I rarely talk about my full time job...  

Mostly because I am bound by my contract to talk about any of the project I am involved with before it's released...

Also, I've been doing mobile casual game stuff... And I don't think there is much interest in finding things about mobile games.  Although... I think there is much to talk about the naure of growing mobile market and how different it is from the mainstream(?) console/PC game market.

Anywayz...

Yesterday, Apple finally announced the new segment of feature for iPod.  iPod Games!!!  Sure, iPods shipped with couple of embeded games... some canon shooting thing and I forget what the other one is...  Sort of like how the cellphones used to ship with the "Snake" game...

Well, I worked on the Minigolf game.  I have to say it was one of the hardest project I've ever worked on.  Mainly due to the fact that the schedule for the art side was extremely short.  And there wer so many changes along the way... which is nature of art side of most game development... But, this one really pushed me almost to my limit.  The raw art assets needed to be finished in less than a month from concept to finish.  yup... just several weeks.  After that, we went through numerous edits... in order to make it work with ever changing specs of the game engine...  Another experience that made me to believe that there is no such thing as a "simple port" of any games...

Briefly, let me describe the game.  It's essentially a port of cellphone game released by Jamdat/EA Mobile.  I think you can still see what the original one looks like at eamobile.com.  Just type "mini golf" at the search section.  The original game has 18 holes and has that almost 80's NES look.  My task was to update the art.  And only significant feature that was added to the game was camera panning between courses.  In the middle of production, it was decided to add two sets of 18 holes (-_-).  So, Final game was to have three sets of 18 holes each (total 54 holes) in three different themes.  First set was same theme as the original game, which is "Tiki".  Second one's theme was "Egypt".  And the third was "Sideshow".  I wanted to give three themes different looks.  So, when you finish one theme and go to the other, it looks and feels different...  Eventhough... you are essentially just playing more holes...  

The highlight of the experience I had was working with many talented artists.  This game actually doesn't feature any of my art.  I merely "directed" styles and certain key feautres.  But, mostly, it's a product of some hard work by several artists I would like to give credit.  

-Tiki-
-Both menu background and the ingame background was designed by Jeff Miracola ([link]).  Since Tiki was used as a showcase for this game from early on, Jeff had to make a lot of changes in extremely short amount of time we demanded.  And he really went above and beyond to meet this call of duty!  And the result is fantastic.  If you are familiar with the original game, you will see how much unique visual improvement has been made for this level.  Green was the theme color.  Style wise, it was supposed to be organic and fantasy like.  I think Jeff nailed it.

-Egypt-
-Menu Background: Julian Hector ([link]), Nuno Alves ([link]).  Julian did a fabulous job doing the initial design of the menu background for the Egypt level.  If you check out his work, you will see how simplified, yet beautiful his work is.  Since Egypt has the flat and simplified look, Julian's style just naturally jived with it.  In order to make it look more consistant, Nuno did touch up the art to make it appear more in line with the ingame background art.
-Ingame Background: Nuno Alves (above link).  Well, if you check out his blog, you will see how established he is in his style of work.  Yet, he is very flexible in applying his style into other format.  In this case, the background for the egypt level.  Nuno also was very responsive and easy to work with.  Especially considering he is lives in Portugal and we had many hours of difference.  The theme color was Yellow.  And style wise, I wanted it to be simple with lots of straight lines and hard edges.  Again, I think Nuno did a wonderful job.

-Sideshow-
-Menu Background: Justin Degarmo (www.justindegarmo.com).  What else can I say about Justin's work?  Go check it out right now.  I love his paintings.  If I get paid more (and don't have to be concerned with mortgage, car, fixing the house and my kids' college funds), I would be collecting his work... The menu background by Justin looks like a piece of painting I wouldn't mind hanging in my art collection!  
-Ingame Background: Jeff Nentrup (www.jeffnentrup.com).  Jeff is a fellow (f)Art Center grad.  If I painted as hard as he did, i would be doing what he is doing.  Go check out his work.  He puts me to shame...  The theme color was red.  And style wise, I wanted the sideshow level to be a bit creepy and painterly.  Unfortunately, we had to scale down the image with 8bit color palette.  So, I had to make the background less painterly.  I still tried my best to keep his gritty textured painting as much as possible.  Again, I think Jeff did a fantastic job.

-Animated Sprites-
-Background Sprites: Henk Nieborg ([link]).  Henk is a veteran pixel artist.  And he got slammed to come up with all the animated sprites in exptremely short period of time.  And as you can see from the game, he did a wonderful job.  I know there were a lot of frustrating moments.  But, I think it really paid off.  
-Character Sprites: Victor ([link]), Nathan Christie ([link]).  Victor and Nathan are young, budding pixel artists I found at pixeljoint.  Since all the gaming world pretty much moved on to high res 3D world, it was extremely hard to find good pixel artists.  Also, due to the time constraint, I worked with these two to make sure we will get a good design.  I think they both did great jobs.  In the end, we had to pick one design though.  But, I want to give credit to both.


If you want to check out the game, you need the latest iTunes.  I think you need 5th gen iPod as well.  

Apple didn't allow any credits to be on the game.  Other than trying to save more memory space, I personally don't really understand the reason behind it...  But, you guys know that I really appreciate your hard work!!!

For the rest of you, go buy the game!  It' will be like carrying a piece of art work created by all these great artists.  Oh yeah, the game is not that bad either!

Cheers!