For fun I tend toward deeper games but I’ve been looking at a lot of web offerings lately, mostly out of professional curiosity. From a design perspective, Neptune’s Pride by Iron Helmet Games is a standout. For anyone interested in the fundamentals of game design, there’s a lot that can be learned from taking a look at how all the parts fit together here.Some dissection:Fleets A carrier sweeping up loose ships.Ships are the basic “piece” in the game, moved from star to star to gain or defend territory. However, they cannot warp around on their own. They require a fairly expensive carrier to transport them. In addition, once a carrier is loaded with ships and on its way, it is out of contact and ...
Just last week, the calendar flipped over the one year mark for Robot Entertainment. I remember our first day very clearly. It was a Tuesday, I drove up to Plano from my apartment in Dallas, arriving a few minutes early, ready to sit down at my desk and get started. I came in to the office to find wires laying everywhere, boxes and furniture upside down in the hallways. Contractors were drilling and hammering a wide variety of things into the walls. I walked around and realized that I couldn’t find any actual Robot employees. Finally I found VP Patrick Hudson in an office on the phone. He sees me, gives me an incredulous look and asks “Didn’t you get the email?” I had not, in fact, recei...
Hey all.. Gene here. I have the priviledge of kicking off the Robot ArtBlog's Theme... Monsters!... hope you enjoy... I read the Wheel of Time Series of Fantasy novels by Robert Jordan during my college years. Ok... I made it to Book 5 or 6 of the series... I luv’d the characters, the world, the intricate detail, etc that Robert created but the books are just soooo looong winded. I eventually threw in the towel BUT... I found the world, characters, creatures, and the lore very artistically inspiring and interesting. One of the main creatures that always stuck in my noggin were the Shadowspawn's Trollocs. These creatures made up the bulk of the Shadowspawn's mainline infantry type units. Animal DNA magically fused with human... Trollocs were very coo...
Robot Entertainment is host to a couple of Canadians, and when the Canucks brought home their gold over the Americans in Men's Ice Hockey at the Olympics in Vancouver, they were more than happy to boast of the pride they felt for their homeland. Here is Robot Entertainment Artist Bart Tiongson with Team Canada's Jarome Igilna: Robot Entertainment would like to congratulate the Canadian Men's Ice Hockey Team for their Gold Medal and are proud to have played a small part in their success. *wink* Read on for a transcript of the Calgary Flames visit to Ensemble Studios in March of 2004. ----------- In January of this year, an ES employee sent an email around the office about how the Calgary Flames unwind on their road trips. We were delighted to find that...
Before the memory of the 2009 NFL season fades into our cluttered mental rolodex and we begin looking forward to crowning of the next Super Bowl Champs (congrats to the New Orleans Saints and all of their fans by the way); what better time to talk about our first Robot Fantasy Football League. A handful of us have been getting together every season for that past 8 years or more just to prove to ourselves that “Yes we can put together a better team than Jerry Jones!” Yeah I know it’s a little different set of circumstances, but hey its fantasy right? Go Cowboys! We typically form two leagues every year consisting of 8 to 12 players per league. Our “Big League” is made up of the more seriously competitive (slightly ...
I know, I know, we already wrapped up the Saturday Morning Cartoon theme. But just like Freakazoid, I'm unpredictable! Freakazoid was a short lived cartoon around that came on between Earthworm Jim and Road Rovers! Now that was an awesome cartoon lineup! He couldn't fly so he would just raise his arms in the air and make swooshing sounds. This drawing isn't as goonish as the cartoon, but I tried to draw it from memory. Hope you enjoy!!
Another showing of amazing participation from the art staff for this theme, I’m still blown away… a 9 part theme, with first posts from Gene and Bimbo Soup! And Pyxlwyz got a Forza 3 Painting post up since I was last online for the GI Joe theme, he’s our Special Effects artist extraordinaire. There is only one artist is left to post, and 2010 is his year! It’s been a while since I’ve been online here, and I wish that I could say that I’ve been spending every waking moment on my theme project for S. M. Cartoons, but with the holidays and Modern Warfare 2 (a lot of Modern Warfare 2,) things kind of got in the ways of my progress. I still got enough done to share with you guys, so here it goes. I wanted to pick a bit...
Hello! Like several of the other artists here, ThunderCats was one of my favorite cartoons as a child. I especially liked Cheetara, she was Hot! My work is unfinished, although it was still a lot of fun and quite a learning experience. I've not spent much time with Zbrush, and this was the first time to REALLY use the program. It’s impressive and I plan to keep learning more about the software. Anyhow, my plan was to infuse more feline qualities into the Cheetara design, like large cat eyes, a cat nose and cat hind legs. I hope to eventually finish this model, and get her posed, I think the ankles and feet would be more successful if shown carrying her weight more naturally. The ankle and legs are th...
Solium Infernum, by Cryptic Comet, is another turn based strategy game that we’re running at the moment. It’s our first game of it so everyone is just learning it now. The story to the game goes something like you’re a powerful demon in Hell and there’s a power vacuum and you have to defeat the other powerful demons to be crowned the new ruler of Hell. Its hex based, you only get a few Actions per turn (and EVERYTHING costs an Action). There’s plenty of diplomacy in the game, and a little bit of combat. You take an Action to get resources, and then recruit Legions to explore the map and capture Places of Power, which give you Prestige Points which is the measure of victory. ...
What's happening. This is my first art blog post so be gentle. I decided my subject was going to be Pirates of Dark Water from the start. I have always thought this was an awesome cartoon with it's crazy prog rock album cover inspired art. So to help me along the way in creating this I listened to Rush's 2112 album a million times over. Yes Rush rocks!! This process was a combination of 3DMax, Photoshop and a little World Machine thrown in. Hope you enjoy it.
