Pastels

I got pastels & paper as a present from my former colleagues. Hadn't really touched pastels since elementary school so I was eager to try. Naturally I had forgotten how hard it is to draw with them (but lot of fun).

The rabbit below was one of the first sketches. Hopefully more to come.

Rabbit, with pastels

BotBall

Started few weeks ago with my friend a small Scala project called Botball. We wanted to create something simple to study the Akka framework. The idea is to simulate small bots playing a ball game. The thinking was that this is something that can be nicely over-engineered to use Actors :) .

As any good project the start went mostly to sync what has happen in the real life. However, last week I have had some time to spend. The basic structure starts to be implemented. Next step would be to implement the actual game simulation.

Source code can be found from github.

Icons

Lately most of my time has gone into work. No time for any fun with the Photoshop. That must change! Luckily my friend asked few icons from me for his mobile application. First versions done. I'm still not happy with them. Need to reserve some time for tuning. It's also surprise how different the icons looks on the monitor and on small mobile screen.

Icons, version 1.0+

Illustrator Sketch

Spent a bit time playing with the Illustrator's Brush tool.

Father's Day

As a kid I usually made a card for the Father's Day. This year I wanted to do it again. The result even looks like a card made by a kid...

Robot Father

Developing a Game

One of my long lasting dreams has been to create a proper (small) game for the current mobile devices. Hardest part has been always to find the right idea that is enough challenging but not too big to create for single developer. I think this is the common problem: you just don't realize how much work there is until you try and because of this end up to do thing that takes year(s) and at the end you don't get anything completed.

Some of my friends have also asked that why don't I use something ready made? You know, that would be the sane option. For example Unity3d is a great engine that makes it possible for small team to do pretty nice stuff. Just check No, Human which was made by one guy. I think my answer to the question is the usually one: for me developing and learning new things is just as important as the end result.

So what's next? I have one idea cooking that includes physics, 2d graphics, space ships and naturally some robots. Hopefully updates will appear here in near future...

A concept planet

Shape Builder Tool

This week I have been mostly eating... This evening I have been mostly practicing CS5 Illustrator's new Shape Builder tool. It is very welcomed addition and makes path finding a nice experience compared to the previous try-and-fail loop of the older Illustrators.

Buu!