Character Profile: Cecilia Ellis

"As long as you work hard, we'll get along just fine.We don't have to be friends."

Full Name: Cecilia Ellis
Specialization: Public Relations
Age: 28
Birthplace: New York City, New York, USA
Education: Masters in Marketing

Hard nosed and driven, you got the job Cecilia was fighting for, and she's pissed about it. Not one to let emotions get in the way of doing a job, she doesn't seem interested in a relationship at all, especially not with you. Perhaps if you can prove yourself as serious and hard-working as her, she'll see you in a different light.

Character Profile: Gabriela Ortez

"You don't know everything about me -- and I don't want you to, either."

Full Name: Gabriela Ortez de Santa Maria
Specialization: Graphic Arts
Age: 22
Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design

Intensely introverted, Gabriela always arrives before anyone else and leaves after everyone's gone. Refusing to attend meetings, Gabriela overwhelmingly prefers to communicate over email. Talented as she is, her secretiveness often gets in the way of her job, and she finds herself often the subject of gossip and and speculation. Is she just shy? Or does she have something to hide?

EDIT 12/11/2015: Changed from Gabriel to Gabriela. Thanks anonymous!

Vive La France

Learning to Draw, pt. 1

Drawing has proven to be such a refreshing change of pace that I'm beginning to really enjoy it, even if I'm really only playing around at this point.

This is the character who I want draw.

This is Gabriel. She has a backstory and a character concept, but I won't go into it right now. After a few hours twisting my hand over the Intuos, I came up with this.

As poor the quality is, it's pretty good for me at my current skill level. She was birthed from a particular drawing technique (I forget the actual name) where you constantly draw over your original drawing as you refine and sculpt the features. As you do this, you flip the canvas -- that basically resets your mind, so you can see proportions better.

So Gabriel actually started out like this:

Then this:

Here I resized Gabriel's shoulders to be not as broad.

Gosh, Gabriel's getting pretty! Look at that face!

Here Gabriel's hips look less like they can stab people.

She's getting there now, but her hips are still too wide, and it's this point I notice her head really isn't sitting well on her shoulders.

Here is the final sketch. A this point, her proportions are right. Of course, there are things wrong with it, the arms don't really sit right, her neck is a little triangular, and she's not "clean", but those things come with practice.

Here is a group portrait with Gabe and all her prior incarnations.

Drawing Again - Art and AIF

I've decided I'd really like some graphics for my next game, but I don't want to shell out the money for complex graphics programs and all the assets that come with it. So yesterday I bought myself an early Christmas present: an Intuos draw tablet, and I've been playing around with it ever since.

Believe it or not, I used to be a reasonably good sketch artist. I'm not so much anymore, I'm just not in the position to draw for fun like I used to. So it's not just getting used to the tablet, it's reaching my former level of proficiency.

A self-portrait. Sort of. Of my own internet avatar, not of myself. I'm much handsomer in real life.

As you can see, it's going to be a bit before I can draw something legit nice. The best I can hope for are portraits in the meanwhile. It's at least fun drawing again, and I can say with certainty the Intuos tablet works really great.

Going over contest feedback

Hi, just wanted to go over and respond to the feedback that I received for the contest held at the beginning of the month, and I'll then I'll talk about what I might do differently.

I think the choice of theme might have been a little restrictive. Cyberpunk is typically quite dark and it is very difficult to turn into something romantic or fun and sexy.

Also, a science fiction theme would have scared a lot writers away. Creating an imaginary world requires a lot of imagination and effort.

If you're going to run the competition again and still want a theme, I would suggest broader and abstract themes, such as "bubble," "winner," or "thirst," which just have to appear somewhere and may or may not be central to the story.

The only reason I didn't make a game for the competition is that I'm currently working a much larger game that would break many of the rules.

I think the author here has a point. "Cyberpunk" was little restrictive, and I know at least one author who didn't submit an entry on that basis alone.

I'd love to keep a theme going, but keeping them a lot vaguer and ephemeral might be key, if they are going to stay at all. The intention of the themes was to give people ideas, not restrict them, and I don't think they worked in that regard.

I like the idea of having more contests, so I am definitely in favor of this, but I think it's obvious that a vote between two games (albeit neither of them were anywhere near as awful as some entries to the minicomp) is only half a competition.

Sadly, I don't think I can really offer any constructive criticism on how to increase the number of entries.

I agree. I'm going to have find ways to promote the competition better if I'm going to run it again. Getting my ass sorted out with the AIF archive and investigating more websites is probably a good place to start.

 Fun contest.  This was just the right length to do something quick but still fun.  I hope to enter another Sneeze comp with what I've learned from this one.  Hope other people liked my game.  My suggestion for the next topic: Magical girl vs. Demon beast.

A sadly poor turnout, but hopefully it will continue and possibly gain some traction in the future. On the bright side, it is relatively easy to put together and got at least a couple games out there and who knows - maybe it sparked some interest!

I myself started with an idea - I had even tossed that general setting into the pot myself (though it could have been one of several). Sadly I didn't think I would get it done and went another direction. Then realized how little I knew about Twine and doing the many things that come naturally to me with Inform.

Even though I released nothing in the end, I did have fun. And though I see that a lot of polish could be applied to the games released, it is great to see the work they did put it in and hopefully they will feel the desire to put out more in the future.

A huge success or not, thanks very much for putting the SNEEZE together for us. It means a lot!

 That's very much appreciated, thanks. I still need to figure out ways to increase turnout.

 I swear it only took me a few seconds to realize that you meant the contest itself and hadn't accidentally left out a third entry in the archive.

CYOA is not necessarily my genre of choice, but any attempt to get a little blood flowing in the community is appreciated.

 Again, thanks!

I personally like the theme but maybe there would be more participants without one?

If feedback is anything to go on, yes, there would be more participants, which makes me rather sad. Making the theme vaguer, or getting rid of it, is really the choice I need to make.

Conclusions

SNEEZE COMP was a good experiment, and I think I will do it again next year, but with the benefit of wisdom and experience.

To me, the big issues were:

1. A lack of entries and votes.
2. A lack of public discussion about the games. 

While there was plenty feedback for the authors (especially considering the low votecount) none of it made it to the comments section, which I found unfortunate, because it made things seem a lot less active than it actually was.

As for 1), it's not just the theme, though that's a part of it. I think I really needed to do a better job of publicizing SNEEZE COMP. Put it on more boards and such. I think I can squeeze out more interest if I focus on that.

Duel to the Death Cover

Hi everyone, I've been meaning to put back up feedback for the contest but I've been horribly busy. I've been working odd hours nearly every day last week. Things might finally chill, we'll have to see, then I'll put up that feedback.

Anyways, I wanted to show everyone the cover for my new book, Duel to the Death, coming out next year. It's about half way done and I just cut out 20,000 words, which represents about a month of work. Ouch. That hurt. But I think the end result is going to be awesome.

If you want you can check out the publisher here.