Daily Pattern: Down Right Fierce

I love fighting games. They're the reason I got into video games in the first place. Although I've played them all, I specifically love Street Fighter. I've been playing Street Fighter for years and years and I can never get enough. I always want one more round.

Of course, even Street Fighter is pretty boring game if you don't have a perfectly balanced opponent to fight. My friend Ryan is just about as close as it gets. There's ups and downs, but we generally come out near 50/50 by the end of the night. No matter the score, we always have to make the last match an epic, age-old battle: his Ken vs my Ryu.

And I usually blow it. But I don't care because there's nothing I'd rather do. So this is dedicated to the incessant tapping of the buttons on my arcade stick when Ryan and I do battle.

Daily Pattern: Snake? SNAAAAAAAAKE!

I was all set to draw some wicked-bad snakes when I jokingly mentioned to Francesca that I should do a Metal Gear Solid pattern (Solid Snake being the main character). After all, Metal Gear is a favorite franchise of everyone here at Paper Bicycle. I think two out of the three of us have a crush on Otacon...

Anyway, once it was said there was no taking it back. I had to do it.

One thing about Snake is, he loooooves boxes. Ever since the beginning, box-hiding has been an integral part of the Tactical Espionage Action. And later, in Metal Gear Solid 4, barrel-hiding was added to the mix. Innovation!



This pattern makes perfect sense to those familiar with the franchise. Everyone else is probably very confused.

Daily Pattern: The Red Cyclone!

Who's more muscular than the RED CYCLONE himself, Street Fighter's Zangief?! No one! Also, who's got weirder armpit hair?



No one!

Daily Pattern: Sgt. CUTE

Whew! It's after midnight on Sunday, but I'm caught up from our trip to Montana! Whoo-hoo!

I got a strong response to my previous pattern The CUTE Clan. Basically, everyone said "Where are you?!"

I guess I am the founder of Team CUTE and the one who brought most of these wonderful friends together for the first time. I guess I had no choice.

So here I am. A pattern all about moi! What a guy!

Daily Pattern: the CUTE clan

This pattern is dedicated to the CUTE clan, which consists of myself, Chris, Ryan, Jesse and sometimes Adam.

We always make our clan tag "CUTE" and roam from game to game (Battlefield being the usual stand by), laughing it up and taking on all opponents.



One of my favorite things about playing with these guys are the quirks and personality that comes out while playing. Ryan is all about teamwork, he'll always wait for you to join him before an attack. Chris is the lone wolf, veering from the pack out of nowhere to find a good sniping spot. Jesse always wants to cleverly bounce grenades off door-frames, usually resulting in it bouncing back in our faces. And Adam is the the eager Noob, not much of a shot and always rushing headlong into danger.

Daily Pattern: Time Flies

As a child I was always told that I was mature for my age. But I think the inverse of that is that I stopped maturing early, too.

I'm getting old now and I spend my days making art, playing video games and cuddling copious amounts of pets. And that's the way I like it. I've pretty well managed to avoid everything I thought being a grown-up meant.

Despite my stunted maturity, I've noticed something about the passage of time. It's waaaaaay faster these days. And it gets faster every year. There's never enough time. Ever.

So here's a pattern dedicated to forever rushing, trying to accomplish everything that needs doing. It's made of pixels, of course, because every moment I spend dealing with my responsibilities is one more level I'll never beat.



Remember, if you're bored your doing it wrong.

Daily Pattern: Toys of Mass Destruction

I love the plainly descriptive titles of early Nintendo games. You knew exactly what you were getting with titles like Baseball, Kung-Fu, Golf and Balloon Fight.

So here's a tribute to silly, blunt titles and over the top violence (and the occasional snooze-fest sports game).



I would totally play a game called Mutant Punch. I probably have played one called Bloody Sword.

Daily Pattern: RPG Mice

Mice make great heroes. Probably because they're about as tiny as it gets, so it's inspiring to see them do great things.

I'm not sure how I put mice and my love of RPG's together; but I did. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Demon's Souls... you name it. Rolling up a new character is always a special moment full of new possibilities and closing doors.

Which class would you pick? I know what I'd do.



(Hint: I usually pick Rogue)

Also, see it bigger.

Daily Pattern: Pixel Lotus

Pixel lotus flowers? Whaaaaaa?

I was planning on doing a pixel pattern featuring Street Fighter's Dhalsim and his Yoga Fire... Yoga Fire... Yoga FLAME!

But then I made a celebratory 100th Daily Pattern, er, pattern and I decided I didn't have enough time to go into the painstaking detail needed for Dhalsim and his flaming awesome.

So I settled on lotus flowers (ala the Lotus Pose) but I was stuck in the pixel mindset. And that's how I got here.



But maybe yoga and video games do have more in common than you might think... I know I get into a pretty Zen state when I'm playing Battlefield.

Just ask Lindsay, she tries to throw popcorn my in slack-jawed mouth.

Daily Pattern: Frogger

So Alyssa requested a Frogger pattern, and who am I to deny myself an excuse to do video game themed art?



I started off with a much higher-res and stylized version of the titular frog, but it looks odd and didn't read as Frogger. So I stayed pretty true to that sprite...

I went pretty bright with the colors, unlike the last two pixel patterns. Once I finished I knew I had to go back and add some details like color bleeding, screen fading and horizontal hold lines to recreate the the gritty, grimy feeling of an actual arcade machine. Just for fun-zies.

Daily Pattern: Childhood

Despite the fact that my media consumption is roughly 95% video games and 5% Netflix (streamed through a game console, naturally), I didn't own any video games until pretty late in my life. My parents weren't fronting the dough, so I had to get random jobs to afford my passion for pixels.

It's the classic story of someone being denied something as a child and overcompensating as an adult. In my case, missing out on that sweet 8 bit era means now I have more video games than I'll ever have time to play...

My parents weren't morally against video games, but they're expensive and I was one of four children.

Even though I didn't have any games of my own, my friends had them in spades. PC, Atari, NES, Super NES, Genesis, Sega CD, SUPER FAMICOM! I had a source for everything.

So in the end, video games were a big part of my childhood. But I don't remember a ton about the games themselves. I remember the friends, late nights, birthday parties, overnights and long summer days.



Good times.

Daily Pattern: Bear Hunting

True Fact: I once had an art director was an (the only?) artist The Oregon Trail, the ubiquitous educational PC game about the hard life of pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Being the child of the 80's, I was understandably in complete awe. The best part about my entire pre-college educational career was playing Oregon Trail!

I was terrible at the game. After naming all my characters with appropriately scatological names, I would proceed to buy nothing but 200 lbs of hunting ammo at the supply shop.

Wagon wheels? Clothes? Who needs them when there's an army of woodland creatures to shoot!

Game Deaths

Death has always been a part of video games. Older arcade games were designed to steal your quarters, and it was pretty much impossible not to die.

Here's a cute video of a whole bunch of death from old video games, set to a Midi rendition of Tears for Fears Mad World.



Let's all take a moment to reflect about days gone by.

Happy Birthday Lindsay!

Today was Lindsay's birthday! Wow!

We celebrated by going to a 4 hour long cake decorating class for the beginning of the day...







...and then having some close friends over and partying all night with her new present; a Kinect and a copy of Dance Central!














The best picture of the night was taken towards the very end of the night by our friend Chris. This is Adam tearing it up like only he can:



To be honest, the technology worked pretty flawlessly (especially considering we had 3+ people dancing at once, with dogs milling around our feet) and it was a blast. Everyone was laughing, sweating and dancing like crazy!

The only one still skeptical was Oliver the Cat. He just can't be pleased.



All-in-all, it was a pretty low-key, but super fun day! Happy birthday Lindsay!

Graham Annable

Graham Annable's art and animation is unmistakable; the sketchy line work, bizarre humor and lingering, tension-filled static shots...

I recently introduced Lindsay to his work via the stellar Puzzle Agent, a puzzle-based, Fargo-inspired videogame. She's been a fan ever since (despite never being able to remember his name).

I saw via his Twitter that he just put up a new animation, The Smartest Dog in the World.



You can see all his animations on his youtube page.

On a side note, I was stoked to hear Telltale Games is continuing the Puzzle Agent series:



Perfect!

Campbell Whyte

Campbell Whyte is taking on a pretty huge challenge: making a piece of art for every Nintendo game released (English-language releases only) in the order they were released.

The series is off to a strong start, with Campbell making one small painting a day. But with about 800 Nintendo games to work through, he'll be doing it for a while. Good luck!


Duck Hunt


Mach Rider


Kung Fu

You can buy the originals on his etsy store.

FanBoi

Hey! I've got a couple pieces in Altered Esthetic's March show; the theme was Fanboi! I love video games so it was a no brainer!

Here's Mega Man villain; Chillman!



The opening is tonight, 7-10 pm!

Dead Island

Warning: The video embedded in this post is gory and not suitable for everyone.

I first heard about Techland's Dead Island more than a year ago, maybe even two or three years ago. All I knew was that it's a game with lots of zombies and that it's set in some sort of tropical resort. Which obviously sounds quite cheesy. I kind of forgot about it immediately.

Out of nowhere, the official trailer came out and I was quite surprised by what I saw. What I expected to be a clichéd, action-heavy video game trailer was actually a very well done, and sad, 3 minute zombie story that rivals a lot of thoughtful horror movies.



P.S. I promise the next post will be extra cute and cheery.

Mollinex + Kinect

Just last night we almost bought a Kinect, the new motion sensor peripheral for Xbox 360. We had it in our hands; Lindsay was chomping at the bit to play some Dance Central.

But (being the nerd I am) I've followed all the hands-on impressions and coverage since it was launched and I don't think we have the proper space or lighting to make it work right. Although I wish I did.

As cool as Dance Central is, what hackers and modders have been doing with the hardware even cooler.

For instance, Mollinex created this video for their song,Catalina using the data pulled from Kinect's 3-D depth-sensing camera.



I might try to round up a lot of cool kinect hacks for a future post. There's a lot of cool stuff happening around that tech.

thatgamecompany's Journey

thatgamecompany makes beautiful games. It's just their thing. And their newest game, Journey, looks like it's shaping up to be something truly special.

















I don't really know when it's coming out and I don't have any idea about how it plays or what it's about. All I know are these screens and this video, and I'm already sold.