic! My new year resolution was to do more of this. I realized that on my YouTube page I've been advertising that I update the comic five times a week (see below image). I then realized I either needed to edit that image or start updating five times a week again. And for some reason updating more frequently seems less inconvenient than modifying an image but I don't know how that works. So be sure to start checking the comic out five days a week again starting Monday, January 24th!

In other news, Sulek is getting close to releasing their third album, "Birds in the Attic!" I'm not doing the artwork for this one, so I hope no one got their hopes up that I would. I actually was pretty involved in the creation process this time, but none of my material worked out. The album title was initially "There's No Bottom," and so I made this concept art/pitch for the band when they asked for artwork:

The idea was that the album artwork, as in "Believer's Lane," would convey a story. This time the band traveled to a city of giants and stole a giant's butt, leaving him with no bottom. They then ran away and fell off the city and fell forever because there was no bottom (again). However that idea wasn't serious enough, so it got dropped and then the title underwent lots of changes. The band decided they wanted to do a bird themed album and asked me for a title suggestion and so I pitched the title "Lookout, Windshield!" but that didn't take either. They finally decided on "Birds in the Attic," and I decided I didn't want to draw birds in an attic, and so I didn't.

In the next episode of "Grey's Excuses," I'll try to justify why I haven't released a new game in over a year!

Anyways, speaking of Sulek- for a limited time they've got a couple of new tracks up for download and some new show dates so check that out at their site!

Up next - Valentine's Day!

The Ol' End of the Year Post

Every year I've been posting previews for the next year's worth of material, however I've noticed I never have time to finish them all. So starting this year, I'm doing previews for the next three projects on my queue (followed by three more when those are done, etc). Anyway, I've noticed every year has kind of been taking on a 'theme' of sorts. 2009 was almost entirely dark/horrory stuff and 2010 involved a lot of water. 2011 is going to be MORE EXPLODEY THAN AN OCULAR DYNAMITE ENEMA.

Valentine's Day 2011
As usual, I can't really talk about this here! The only thing I'll say about it is that I think this one is probably the strangest one I've done so far. It's also probably going to be a bit simpler/shorter than last years (by request).
As of right now I've finished the keyframes and have gotten maybe a fourth to a third of it penciled? Not really sure, HENCE THE QUESTION MARK.


Empire of Sock
I already previewed this last year, but it's really happening this time! "Dawn" was largely a standalone piece that introduced everything, "Advent" was Sock's plan being set into motion, but finally, "Empire" is going to be where the exploding colons really collide with the various blowing apparatuses. If you read "Genesis of Sock," you may have a fair idea of what's coming.
This one is going to contain some of the most entertaining action sequences that I've ever done. It's going to be difficult to animate, but I'm really looking forward to drawing loads of reality defying madness.


SuperVillain 6
Throughout its makeshift career, SuperVillain has encountered resistance from various, incompetent forces attempting to stamp out such a unique calling in life. However the biggest threat to SV's livelihood is about to arrive in the form of another BarfQuestion, and a rather psychotic one too. To worsen matters, a returning enemy has been thoroughly upgraded and is back in town in response to recent events. In order to survive, SuperVillain will have to take on two powers that are far in excess of its own.
I've been sitting on this idea since I was making SuperVillain IV and I am extremely excited to get started on it, although it is going to be murderously difficult to produce.

"Hitting Stuff at a Building" might crop up at any time too. But there are no predictions being issued on account of my estimates always being horrifically wrong. A cat passing through on my keyboard had this to say: "p0---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------loooooooooooooooooooooooooooo vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv"

The Return of SuperVillain

It's been over two years, but SuperVillain has finally returned! I apologize that this is coming out a month and a half later than expected. Some very unfortunate things happened during the time I was working on this which delayed production considerably.

I really enjoy animating big robots and explosions and all, but for this installment I wanted to get back to the series' roots of simply running around and generally ruining everything without some major threat to fight. I especially wanted to do this to break up the enormity of SuperVillain IV and the upcoming SuperVillain 6, which is going to be gargantuan (stick around after the credits for a teaser trailer).

I actually did my first ever pickup shots on this project (meaning I finished production and had to go back and animate new shots). The baby/shark fishing sequence wasn't initially planned, but as I neared completion I couldn't believe that I had forgotten to include a token infanticide scene. I MUST BE GOING SENILE IN MY OLD AGE OR SOMMFING.

I've really missed working on SuperVillain, and so I'm making a serious effort to do an episode in both 2011 and 2012. The large and tedious amounts of work that goes into every project gives me a lot of time to think about what to work on next, and so I have pretty solid ideas of what I'm doing with both the sixth and seventh installments.

Anyway since this year has been overflowing with delays, setbacks, and bitter disappointment, I'm going to get started on Valentine's Day 2011 now in order to get going on Empire of Sock early next year. I'll update this blog at least once more this year to give a preview of the next couple of projects I'll be undertaking.

This year is kind of a gravy train, but only in the sense that it's really slow and keeps clogging your arteries.

This year has had this irritating release schedule pattern where I finish a project and then its release is delayed until I finish the next project (whose release is then delayed until the completion of the next project and so on). HENCE THE TRAIN MADE FROM GRAVY.

Remember at the start of the year when I said 'SuperVillain V' was going to be this fun, short, little project that I could speed through before starting on 'Empire of Sock?' Between the tears and frustration sometimes I can too. It's going to be (probably) of average length (3-4 minutes), but it has got an obscene frame count that dwarfs all other SuperVillain projects to date.
The project is about half way through inking after two weeks of delays due to lots of stuff going on in my life. I'm plowing through it again and hopefully will finish in November. "Well butts," you say, "doesn't that only leave a month for production on Empire of S-," to which I would reply "MOTHER OF BALLS I AM COMPLETELY AWARE OF THIS." But I've got a plan, which I will detail in a paragraph or so.

The other question you might have is why 'Hitting Stuff at a Building' has been at 95% completion for a couple months now. Basically, I've completely finished with all of my work on this game, so it isn't something I'm having to put time into any more. However I have no idea how to estimate the amount of work necessary for programming so I just stuck the progress bar at some arbitrary number.

"ENOUGH ABOUT THAT BUILDING GAME," you cry hysterically, "WHAT ABOUT EMPIRE OF SOCK?!" to which I reply with sedatives and deportation notice to the moon. And by that I mean either a notice to deport you to the moon or a notice to deport the moon which will flood you out of existence so I win either way.
With that all cleared up, basically all I can say is there is nowhere near enough time to undertake the monstrosity that is 'Empire of Sock' in a month and a half (or less). So I'm going to start 'Valentine's Day 2011' early once SuperVillain is done which will allow me to get an early start on 'Empire' in 2011. Valentine's Day will probably be a bit simpler this year as well because Danielle has complained that apparently it's really hard to match a gift that took several hundred hours to make.

The good news is that I hope to get a Sock project done this year. "HOW THE F-" you begin to scream, to which I ponder how you are communicating with me from either the moon or from under all this water. Unfortunately the only mystery I'm capable of solving today is what's going on with Sock this year.
The 600th Tales of BarfQuestion comic is coming up, for which I previously planned to make a second chapter of 'Syphilis Rice.' I wrote the script out for it, but I really don't feel like doing it at the moment. All was lost until awesomely, I remembered my long held ambition to make a prequel story to the Sock series. This was either going to be a movie or a game, but I realized it would work much better as a short graphic novel type thing. So there you go moon dwellers/drowning victims. There should hopefully be some new Sock material (laden with plenty of blatant hints about the plot of Empire) coming in the next month or whenever.

FIGHTAN' SOME DRAGONS

The official music video for "The Faster the Treadmill" by I Fight Dragons is out! Watch it here!

I began work on this for the band shortly after completing Grumatorium and later finished it in April. I Fight Dragons utilizes a lot of game controllers and NES era material into their music and performances so I approached this video from a similar perspective; I started by designing and animating gameplay footage from a fictional 8-bit game that the video would take place in.

The result was "the Adventures of Puddlenaut," in which a shark-armed diver hero does battle with deep sea creatures in order to mine mystical power crystals that are abundant in the underwater kingdom. The main grunt enemies, one of which is the protagonist of the video, were modeled after drowned fetuses since I couldn't find any deep sea creatures to fit the image I was looking for. Thus I ended up calling the main character "Fetusaur" throughout production.

