Blog for Nate Feyma at GarageGames.com

Great Games Contest Avatar Winners - Round 2!

Nate Feyma — 2007-02-08T22:58:27+00:00

Two posts in as many days... if I do any more, I'd be in trouble for spamming! Regardless, it's that time again! Yes, another round of the Great Games Contest has come and gone (There's a third round going on now - you should probably check it out if you haven't already. The prizes are getting larger and larger). That means that I was able to put down my fonts and gradients and pick up the pen and tablet, and start making some custom avatars! Once again, office sentiment says that it's nice to share, so here are the winners and their brand-new avatars:

Most Kudos recieved by a Gamer: scottige

This pint and pool loving retro gamer requested a visual update on his old avatar, which looked (to my uneducated eye) like some sort of marshmallow peep in medieval armor. I think it may have actually been something else, though. Regardless, this tiny (and adorable) warrior was a blast to draw.

Most Kudos Recieved by a Developer: oddbob

This request was a bit unusual in that oddbob gave me two suggestions, and let me make the final decision. My choices were Jet Set Willy, or the beastie on the cover of the Tempest 2000 box. In the end, I decided to draw the demon-alien-badguy from Tempest 2000. Although the temptation to do the man in the pink space tuxedo was very tempting, I just haven't gotten to draw a good alien for awhile. I also decided to throw in the player ship as well - it's nicely out-of-place with the surroundings, just as it was on the original Jaguar box.

Although there are still three more rounds to the Great Games Contest, there's only one avatar prize left - check back in two weeks to see the next winner's circle, and the last custom avatar (Grab the most kudos from now 'till the 19th, and the avatar could be yours, gamers!).

Great Games Contest round 1 avatar winners

Nate Feyma — 2007-02-05T21:57:36+00:00

Some of you may recall that a few of the Great Games Contest prizes were custom-made avatars by the artist responsible for the appearance of the Great Games Experiment. Well, that artist is me, and the first batch of avatars have been done. It's always fun to get away from web graphics and get some actual drawing and coloring done. The other folks around the office suggested that it might be nice to share the images with you all, so here goes!

Most Kudos recieved by a gamer: OnyxAbyss
OnyxAbyss requested a 'cartoonized' version of a Templar from the upcoming game 'Hellgate: London'. I'm always a fan of sci-fi knights in techno armor, and dove right in. It took me awhile to get a pose I was happy with, but I do like the results.

Most Kudos recieved by a developer: Marek Bronstring
Marek asked for a hybrid of Otto von Bismarck (from the Civilization series, and also real history) and Coach Oleander (from Psychonauts). This one was also a blast to do, and took a couple of tries to really get it. The picklehaube (pointy helmet) was an absolute necessity.

The next round of the Great Games Contest has just wrapped up, and there'll be a new pair of avatars done for those winners soon! Check back for the next set of lucky winners!

Tankbuster: the .plan

Nate Feyma — 2006-08-18T22:58:46+00:00

Considering the length of time (nearly on 3 months now) I've been working as an artist here at GarageGames, I think it's high time I introduced myself, and a few of the things I've been working on during my time here. As this is my first .plan, pleas bear with me.

Officially, I'm the new web/2d/marketing artist. That's pretty vague, but it means that I tend to work on a huge variety of projects. Definitely a good deal, in my opinion.

Over the past month, I've gotten to create all the art assets for a TGB tutorial entitled Tankbuster. The demo made its offical debut at Gamefest just last weekend, and ought to be showing up on the site in the near future. During the process, we also decided to get a version running on Torque X, which enabled us to do some pretty neat things graphically.

The Art of Tankbuster
At the start of the project, I was planning on using Mark M's lovely bomber featured in the TGB banner (which can be found here). That plane determined the entire look of the game (squashed, Advance Wars style objects with bright, painterly colors), before I gave in to my desire to make my own plane. Although I'm not a programmer by any means, TGB was a big help in prototyping my art - I just started with the space scroller resource pack and replaced the beginning art with my own. Unexpectedly, I also found TGB to be an invaluable animation tool while I was working on the explosions. The program makes it very easy to preview an animation, which lets you go back and make any desired tweaks. The ability to use animations within the particle system was also a very useful feature.

Enter Torque X
Midway through the project, the decision was made to make a Torque X version of Tankbuster. That opened up a few new graphical options for the game, like normal mapping. The ability to make a 2D sprite react realistically to dynamic lighting was too good an opportunity to pass up, and so most of the foreground objects got a shiney normal map to give them some depth.

I'm honestly sad that the project is wrapping up. I had the amazing experience of being responsible for the look and feel of this game from the beginning. There were definite highs and lows, but getting even a small demo game finished and out the door is an incredibly rewarding feat. Adam Larson and Thomas Buscalia get big shouts out for their patience as we tried to get the handling and pacing just right.

All in all, Tankbuster is nearly done for now. There are a few graphics that still need to be made, and a few features to be implemented (player damage, score counters, etc.) before it's ready to go out as a demo. After that, I'd certainly like to revisit it at some point to add more levels, enemy types, and terrain objects - and a boss fight seems like a definity necessity. However, there are still more demos, icons, and web features to be made. Keep an eye out - GG is going to see a lot of neat stuff in the near future.

For those interested, the video of the the Tankbuster demo in action can be found here. It's about 35 minutes in.