Sunday, May 30, 2010

It Lives!


I know, I know. Hush now my little babies, I'm here. Three months is a long time... too long in fact. But as some of you dear readers may kn
ow, and others may have posited, I got a new job. In late February, I was rotting in a corner somewhere in the labyrinthian tombs of Lea--some company--when suddenly, I got a phone call from a slightly magical recruiter. The phone had fucking sparkles coming out of it, I swear! So anyway, he offered me a job at this social ga
ming company called CrowdStar, and seeing as how I'd run out of that ball of thread I got from Ariadne a few years back, I figured "hey why the hell not?" And within a fortnight's time my life had changed dramatically!

Life can be wonderful... absolutely wonderful. Within my first week I was already happier than I could ever remember. I won't list off all the whys but this is, so far, the best job I've ever had. I work on something new every week, I'm surrounded by tons of other talented artists, the work is fun and challenging, and the pay is great! The only downside was that these last three months I've also been busier than ever. I was working at tim
es, 60-75 hour weeks, sometimes 16 hour days, and most of the weekends in the last three months went to, you guessed it: work. All of this just to keep up with the pace. Since then, however; I've sped way up. but all that said, I wanted to share with everyone some of my work work. Out at CrowdStar I make assets in a game called Zoo Paradise, follow the link if you'd like to give it a go, and please do! It's really fun, and it's made by a group of really talented people.


These are Habitats for the Zoo Animals to...err--inhabit. These are my favorite assets to make, I love all the different biosphere's of the world, even the imaginary ones, so every time I get assigned a habitat, I get giddy. Every asset we make requires five "upgrade stages" for the user to achieve, which makes for some really fun challenges. That said, if I counted every "upgrade stage" from each item, I've made over 100 assets in just under three months! Whoa!


These are Concessions, in the game you build them to bring in money for your zoo. everything from food to entertainment. But they allow for some really fun gags. I'm not sure if you can read them but the Churro Stand assets have accessories like vats of horse grease wherein you can deep fry your own Churro. this later gets upgraded to a flippin' dippin' grease bar: for all of your greasy needs. Do I know how to make a Churro? Heck no! I've actually never even had one. Still, I felt the grease vats to be somehow appropriate. Finally, you might note the Frozen Banana Stand homage nestled in there. I really want to make a Mister Manager joke but I'm way too sleepy to think of one.




Lastly: the bathrooms, their use in the game should be pretty straight forward. They're not the most popular assets in the game, but good god were they ever fun to make... I'm also pretty damn proud of the bathroom of solitude... but that's neither here nor there.

Well I might add a followup post or two to this one, but for now this will be it for my work-work on this blog, you should really just play the game :3. As for my regular blog posts, now that I've gotten used to the new workload I'm going to try to start working on my own stuff again, so hopefully I'll update before another three months go by. Though, I've got a trip to Italy coming up and immediately after I get back I'll be moving out of my apartment, so... yeah.... the next title could be "It Died" but let's hope not. I think I'm going to go to sleep now, I'm beginning to wonder why all of my blog entries manage to get published at like 2-3AM... it's weird. Okay... y'all take care now. Bye wooorrld.

8 comments:

Inverce said...

I loved seeing these- they look so fun!
I want a fairygodmother like recruiter to come save me too! :)

Seafoodpunch said...

whatever! AI must have done something right because these look awesome! I take back what i said...i might be a little intimidated by having to do this stuff in 2 days. but you are meticulous so you always worry about the time i think.

David Jackson said...

dude! these are great.

kanishk said...

great thinking its amazing.
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Unknown said...

Hello! I'm Daisy. I'm a friend of Jill Johnson, actually she's my roommate on the Island. Anyways your name has been brought up a few times and it sounded really familiar then it dawned on me, I've seen your artwork before! Just wanted to say your little habitats are soo cute! I can just eat them up cuz that's what I do... eat habitats.

Christopher Vear said...

Ooh thanks Daisy, they're not very good for you though, lot's of corn syrup and empty calories :P. I think Jill has mentioned you before too, your name sounds familiar. How's the island treating you these days?

Anonymous said...

fun, interesting ,cute!!
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Colleen said...

I love your art. Keep on making this.:)

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