Final additions include:

• tutorial bubbles that teach you how to use the town’s healing water and the doctor’s house.
• game save and loading via Flash cookies
• popup numbers to tell you damage being done and when any HUD numbers change
• a rebalance of enemy life and damage so the game progresses more smoothly (you should be able to kill end boss around level 14, instead of the original 20-something)

If you’re interested in hearing more about the developement, here’s the original post.

Again, here’s a description of the game:

It’s kind of a spoof on RPGs. You start in a town and you run out and kill a few guys only to retreat back to town to restore your life.  You do the xp grind like this until you level up and start venturing out farther and farther.  It basically points out the core mechanic RPGs use, which is "forcing people to grind in order to progress".  I wanted it to be so obvious that I didn’t even program any button presses –>that’s right, it’s a zero button game.  However, what started out as a spoof on RPGs turned into, what I think, is an okay game with a nice sense of progression.  It also involves some skill because if you’re not careful your little hero can get double or triple-teamed and will die much faster.  As you get stronger, it becomes obvious since enemies that would 3 hits are now crushed in 1.  Ultimately, you save the princess from an end boss, the red orc.  Actually, you can beat the game multiple times and each time you do, the end credits make a different joke about the hero and the princess’ "happily ever after" depending on how much money you have when you reach the end AND beating the end boss causes all the enemies in the game to level up, increasing the amount of gold and XP they leave behind.

Enjoy!!
~Danny

Basically, my thought process was: "what the? why is he for-each’ing an array created on the spot? –oh, that’s pretty elegant, I should share that."

So basically I just wanted to post to say "hey, check out this for loop." :)

(and go read Tom Carden’s blog! :)

Appreciating the little things,
~Danny

Over the holidays I made a little game I called MicroRPG (here’s the original post, and original playable game page). It’s kind of a spoof on RPGs.  You start in a town and you run out and kill a few guys only to retreat back to town to restore your life.  You do the xp grind like this until you level up and start venturing out farther and farther.  It basically points out the core mechanic RPGs use, which is "forcing people to grind in order to progress".  I wanted it to be so obvious that I didn’t even program any button presses –>that’s right, it’s a zero button game.  However, what started out as a spoof on RPGs turned into, what I think, is an okay game with nice sense of progression.  It also involves some skill because if you’re not careful your little hero can get double or triple-teamed and will die much faster.  Ultimately, you save the princess from an end boss with a ridiculous amount of hit points (just like a Final Fantasy game :).  Actually, you can beat the game multiple times and each time you do, the end credits make a different joke about the hero and the princess’ "happily ever after" depending on how much money you have when you reach the end.

Anyway, I’ve been playing with the code in my spare time (which is not much :) and working on a version 2.  It’s not currently running well enough to release again, but I just finished upgrading the hud and it looks sooo much better!  So much so, that I thought I’d post a screen-shot (even tho the game is not ready to release again).  Before, the hud was just some numbers along the bottom of the screen.  Now it’s closer to my original idea.  I wanted to embrace the whole "micro" part of the MicroRPG idea and make it look like the "screen" was also ‘micro’ by making a little box around the hero.  It looks sooo much nicer and it’s soo much easier to play when the info you need from the hud is only an inch from where you’re already looking.

Improvements include:

• Hearts to show health, which break down into 5 pieces in each heart
• As you level up, you get another heart
• When you die, one of your hearts is x’ed out and can’t be filled until you go to the little doctor’s house and pay gold to get it fixed.
• The "Attack" and "Defense" numbers are now icons that change as the hero gets stronger.  The icons are also in the hero’s hands.

Unfortunately, by redoing the hud, I now have to re-balance the game (I halved the hero’s hp… which makes all the enemies kill you really fast now).  Before the next release, I’m hoping to create a new map and have creatures drop items (so the map above might be removed/replaced).  I’m also debating about removing XP completely and going with a more Zelda style approach where all progress is ultimately an item you have to collect.

anyways, I’ll keep you posted (all 2 of you who actually played the original :p  )
~Danny

Briefly, during the talk, Stefan mentions finally getting a chance to read Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert.  Stefan noted that this book was written while the author was on sabbatical.  So I googled the author and found that he too had two ted.com talks about why are we happy and our mistaken expectations. After watching the videos, I decided to pick it up.

If you haven’t already watch the videos above, this book’s look at "happiness" based on a scientific approach.  Its definitely not a touchy-feely book about finding some secret to happiness but rather a vast array of results and conclusions based on control groups and studies.  It’s pretty eye opening in many ways.  It amazing to see how humans poorly predict what will lead to happiness and how our psychological defenses deal with things we can not change.

 I think the best way to detect whether or not *you* would like the book would be to watch Daniel Gilbert’s ted talks.  However *I* personally enjoyed it enough to buy it, read it, and find all those links above so I could post about it.  :)

…and I plan on reading it again :)

enjoy,
~Danny

Great Grandma is no longer with us.  I made this comic over a year ago, but never posted it.  My sister said it best.

