I did my first pace run in two weeks this morning…
…and I didn’t do too badly considering I’ve been taking it easy for a fortnight! I am missing parkrun on Saturdays, but I’m hopeful that I will be able to maintain my speed during this lockdown.
I’ve now got an afternoon and evening of game creation and game playing to look forward to. I feel fairly lucky that I’m an introvert and a homebody anyway, so I can keep myself quite content during this awful world situation, but I know it must be pretty unbearable for people who thrive on social contact.
Tomorrow will be similar, with added Easter chocolate 🙂
Light at the end of the tunnel. Made for my upcoming graphical update of Goblin Decathlon.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Abba – ‘I Have A Dream’ Ram Jam – ‘Black Betty’ The Knack – ‘My Sharona’ Flogging Molly – ‘Drunken Lullabies’ The Pogues – ‘Fiesta’ Rei Kondoh – ‘We Should Turn In For The Night’
…because I wanted to get home quickly and get on with today’s projects. I’ve done a whole separate post about my current adventures in creating game graphics, which is my main focus this week. It’s a lot of fun but also takes a long time!
I find that my hobbies have sort of expanded to fill my current additional free time, and am starting to worry that once this lockdown is over, I’ll go back to feeling like I never have enough time for the things I love doing. One thing that I definitely need to do (and this has been a bit of a theme recently) is learn to let go of the things in life that I’m not enjoying but instead just doing out of obligation.
Tomorrow should be a really good day – I’ll be doing my special run for RED day 100, then a bit of day job work, and then Easter weekend can begin. It’ll be a fairly unusual Easter weekend given the circumstances, but I’m still looking forward to a few days relaxing and the occasional bit of chocolate.
Today’s bit of garden progress: more spring flowers have appeared. Due to the current situation, I’m appreciating our garden a lot more than usual!
Today’s earworm playlist:
Takeru Kanazaki – ‘Fódlan Winds (Thunder)’ Glenn Miller – ‘In The Mood’ Adam & The Ants – ‘Prince Charming’ Cast of The Jungle Book – ‘I Wanna Be Like You (The Monkey Song)’ Michael Land – ‘The Swamp’
I’m creating graphics for my adventure games this week, and because I’m currently working on three different adventure games (set vaguely in the same universe), I’m also working on three different types of graphics!
One of the many goblin officials you meet while trying to win all the gold medals in Goblin Decathlon.
For a graphical update to Goblin Decathlon, my most recent Adventuron jam entry game, I’m currently creating some basic graphics in the same style as I used for Hallowe’en: Night of the Misty Manor back in October for the Hallowe’en jam. This style – which I think (and others have kindly commented on occasion) is quite cute – is very basic pixel art, with flat colours and marginally fleshed-out stick figures – nothing complicated at all – and, unfortunately, represents the limits of what I can currently create from scratch using pixels. I hope to improve my skills in this area, but I’ve got a long way to go.
In Hallowe’en: Night of the Misty Manor, Mr Campbell is in charge of all the party snacks. How are you going to distract him so you can grab one?
For one of my unreleased games – the game idea I was originally intending to create for the most recent jam – I’m taking a different approach and drawing the graphics with paper and pencil. Once I’ve finished that part of the process, I’ll scan them in and finalise the artwork using GIMP (my preferred digital editing software). At the moment I’m planning to keep it black and white for a stylised effect… but I may succumb to the temptation of colouring in during the cleanup process. We’ll see!
This wizard is a central figure in my current series of games, but right now he’s still a very basic pencil sketch.
For my other unreleased game (which is a huge project – I started it for NaNoWriMo last year and am currently working on it again for Camp NaNoWriMo, but I don’t expect it’ll be ready to release until at least the end of 2020), I’m going back to where I started when I had to create last-minute graphics for my first jam entry, The Cave of Hoarding. For that game, I made photo collages and then pixelised them – it was very rough and ready, but I had very little time (in that jam, I spent two weeks working on one game and then had to switch to a different smaller project in the last forty-eight hours when I realised it would be impossible to finish the first on time!) and zero experience of creating pixel art. I’ve been experimenting further since then with pixelised photographs, working on editing and filtering them to make them look more like drawings than photos, and I’m feeling more confident that I can create something nice for this project.
One of the jam conditions for the first Adventuron jam was that certain locations had to be used, including ‘the side of a beautiful lake’. For my attempt at this graphic in The Cave of Hoarding, I used some old holiday snaps to make a photo collage of a lake and some trees, then heavily pixelised it and indexed the colours. I’m not sure how ‘beautiful’ it is, but it was probably the best graphic I made for my first jam attempt!
