Ricki and I have been working on our next indie game called GravityRun for quite a while. We’ve gotten great help from voice actors, an awesome script writer for the dialogue and plot, we’ve got a great animator on hold for the cut-scenes, and no other than the amazing SID-metal band, Machinae Supremacy to compose the music for the game. Henning was hooking up with the band two days during their Athens gig on their European tour. Good things are definitely coming!

What’s our plan with the game? We don’t have a major plan, to be honest. We simply just want to make a fun game by taking an old-school game-play concept that we enjoy ourselves, and take it many steps further by taking advantage of modern technology, eye-candy, a light and fun storyline, our love for game development, and good old hard work to get there. And I think we have a game-play and concept that some people will enjoy.

More information about GravityRun on our site.

Here are some screenshots from our current test-bed.

Our first project, Ubergridder is in it’s beta state, so head over to have a test, completely for free!

The fridge is packed to the brim of beer, vodka, sangria, amaretto, and cookies, so we should we well suited for a late evening of horror and laughter.

We have a list of movies ready, and we’ll watch a few of them. On the short-list we find:

• Fright Night (not a craptasic movie, but pure and simple awesome 80′s comedy horror fun).
• Braindead (also not a bad movie, just packed with awesomeness).
• Birdemic (now, THIS is a crappy movie. Looking forward to this one).
• Poultrygeist, Night of the Chicken dead (a low budget musical with zombie chicken-humans, and lots of breasts. What can possibly be bad about this one?)
• Killer Clowns from outer space (good old movie, lots of fun).
• Zombie Strippers (one of my favorite stupid horror movies. Lots of fun! Wonder how they convinced Robert Englund to star in this one).
• Evil aliens (very bad movie, I know it has a few funny moments).
• Evil Dead (old classic).
• Troll 2 (Awared THE BEST worst movie ever, and I totally agree!).
• Re-Animator (Pretty awesome Lovecraft adaption).
• The Stuff (old, very crappy movie. Could be fun but I’m a bit concerned that it might be a tad slow).
• Shaun of the Dead (GREAT horror comedy, lots of fun!).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m super happy for all the cool projects I’ve been offered and worked on, and sad about all the projects I had to turn down because of lack of time, but after a while of working hard you start to feel it.

For the past 2-3 weeks I haven’t work on extra projects at all and it actually feels good, which is a sign I should take seriously. It’s definitely time for a break and focus on my own projects and refill my muse. However, I will naturally be on alert for any special projects that might come my way, and still stay true to my good old clients

To help me on my way, I’ve purchased 3 books about computer games, just to be able to relax and don’t sit in-front of computers, yet still learn more about what I love doing.

Replay: the History of Video Games  Replay: the History of Video Games.
I love watching documentaries about the youth of the video games history, and with several books on the market this was the one that seemed like a good buy.

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter  Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter.
This is a book I’m looking forward to read. It’s short, has big letters, and will probably be a good choice for my first read to ease into things. I’ve also been recommended this book from others.

Fun Inc.: Why Games are the 21st Century’s Most Serious Business.
Random buy, but I’ve read some interesting reviews about this book that made me curious.

When starting out you usually have to present a series of rough sketches, just to give the client a good variety of poses to choose from. Some poses might be requested by the client, and some might be of your own likings and should also be included as an option, which I did in this case.

When I made the illustrations for Burton Snowboard’s 2011 Love collection, I presented a series of rough gray-scale sketches to my client to give them a few choices to pick from. Clothing, facial expressions and style is not important at this stage, only the overall pose. We also had to take under consideration that they are to be used on a narrow and limited space on the surface of the boards, leaving us with some limitations. I also tried out a few poses taking advantage of the limitations by having some of the characters lean on the sides of the board lay-out.

Once we had four poses chosen, we started fleshing out the concepts and gave each girl a theme. Even if you have a plan, things are always subject to change, and sometimes initial plans and ideas might sound settled and the way to go, you still might want to alter a few things or even change direction completely.

The cowgirl design actually started out quite differently; with a completely different girl in a very different pose. Heck, she even started out as a blond, as seen below:

Other designs might work well from the get go and merely ends up with some minor alterations, as with the outfit of the navy-girl design seen below. No polka dots allowed in the navy

The nurse design started out with a slightly different idea; with the girl having skis on her feet. Also, the nurse changed a few times, from the more naughty kind we all know too well, to a more generic and cute version. A good decision all in all in my opinion considering the use.

The sailor girl is probably my favorite, probably because I am fairly happy with her face. However, we did struggle a bit nailing down her facial expression, and we tried several different facial expressions after deciding on her outfit.

Click here to see the finished Love 2011 collection on Burton’s official site.

Ok, so we’re paying out of our arses to go there, but not having to stand in line like a bunch of sheep kinda makes it worth it.

For starters, the Gold Class Theater main entrance is on a different location than the normal movie theater entrance, and what you experience first is a beautiful lounge with seats and a huge bar. You also get offered champagne (well, probably the cheap bubbly version, but still) when you enter, and are handed a menu where you can choose all kinds of drinks and different dishes varying from starters, main courses and desserts; all named after cheesy film titles (The Terminator, Fight Club (the club sandwich, harr-harr!, and so on…).

When the theater opens, they will lead each person/group of people at a time into the theater to their seats, which are huge lazy-boys with electric leg support. Later, they will bring you the drinks and food you ordered to your seats during the duration of the movie. It doesn’t get better than that…

…except that they forgot about my main course, obviously

We went to see Inception; a very cool movie with many layers and the most impressive and creative fighting scenes I’ve seen in any movie so far.

Nevertheless, it will be hard to go back to a normal movie theater now…

We’re usually going to this private beach facility called Moraitis. You pay for two beds and an umbrella, and they have a good bar/kiosk to buy drinks, food, and snacks. Very handy and totally worth it compared to over crowded free beaches with sand storms and people stumbling over you, and by arriving early, you can leave when the masses starts pouring in.

There’s nothing like nice, clean, sandy beaches. I have to admit that I hate sea weed and weird ass underwater plants with a passion. Well, at least the part about stepping into them, so leave me at a nice sandy beach like this and I’ll stay for ever. This upcoming weekend we’re planning on going snorkeling at a location further north. This will hopefully lead to some cool photos of marine life and plants (yeah, photographed from a distance )

After being here in Athens for an entire year, it was great to see family and to catch up with old friends again. The past year has been dominated by massive amounts of work, and finally being able to do pretty much nothing for 16 whole days was just what I needed. Athens is super hot at this time of year, and coming home to the fresh summer breeze of Norway was more than welcome. Just sitting in a park with a beer, doing nothing but looking at people was for some reason very relaxing, and the traffic cannot be compared to what the hell is going on here in Athens, hehe.

I visited Akershus Fortress in Oslo, and a couple of weapons and war museums leaving a good pile of reference photos which I’m sure will come handy sometime in the future.

It should be mentioned that KLM managed to overbook my flight, leaving me stranded in Amsterdam for about 7 extra hours, and then on top of that also lost my luggage, so the hills weren’t all alive with the sounds of music in the very beginning…

…oh, and Norwegian prices, hehe. Damn, I almost forgot how expensive everything was up there

Here are some impressions from my visit during end of July/beginning of August:

Will keep fiddling about  a little bit more, and slowly get into posting more stuff now that everything is all brand new and shiny.

The cool thing is that this model has already gone out of production so what is to be found in stores are the only ones left on the market. I smell a valuable collectors item for the future.

Hmmm… I’m wondering if I can actually fit inside of it once it’s been built.