Maria Albani would have been 93 this month. I can’t imagine everything that she saw in her life, in America and in Sicily. She was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known and she loved her family more than anything else in the whole world. I’ll miss you Great Grandma, say Hi to Grandpa Mike for me. I love you.

I love you great grandma.
~Danny

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

I saw a few other sites doing this decade recap thing and I thought I’d give it a try :)  It’s amazing how it all adds up.  I’d like to give a quick word for what was going on with each year, I’ll try to be brief.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2000

In 2000 I was mostly still doodling.  Basically everything I drew was an experiment (which is why I left the "experimental" item blank).  My polished work was sort-of colored in the computer, but I didn’t quite get shadows yet.  When trying to draw from a reference, I set my sights lower than photos and instead drew other people’s drawings.  And finally, my self-portrait was at the tail end of my "goth is cool" phase.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2001

2001 was the first time I was drawing with others.  I was in LA and hooked up with people for "sketch parties" thrown by the (soon to be) admins on drawingboard.org Basically, I was socializing with real artists and art school grads who were as encouraging as they were inspiring.  I drew a lot more that year and the group passed plenty of advice my way.  I found myself drawing one-panel comics, working from photo references and attempting to take things to a much more polished state (though I still had much to learn about anatomy, light/shadow, composition, etc).  At the time I was experimenting with the nearly-overwhelming idea of drawing **an entire comicbook page**.  Something I didn’t thing I could do until I used an x-men comic as a reference and drew the whole first page. (I was excited, but ended up getting flamed on forums for copying vs making my own comic)

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2002

In 2002 someone told me that all I had to do was spend 10 minutes a day drawing and I’d get good at it.  Basically, he was encouraging me to practice.  So I created a "sketch calendar" where I posted what I drew each day and tried to draw for at least 10 minutes each day.  Even though I was still just stumbling though trying to teach myself to draw, it really did make a difference.  You can see this by my experiments with longer comics (a page or more) since they show a lot of work, but also show a lack of composition and can be downright hard to read/follow.  I also tried to participate on various forums more for motivation and ideas.  The polished piece is a self portrait done in the Gorillaz art style, which was a forum jam.  Also the reference sketch was another forum jam.  I kept up with the sketch calendar’s 10 minutes a day for 9 months straight until….

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2003

So what happened in 2003?  Why is it that I only have 3 pages of doodles in my sketchbook to show for it?  Well it’s quite simple.  My girlfriend, whom I was living with, turned out to need a lot of attention.  As in, an unhealthy amount.  2003 was over by the time the whole ordeal with her was officially done with.  A word of advice, if you’re significant other is not letting you have time to do what you love to do, maybe they shouldn’t be so significant.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2004

After kicking a certain girl to the curb, I tried to jump right back into my sketch calendar in 2004.  I only did it for about 3 months this time, not because I didn’t have time, but because I was starting to out grow it.  I was working on comics (like the Dragon Ball Z spoof) that took way more than 10 minutes, and in many cases took multiple days.  I was starting to find the patience to work on one piece for an extended amount of time and was satisfied with my progress/pace to stay excited and motivated enough to keep working on a single piece.  I was attempting to draw things other than girls and cartoons, like flowers, motorcycles, and space ships.  At that time I was also discovering manga and started experimenting with more of that style of drawing.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2005

 In 2005, I met Alberto Ruiz at Wondercon here in San Francisco.  I loved his work from his posts on forums and only went to the convention to see him in artist alley.  I was such a fan-boy that I blurted out "how do you draw so good?".  And he actually told me.  He gave me a quick lesson on how he tackles a drawing and then told me that he spends time every day doing slide-show sketching.  That is, he has a bunch of photo reference on his computer that he sets to randomly display for 30 seconds or a few minutes each and just sketches away at whatever is onscreen.  So I started experimenting with that and I’d never filled up so much paper so fast.  I also continued to drop by various online forums from time to time to participate in a sketch jam.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2006

Katie Cat and Juvenile Drivel were started in 2006.  I figured, if I could post a comic or two each week, I’d eventually have a whole comicbooks worth of material.  And it worked.  Having a milestone to post a comic online each week really helped.  I also specifically targeted art styles that would keep the project doable and possible to keep up with (while working a full time job).  I also got a tablet pc, so my process changed since inking became soooo much easier.  I did a lot of experimenting with process and approaches using the tablet in an effort to streamline my work flow as much as possible. This was put to the test when I took the 24 hour comic challenge (along with a couple sketchcrawl friends, Paul and Ryan).  Which brings me to the next point, I was also pretty into Sketchcrawl in the San Francisco area.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2007

