Grunts: Skirmish art stuff

Hey guys! Crossing my fingers this blog post works! Been awhile since my last update so figured I'd post some of the art I've been working on recently over at PushButton Labs. We've been working on a variety of projects, but over Nov/Dec I've been focusing mostly on a little Flash game called Grunts: Skirmish. This is our first project based on the Grunts IP Jeff mentioned in one of his blogs over at MakeItBigInGames.com. True to the "Art of backing off", we kept scaling back our ideas for a Flash based RTS until we had Grunts: Skirmish, a hybrid mixture of RTS and tower defense elements.


We thought the best step would be to get the mechanics up and running. The game is making great progress, I recently completed all the 2D animations and am moving onto the level design. It hasn't just been all me though, I have had some great help getting the art to this point. Todd Pickens did a wonderful job on the character designs and modeling, and a first-time indie game dev Michael Lee Lunsford has been helping us flesh out bits of our cut-scenes.


In other news, PBL, will be making the trek to GDC this year (woop dee doo), but more importantly we will be attending the Flash Game Summit on Sunday, March 22nd. The Flash Game Summit is an awesome conference thrown by our friends over at MochiAds, and we are really looking forward to it. It has the whole IndieGamesCon[RIP] vibe going. Rumor has it Jeff T. and Ben Garney are thinking about giving one of their famous (or infamous depending on who you are) talks at the conference. If you want to talk about games, PushButton Engine, or anything, hook up with me via email, or LinkedIn. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@timaste). I've been using it more and more, and have been known to leak cool art through there.


Lastly, I've been working more on my personal blog (Subreal.Net) lately and have been cooking up a bunch of tutorials. I have a few coming out, but I recently published a tutorial on making organic shapes using Lofts and Snapshot Arrays in 3DS Max. I have a few drafts for game development ones, and even a few on Torque art in the cooker. I have had a little experience with Torque's sometimes mystical art pipeline. At some point, I really want to sit down and start packaging up a bunch of the unfinished content I have laying around as free "content packs". :)

Random fun fact: Do you know Flash is installed on around 998 million computers right now? That is insane!

I leave you with this picture of me in front of the yurt: