Instruction Booklet Doodles!

I thought that a new instruction booklet was in order. There previously was one with super detailed drawings of each item and bad guy, but it didn't quite jive with the overall theme of the current iteration of the video game. This time around, I went for large, colourful and cartoony drawings with a nice simple presentation that I hope will prove easy on the eyes :) The majority of the images are what you see below, and the instruction booklet even includes little maps of each level to help players out a little. If you want to see how the finished product turned out, feel free to download a copy here!

Updates

After thinking things through about the style of the game, a comment made a LONG time ago when I was just starting the project was what I needed to make up my mind. Someone said that they wished the drawings were more representative of what you saw in the game(regarding the illustrations in the instruction booklet). It may haven taken three years, but I agree with them now! So, rather than trying for ultra-detailed images, something more on the cartoony side will be done for the planned cutscenes and instructions....not to mention the main start screen. Not only does it more closely fit the style of graphics in the game, but it is a lot more representative of the game itself, instead of the old start screens with Mitch and Otis mugshots on either side of a banana logo. This new one was done with a Pentel brush pen, then scanned and coloured. It's fun to do, and I think it gives a more natural feel than using the pen weight type options in photoshop.

That isn't the only thing that I've been tinkering away with all this time though. The game itself has gone through some really cool updates, lots of blocks and items have had their graphics updated, and I've even gone and tightened the controls to (hopefully!) prevent the player from getting stuck against any of the blocks. An updated demo of the game will be up on the Adventure Apes site soon! At this point, it's a matter of finding things and fixing/fine tuning them so that everything runs smoothly. Here's some screenshots in the meantime:

Onward and upward!

Wallpaper Mania!!

So yeah, the last little while has been spent not doing as much art as I would have liked, but I did manage to push out these wallpapers for each of the characters in the Adventure Apes universe. In order from top to bottom, they are:
Mitch (Do-gooder)
Otis (Do-gooder)
Dr. A (Do-gooder)
Mr. E (Evil schemer)
Horatio (Evil schemer)

My intention was to let the personality of each character come through:
Mitch is upbeat and eager to take on new challenges
Otis is a big goofball
Dr. A is old and kind of beat up from a long life of adventurin' and crime fightin'
Mr. E is a very old creeper
and Horatio clearly thinks very highly of himself!

The resolution for these files is huge, so if you can scale them down to the right size, good. If not, you should be able to 'fit' the wallpapers on any 4:3 ratio monitor (I think). If you have a widescreen monitor, just set the background color to black beforehand, and you should be good to go!

A Whole Mess of Adventure Apes Line Art!

It's been a little while since I've posted anything for the storybook here, but it has been getting worked on, and here's the proof! Recently, I decided to try changing up my process a little bit in an attempt to keep things fresh and fluid instead of trying to pound out one thing at a time...meaning that I'll be rotating what I do week by week: Line art/story related stuff/game design/coding related stuff. We'll see how it turns out, but hopefully it will keep each required skill from getting too rusty. Anyhow, here's a peek at some of the latest storybook pages!

 

  

  

  

 

An Adventure Apes Christmas

It's been a mega-hectic month, but here is a little something for the holidays. Merry Christmas everyone! See you in 2010, it's going to be great!

Adventure Apes Return!

It's probably been a couple of months since I last posted any artwork here. Level one of the game is complete and got some good responses through the month of October, much more than I ever thought imaginable! Level two for the full version is well in development, and now, FINALLY, I've gotten back to doing artwork for my storybook. This is page three of what will be a 27 page illustrated poem that outlines Mitch's first adventure.
Time to get back in the swing of things!

Adventure Apes Line Art

I threw this together as an idea for a wallpaper or shirt design. I'd like to do something full-colour, but thought this turned out kind of fun and interesting! It was originally a brush-pen sketch that was colourized in Photoshop, hope you like it!

Adventure Apes: Play online!

So I've put the game up on a site called yoyogames, and they made it able to play the game through their site if you don't want to download the file. I'm not sure if it will work on a Mac this way, so if anyone with a Mac tries it out, be sure to let me know!!

Adventure Apes ...
Added: 13 August 2009
By: ScaryPotato

Adventure Apes, ready for launch!