I’ve never been much of an artist, but creating graphics to go with my games has probably been one of the most enjoyable challenges in making adventure games over the last few months. It’s an area in which I have definite room for improvement!
…and was really glad that it’s still warm and sunny out there, even if I can’t spend much time outside at the moment – running has been really pleasant over the last few days.
I’ve spent most of today creating graphics for my various adventure game projects. Graphics are not my forte AT ALL – I’ve never been much of an artist – but I dream of having beautiful pictures to go with my games, so I have to keep practising. I’ll get vaguely okay at it eventually…right?
Looking forward to a bit more videogaming tonight.
I noticed after wearing them for my run today that my new Tikiboo capris have red phone boxes as part of the design! I love them even more now 🙂
Today’s earworm playlist:
Kuana Torres Kahele, James Ford Murphy and Napua Greig-Nakasone – ‘Someone To Lava’ Depeche Mode – ‘Everything Counts’ Lady Gaga – ‘Judas’ Fleetwood Mac – ‘The Chain’ Jason Donovan – ‘Sealed With A Kiss’
…and even having done the parkrun quiz at 9am, I was still able to get my run done really promptly and so had the whole afternoon for getting on with my text adventure game. It’s such an enjoyable project to be working on, and my latest installment is really starting to come together! I’ll be stretching my (rather weak) art muscles over the next few days in order to create some graphics for it.
I really hope I’ll be able to wake up nice and early tomorrow too, as I’ve felt so much better for it today!
Another holiday snap – this one’s from Gran Canaria, twenty years ago this month. I’d love to go back to the Canary Islands sometime, especially the more out-of-the-way islands.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Tones & I – ‘Dance Monkey’ Mø – ‘Final Song’ Bill Withers – ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’*
*RIP Bill. This song has always been one of my favourites.
…because I needed to visit nine shops before I was able to find any pasta, and so I thought I might as well get my run in as part of the search! Our wee Sainsbury’s Local had a few packs of macaroni left. It transpired that they’re now limiting them to two per customer, which is probably why!
I also (miraculously) managed to find some toilet roll in a pound shop that I never normally go into. Everyone in there was being really great about only taking one pack. I now feel confident that Geth and I have enough to keep us going, even if it takes a couple of weeks before I manage to find some again.
I spent the rest of the day working on a paper for a client – I’m very grateful to have some work at the moment. I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend, including a ‘non-parkrun’ tomorrow and a ‘not nearly as long as in marathon training’ long run on Sunday.
Being in the house means I’m running out of stuff to take photos of, so I made this slightly existential upscaled pixel art self-portrait.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ Badly Drawn Boy – ‘Once Around The Block’ The Beatles – ‘Michelle’
Just got off the treadmill, having done my nightly ninety minutes to get my steps in. It’s a good thing I decided to set my daily step goal as an October target, because I’ve been so busy with my text adventure this week that I doubt I’d have got any exercise in otherwise! Didn’t even make it to ukulele class this evening, although I will be back with a vengeance next week.
Eight and a half hours to go until the jam deadline – and I expect I’ll be up for quite a few of those hours getting everything finished off!
Busy day tomorrow too…
Not an OOTD: I’m still loving making my pixel turnip lanterns! Much easier to make on the computer than hollowing out the real thing…
Today’s earworm playlist:
Michael Land – Lucre Island Lawyers Jimmy Eat World – The Middle Fleetwood Mac – Big Love Duran Duran – First Impression Michael Land – The First Church Of LeChuck…Orthodox Duran Duran – 911 Is A Joke
I’ve had a day in the house today (meaning a treadmill walk this evening to get my steps in!). I’ve mainly been working on my text adventure – the end is in sight in terms of the actual programming, but I’ve still got quite a lot of graphics to create.
I’ve also spent a bit more time looking into job opportunities. There’s a few different things I could do and I’m going to spend a bit more time researching them this weekend.
I’ve had a good day working on my text adventure today. I’m starting to create the graphics now, which is really relaxing! I’m not really any good at drawing but I’m enjoying making my wee pixel pictures.
Now catching up with a few episodes of Strictly and am about to get my steps in with a quick walk on the treadmill.
Not an OOTD: it looks a bit odd as I had to take a picture of the screen (the pixel art is too small to post online!), but here’s a vampire bat I made for a minigame that takes place within the main game!
Today’s earworm playlist:
Michael Land – The Brimstone Beach Club The Sugarhill Gang – Apache
