TIG Jam has run its course and I’m back in San Francisco. (The weather is blessedly gray and cool.) The jam was terrific, such a great creative shot in the arm. The indie community is truly talented and supportive.

On the last night, some of us gave 5-minute talks about whatever happened to be on our minds, indie-wise. Matthew Wegner, CEO of Flashbang (who hosts the jam) encouraged us to eschew the angry ranting format and talk about constructive things. A video of the talks has just been posted, presumably by Matthew. Keep in mind these are highly informal and somewhat off-the-cuff, coming at the end of 3 days of 30 people hanging out together in a medium-sized room.

I come in at 21:00. Other speakers include Danny Baranowsky, Derek Yu, Chris DeLeon, Adam Saltzman, Alec Holowka, and Tommy Refenes.

Update: Here’s the video of everyone showing their projects, later in the evening. Unfortunately, for much of the running time there’s no view of the screen where the work is actually displayed…

I’m at TIG Jam at the Flashbang Office in Tempe, Arizona, with about 29 other indie developers. Everyone is working on various cool-looking projects. The TIG Jam website is updating live with graphics from the event, including a web cam. I’ll be posting concept art there over the next few days.

Alice in Bomberland is an upcoming game for iPhone and iPod Touch, developed by Chris DeLeon. Chris designed and programmed Topple, and worked prominently on Boom Blox. He’s also a teacher of game design and all-around profond penseur. One time, he made a game a day for 219 days!

We met at a bar and before you know it I was drawing the main character sprite for his new game. We turned her into a simplified, Mario-like game hero, designed to read well at a small scale. Other prominent art is by Mark Meyers. The game itself is an old school survival challenge where you jump around frantically avoiding deadly explosives. In keeping with the source material, it diverges frequently into the surreal, here taking the form of fantastic, disorienting special effects.

Now that Alice is done, Chris and I are in preproduction on another game on which I’m the design lead. At this point, it could take virtually any form, although we’re targeting the iPhone/iPod Touch platforms. I’m excited about sharing more information about that at the right time!

Oh, I forgot to mention that I did a painting for the Darkstalkers Tribute book that came out recently. We weren’t supposed to talk about it, and then we were, and I wasn’t sure when it was okay, and I just forgot about it.

But here it is:

For those who don’t know, this is a character from a popular series of fighting games. Pretty sure he’s a vampire. The book has a lot of vampires, as well as mummies. There are also a lot of sexy girls, because undead things are sexy.

Also! When the poster shop opens in the near future, a limited run of these will be available for purchase!

To make this blog post slightly more interesting, I thought I’d share some of the rough drafts. In the original sketch, the guy was more weird looking:

Read the rest of this entry »

Look what the internet made:

We’ve discussed WayForward’s A Boy and His Blob already, but I feel that this adds something valuable to the discourse.

Mihai Lazar from the GMZzz blog recently interviewed me about Braid, A Lesson Is Learned, and the future. Out of an abundance of caution, I frequently employed the “I don’t recall” tactic. Still, Mihai’s interrogative contortions and analytic ambushes are worth the read.

One nice thing about this interview is that although it started in email questionnaire format, we ended up going back and forth a little bit with follow-up questions.

You can read it here.

It’s been about a month since the last maps update. I’ve made incremental progress, but from here on it’s the sort of thing you’ll mostly need to zoom in to see. To be honest, this project has been mostly sidelined by a new work opportunity that arose unexpectedly. (More info on that in time…)

Here’s a zoomed-out view of the whole thing.

Might as well say now: my intention is to sell these maps as posters, along with Braid-related images and my old comics. Back when I was doing A Lesson Is Learned with Dale Beran, we sold prints of those comics. I printed, packaged and shipped each one myself. As much fun as it was to share the work with an audience in a physical way, it ate up a lot of time and we didn’t charge enough to make a worthwhile profit. So I’ve been looking for another way to do this.

At the moment, my favorite option is imagekind, literally the CafePress of art. You create an account, upload your art files, set your profit margin by percentage or flat amount (the base price is predetermined), and prints are made on demand. I’ve ordered their sample booklet and the prints are high quality. One of the paper options is the same as what I used to print myself from home (Epson Photo Luster). They even print on canvas.

On the plus side, I can offer a range of images and see what people like without incurring any up-front risk on a big order. Over time, I could even offer the entire back catalog of A Lesson Is Learned. (Each image requires some preparation, so this would not happen instantly.) So it allows a lot of choice for customers.

Also, because everything is handled by imagekind, I don’t have to do anything! I can keep my hands alien-smooth and customers can expect quick turn-around.

On the minus side, artists don’t have great control over what kinds of prints they offer and how they set their prices. Imagekind offers a dizzying range of paper options, and there’s no way to limit that. Maybe that’s a good thing for certain customers, but I’m a little concerned it could be confusing and deter some. (I’ll probably just indicate my recommendation and people can make up their own minds.)

Another issue is pricing. Each type of paper has its own base price, and I determine the markup (either as a percentage or a flat sum). The markup is controlled per image, not by paper/size. This makes it tricky to not charge too little or too much at one end of the paper spectrum. So the prices will probably seem a little high at the lowest end, and a little bit cheap at the highest end.

However, from a customer’s viewpoint, if you keep in mind that these are not cheapo things that you want to stick to your bedroom wall with rolls of Scotch tape, but really high quality archival art prints that you can frame, the prices will be reasonable.

Because I’m still mulling this over, I thought I’d share this with you in case you have any knowledge to share.

• Anybody have experience with imagekind?
• Know of any good alternatives to imagekind?
• What images would you personally consider purchasing? (Braid, A Lesson Is Learned, maps, other)
• What size print would you ideally want? (imagekind prints up to 60×60″!)
• What is the most you are willing to pay for timeless beauty?

Thanks!

(By the way, some people have asked for wallpaper images for the puzzle paintings Tim assembles in Braid. I don’t plan to offer these as posters. The main reason, which may or may not amuse anyone, is that some things really belong in a certain context. Those images were made to exist in the game, and derive their meaning from that context. They are rewards for thinking through Braid’s challenges. I don’t think they are as good outside of the game. Also I don’t want to contribute to de-mystification of things that are better when you earn them. To the small extent of my influence, I don’t want those images out there to be seen by people who haven’t yet played the game. The secondary reason, also known as the convenient technical problem, is that they were painted at a resolution too low for printing. Sorry to those who’ve requested these!)