After designing and animating the fake game footage digitally using a set of hand drawn sprites, it was a long process of animating the rest of the video traditionally and then compositing the two types of animation together where they overlapped.

There were several games that I drew inspiration from/stuck homages in for, but people's guesses as to what these are have been all over the place. To clear things up, the following are the only ones I intentionally inserted homages to:

Super Mario Bros

Inspiration for the level design, plus considering its status as the best known 8bit platformer, it seemed wrong not to include it.

Megaman

The original series is a favorite of both myself and the band. I included homage to these games in the final boss scene, in

which the chamber has the same time pausing shutter style doors.

Final Fantasy

A favorite of the band, but a game I know hardly anything about (on account of my distaste for RPGs). Every game seems to

revolve around magic crystals according to my brief research, and so the story of "the Adventures of Puddlenaut" is centered

around glowy crystals.

the Katamari series

The first two games are some of my favorite, if not my favorite, games. In a group shot of enemies there is a vaguely Katamari

shaped, green plant in the back (unfortunately it got pretty cropped out in post production).

Portal

The sequel looks like Pixar-inspired garbage, but I adore the original. There is a certain cuboid cameo for all of two frames

during a camera movement early on that is virtually invisible without obsessive pausing.

This is the first and last time I'll ever incorporate video games in my work however, as the internet's over-saturation of crappy video game animations is frankly nauseating.

Stay tuned for BarfQuestion Games debut title "Hitting Stuff at a Building" and a new installment in the SuperVillain series during the next few months! Check out the previous entry for more information because I am all full of hectic and busy and it is difficult to write more things for you when I am moving around this much.

HOLDUP, WHAT IS THE

People seem a little more panicky than usual about there not being any updates, and with reason, because there haven't been any updates. Contrary to assumptions however, I have been hard at work this entire time. What's the deal then? After Valentine's Day 2010 was released, I ended up working on two projects that (unbeknownst to me) wouldn't see release for a long time. 

The first of these projects is the music video I was commissioned to do for I Fight Dragons. Production was finished in late April, but it's been stuck in Atlantic Record's "Marketing Hell Zone of Ultimate Apathy" ever since as the suits decide how best to 'utilize it.' The joys of professional work!

The second project is nearing completion on my end, and it is a game that goes by the title of "Hitting Stuff at a Building." I bumped the adventure game off my immediate list of projects in favor of this, and it will be BarfQuestion Games premiere project. I'll finish working on this in a few weeks and then it'll be sent off to programming. Have a teaser!

Within a sprawling urban landscape, an enormous complex is being constructed. Truly a pinnacle of both human engineering and lust for packing miserable people into constraining spaces, the tower (even while under construction) stands out as an unprecedented achievement upon the horizon. That is until a BarfQuestion with a badminton racket discovers the construction site.

The gameplay is the resulting chaos of this chance encounter. It's racquetball meets badminton meets breakout, all while dodging avalanches of potentially lethal debris, evading the cops, inflicting misery on the construction workers, and finding new and interesting things to hit at the building (and everything else in the vicinity). Features could potentially include unlimited randomly generated gameplay, thirty unique cutscenes, mini-games, and multiple endings.

In other (older) news, I also designed this poster for Sulek as they've got a few upcoming live shows. Check out their Myspace for more information on show times! Additionally, they now have an official website at http://www.sulekmusic.com which you should also visit!

I apologize to everyone for not knowing in advance that these would be slow moving projects, but I assure you that I've been working my crapping facilities off to get them completed. However, if you were understandably disappointed by the first half of 2010, holy-scalding-pants-zipper-fresh-out-of-the-dryer, the second half is going to be more exciting than jet skiing into a volcano filled with those little plastic ball-pit balls. Behold my new queue of projects that I'll be starting on in a couple weeks:

1) SuperVillain V

2) Empire of Sock

3) Short toon, TBA

In addition to this, the slow-butt projects from the first half of the year will be showing up sporadically as well. I hope it will be exciting and not in a "I'm so disappointed that I'm excited" kind of way.