2007 was a crazy year.  After a twist of fate, I found myself unemployed for a lot of the year.  This left me 40 hours a week to draw –I mean, look for a job….  The most notable thing was the Vacation Comic and my Comic Journal.  I was drawing a comic every day plus the comics that would ultimately make up a book for my fiance.  I got A LOT of drawing practice in and a lot more workflow streamlining in.  I was experimenting with painting via the tablet pc, but never really got a change to stick with it.  However my confidence with the tablet and cartoon/sunday-comics style.  I finally decided to invest real money in my drawing and started taking night classes at SFAI.  I also found some places to go life drawing, something I’ve never actually done.  Finally, I was drawing real anatomy from a real live reference and learning new techniques.  This was also the year I discovered Bay Area Artists Unite, which is a small group, but a dedicated one.  I gave them about 30 pages of "You had me at croissant" for their annual.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2008

I got the first order of "you had me at croissant" in early 2008.  It was, by far, the biggest project I’ve attempted and it actually got finished :)  I started taking Chinese Brush Painting classes with my fiance, which was a good experience, I’ve got plenty of posts about it.  I discovered entervoid.com (which is all about user drawn comic battles) and I started their "draw 50 hands" challenge (because I can’t draw hands and needed practice).  This was also the year I game up with the Blonde Shelly concept (which is the idea of having a nude female character in a story, but somehow making her NOT the main character –it was basically a self imposed challenge.)  I also kept in touch with Marc (from my previous job) and experimented a lot with his style of starting and ending with pen.  It was a very different way to draw.  You have to really plan before you lay down your lines.

	Comics	Experimental	Polished	Ref	Self-portrait
2009

I was working full time again, making games, for all of 2009, so I didn’t draw anywhere near as much as when I wasn’t working.  I didn’t draw hardly any comics or cartoons at all (maybe I was burned out on comics? or maybe I just didn’t have much time to draw).  Again I took night classes at SFAI, including an Anatomy class.  That class made a big difference.  For the first time, I had someone telling me "no, not like that, do this."  I mean, I finally had an instructor that did more than blindly encourage everyone.  He pointed right at mistakes and say "that’s wrong", then he showed you how to do it right.  My life drawing improved greatly in 3 months.  I also experimented with some abstract ideas in the other drawing class.  I usually *hate* abstract art… but it was a fun experience.  Finally, a friend of mine setup a private lesson with a watercolor painter.  Watercolor is much different than Chinese Brush Painting, it’s something I’d like to try again in the future (even if I am terrified of painting in color)

Now, what have I learned from all this?  Where do I go from here?  What do I do next? 

Well, I don’t have any comicbooks planned at the moment.  I have plenty of ideas, but no real plan for completing them like I have in the past (which means they won’t get done! :)  However, I’m in a different head-space lately.  I’d really like to practice at getting better.  I mean, I’d like to learn/practice new techniques and get better, not just draw what I’m already comfortable with (which is cartoony-comic that allow me to hide the things I’m bad at drawing… like hands).  I’ve already signed up for a couple more night classes: intermediate drawing and drawing motion (I’m excited about that last one).

In the end, I think the biggest lesson to learn from all this is: the years I practiced the most, I improved the most.

You only fail if you stop trying,
~Danny

PS: It’s 2010!!  Where the hell is my flying car!?

I got inspired over Thanksgiving and made this game.  Then I worked on it some more over Christmas.  It was loads of fun to make so I thought I’d share :) 

Click on the image to actually go to the page that has the game on it.

I just think it’s funny to have an RPG on such a tiny scale :)

Enjoy,

~Danny

So we found ourselves with many familiar concepts but the biggest difference is that Chinese brush and ink is done on rice paper and watercolor is done on watercolor paper.  The paper ends up having a huge impact.  Rice paper absorbs and spreads the ink and colors, but watercolor paper doesn’t (or doesn’t any where near as badly). 

With rice paper, you lay down a stroke and that’s it.  You get it right or you fall back on changing that stroke into something else.  With watercolor you can use a sponge to actually pick up the color off the page.  It’s so effective that it’s like having an eraser or an undo button.  You can also use the sponge to blend things together and smooth out hard lines.  On top of that, you can purposely come back and hit a hard line with water blend it.

For Example: at one point, my birds in the sky were nearly black.  So I used the sponge to pick up most of the color and make them look more distant.

You can also see the effects of blending verses not blending by looking at the greenery in the forground compared to that mountain in the back on the right.  The first has much more texture and abrupt color changes while the one in the back is more smooth.  I personally am used to seeing the more abrupt colors when I see people watercoloring.  I didn’t know you could purposely make such smooth transitions without being forced to fallback on a wash.

It was a fun experience.  The same, but different.  Maybe I’ll take some more classes in 2010. :)

I’ve been taking night classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. This week, some of my work will be on display in the Diego Rivera Gallery!! :)

Diego Rivera Gallery, December 14-December 18

San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
( map )

The work is slightly abstract, which is something I don’t normally like, but somehow I got wrapped up in it :) I’ll *try* to get pictures :)

There’s actually a lot of artists on display, so it should have something for everyone’s taste. And the campus is beautiful, so don’t hesitate to wander around the courtyard or go out to the open area that has a spectacular view of the city.

~Danny