Another round of fine-tuning is done, and things are shaping up really nicely! Level one as of today is error free, and requires next to no touch-ups, apart from the odd thing that irritates me from a coding point of view. Below is a rundown of the level, from start to finish..no glitz, no glamour, all glory!! The latest version of the game is, as always, available at scarypotato.com or adventureapes.com or even at greatgamesexperiment.com (it's a super cool site with plenty of indie and commercial games)!

Some major tweaks...

I had realized a major problem in the game that needed addressing, and here is the result! In the previous version, it was difficult to lose all your lives, so chances are that no one noticed that the game wouldn't know what to do if you DID die off! The problem has been fixed by making the game a little tougher, as well as adding a little mini-game type idea where you float around a room as Mitch's angel and have to collect three hearts if you want to restart the game. Pointless fun, but fun nonetheless!

Be sure to get the latest copy of the game here or here!

3500hrs R&D, 437lbs Bananas Eaten, 1 Hardcore Monkey

After a couple weeks of working night and day, level one is complete!! I'll be doing through and looking for bugs to fix, but as it stands right now, you can go through and find everything, shoot everything, beat the boss etc etc.
The demo here is a teaser for all the weapons in the whole game (two of them are found in level one; Blue Raygun and the Sawgun) Be warned though, if you don't watch your ammo, when you get to the boss you will be in real trouble. He is one seriously tough hombre!! Oh, and you will find the link to download the game file at www.adventureapes.com, and www.scarypotato.com!

Numero Dos

Nose to the grindstone!

Storybook First Page!!!

All right! So now that all the characters from the game have been drawn, I've been spending the last little while writing up a story going through Mitch's adventure. This would be the first page of said adventure. Tweaks will more than likely be made down the road, but I'm pretty happy with it so far:)

The Final Two Character Illustrations...

...although technically the Golden Egg isn't a character, it got thrown in because it's Horatio's main means of attack! I think now it's time to hunker down and put together the front end of the book (illustrations of the adventure Mitch went on, along with a couple more maps)!

Final Boss: Horatio Hawk!

So, I'm working a bit backwards with this in that you won't actually battle Horatio until you blast his Golden Egg to smithereens (that'll be the first illustration, this is the second). It does seem like a better way to introduce him to the world though since you actually see his character on this page, the other will just be his Golden Egg vehicle.

A little background on Horatio....

*Was in the same orphanage as Mitch and Otis, but was always an outsider.
*He always took things from other kids in the orphanage just to see them cry!
*Adopted by the enigmatic Mr.E, who is incredibly rich and has raised Horatio to use whatever means necessary to eventually own everything in the world.
*Loves watching old WWF matches when he's not bent on world domination.

The Mighty Squidephant

Found in the darkest depths of the underwater portion of the Mayan Mystery, the Squidephant waits patiently for its next tasty meal. This guy is going to be the 2nd Level boss in the game, which will include lots of swimming, bombing, and lasers. Look out!

Reference book compilation

As promised, I re-did the colouring on several pages to bring it up to speed with the more recent posts and figured that probably the easiest way to look at them would be to put them into one file, so here it is! It's something like 4.5mb, so it isn't small, but it will be nice and clear when you look at it as each page will show up as 640x640 on your screen. Hope you like it!

***EDIT*** Even though the file uploaded was over 4mb and 1280px wide, the one you can view is only a fraction of that size, 193kb so I apologize for that. It looks like there are limits to the dimensions an image can be when uploading? If you are curious to see all 18 completed pages clearly, you can find the file on my website!

Boss One: The Skull Demon!!

One serious piece of business, the Skull Demon is relentless in his attack on Mitch. It'll take quick wits and lots of ammo to finish him off.

I find the pose pretty stiff, so I might redo it, but my intention was to try and show all the things in the book in different poses than what you find in the instruction booklet and all these drawings are more to be used as diagrams of the enemies instead of action poses. Hm, maybe it'll stay. What do you think?

Last Two Creatures

Here are the final creatures that you'll find in the game. It looks like I'll have to retouch my earlier stuff as the rust has gradually been shaken off my colouring skill...look out bosses, you're next!

Two more pages..

Two more pages down! Still a lot to do, but there are only two more pages of creatures left. Then it's on to the bosses which should be fun!