My hobby is painting. However, hobbies generally don’t pay the bills. I went to college for computer science – so during the day I develop and test software. When I was younger I had this little dream, as many young programmers do, of developing games for a living. Well reality hits you when you hear of terrible working hours and comparatively low pay. If you develop business software you will generally make anywhere from 25%-50% more than a game programmer. So those who develop games have not just a passion, but more of an obsession for games. I would describe my interest in games as an occasional diversion. I’m actually more interested in telling stories than playing one out. So I decided to change my focus to the business side of software development.

The creative spirit never dies however and I have always had an interest in creating my own game and telling my own story. I just never found the time nor patience to complete a fully functioning game. All the software I wrote was more to prove to myself that I could learn something new and have fun with it. I never had anything anywhere near commercial release. This precedent is about to change. With the relative ease of creating a mobile application and getting it to market, I see a new opportunity to take my creative urge to the Android market.

During the last year I have been spending time learning the Android platform. After months of reading documentation online and in books, I have reached a point where I can actually start my concept drawings for characters and scenes in my game. So before you are character sketches and a level-world sketch. This game is not breaking any new technological barriers – it’s a 2-D space shooting game in the theme of Galaxian or Galaga. The point here is not to invent some new graphics rendering engine or some new A.I. algorithm, but rather tell a story with engaging game play. The sketches of the characters are in 3 frames; this is to study how the animation will look when in game play. I have done these drawings in pencil and when happy with them, I will move them to my Gimp editing software for a digital copy.

As the game development progresses, I will have more about how the game will work. I hope to have something to market before the end of the year, but I have other interests (painting) that I split time with so I’m not sure if I will make that self-imposed deadline. At any rate, I hope you find these drawings interesting. There will be more to come soon.

Coming up next….my encounter with a successful artist. See you next post!