I always enjoy art walks. You get to meet interesting people, and sometimes even talk about art! For the galleries, it generates exposure and business. For the community, it brings people downtown. So at least there is an appearance of vibrant night life.

I was fortunate to have met at least a few interesting people during this Fourth Friday Gallery Night, among which was a professor from UNCW's fine arts department. We had a good talk about a master's class he teaches on invention. Additional familiar faces also came by, including some of the gallery's represented artists.

All was going swimmingly until I was drawn into the negativity nexus of a bitter young woman. She was staring intently at one of the photographs on the wall. Her attire might have been a little too casual for this occasion, and she was eying the crowd for a victim as her lean an tall figure shifted about.

I thoght I would see if she had any needs I could attend to, and her nicotine-marked face tightened with satisfaction. It started out innocently enough, with questions about the photographs on display. Yet it quickly plummeted into a cascade of random inquiries and dissatisfactions. First it was all about whether the photographs were digitally touched up, where it took numerous reiterations that they were not for her to grasp the concept. From there she stumbled onto declaring the work on display to be boring, and was appalled that some of our artists appeared to be painting in the style of the "California beach school" (picture above), a movement long gone. For the record, it's actually called the Bay Area Figurative School, popular during the mid 20th century.

I don't know if she had just too much wine on her freeloading trip from gallery to gallery, too much Ritalin before she left the house (or not enough), or whether she was just plain crazy. Whatever the case, our conversation steadily deteriorated. She got upset that I wasn't familiar with the other gallery's show down the street, then continued to interrogate me as to what artists I thought were good. As if whatever I had to say mattered at that point.

She didn't seem remotely interested in anything other than arguing trivialities by this time, yet continued
to probe me for any explanation why we might have chosen to hang this "crap" on our walls. I think that in the end she wore herself out, and slowly stopped incoherent rambling without giving me the opportunity to respond in full. That's when I saw my out, having stood there for what seemed like an eternity, and bid her good riddance with a polite "Well I hope your night goes... ...better." She didn't say anything, turning towards the door with a nod.

So what am I to learn from this? Maybe that "you can't please everybody," but that's too obvious. I prefer to think the moral of this story to be more like "don't get pulled into bitter psychos' gravitational vortex." Though the real lesson is probably somewhere in between those two.

The I Am 8-Bit Exhibition opened about a week ago at Gallery 1988 in LA. You can see a video of the opening over at Vinyl Pulse, and catch more details about the incredibly successful opening night. To see photos of every single piece in the show, check out the complete photo set on the I Am 8-Bit website.

Though perhaps not quite as prestigious as MoMA, Gallery 1988 had people lined up to see this work all night. You can't argue with success, which only shows that they too are doing us a great service in supporting artwork influenced by gaming culture.


I must admit that I felt a slight tinge of disappointment at the overwhelming amount of Mario and Pac-Man art. Is there nothing else but Nintendo and Namco to choose from? Well, maybe I'll just have to prove them wrong. There were additional themes naturally, but images of Mario and his cohorts dominated the walls as you can see in the photo set mentioned above.

Nevertheless, this exhibition has undoubtedly generated a lot of good publicity for video game art. Maybe next year we can expect a little more diversity. A broader subject range can only serve us well, and there is certainly enough material to draw from.

The exhibition entitled Comic Abstraction opened at MoMA on March 4, and it is good to see this area of art getting more recognition. Naturally, when an institution such as this does anything, the message tends to resound unto the far reaches of the art world. So it is only natural that Art News would run an article on the show. Written by Peter Plagens under the name What's So Funny About Abstraction, it's helping to elevate artwork created under the influence of comics.


Plagens focuses on making a distinction between the tragic and comic traditions in abstract painting, serving up early modern styles as an example of the former. The latter, and more recent, continues to demonstrate its suitability for abstraction as it gains momentum. In the first paragraph of his article we are reminded that "the comics are a lot older than abstraction," with the first being published some two hundred and five years ago.


Comic abstraction in itself is not quite that new either. We have Lichtenstein's work as an early example of that, and that was over forty years ago unless there is something prior to it I'm not aware of. So why is it that a stigma is still being associated with paintings in this tradition? And why is it that the existence of such a separation seems to be stronger in the western world?

These are some of the questions raised by the MoMA exhibition. The online description for it reiterates that "in the United States and Europe comics have stood at the nexus of the high-low debate, while in Japan manga and anime have never been differentiated from art." Meanwhile, Plagens also declares that "comics and abstract painting share a common root." Being the effort to exclude certain details, while exaggerating others, in order to disclose the work's purpose.


It comes as no surprise to me that the lines between high art and the low-brow work of the "less elevated" are beginning to blur. To me, comic art and derivatives thereof represent all that is good and vibrant in art, without being diffused by the elitism of art establishments. How can artists not be influenced by the tsunami of work from Japan? How can we not be inspired by that which we see in ever greater numbers?


There is only one answer to those questions for me. The simple truth is that I, for one, can't. My only hope is that the momentum gained from MoMA's possible acceptance of what seems contrary to its nature, and Plagens' consequent written word, will retain its virility. I know that the chances are slim. Yet maybe this will bring about some change in the perception of the good people of the world. Maybe even generate more acceptance of this movement, if I can even call it that, among galleries.

Why not. Let's call it a movement. Now to come up with a name. A name that is all inclusive, and one which will transcend some cultural differences. I'll have to think about this one.

Over the last week I have made a number of changes to Copic Fighter. Even though many of the graphics were pretty good already, there were still a few which I wasn't entirely happy with. Here is a list of the new sprites that were created, and old ones that were changed...

• Fixed kana error in title animation.
• New ship sprite.
• New player bullet sprite.
• New life sprite.
• New bullet impact animation.
• New weapons upgrade animation.
• New enemy explosion animation.
• New player explosion animation.
• New sprite for boss' big tear.
• Created an Ink meter graphic.

That's right, I did finally fix the title by adding the "chuon." I know at least one person that's going to be happy about that, besides myself of course. As per some other suggestions, I made some changes to the gameplay mechanics. Among those, an important difference is that the green eyes no longer drop Ink. Since they are easy to destroy, because bullets go through them, I decided it was a good idea to remove that particular reward.

In addition, I have adjusted the speed of several objects, which should provide a slight change in the pace of the game. The unfortunate part is that the speed of the game is as much influenced by what I dictate as it is by the speed of the computer that it's run on. That's not a particularly good thing, so I will try and research the possibility of capping the frame rate.

Last but not least, I have fixed the irritating menu cursor bug. So no more getting the cursor stuck in odd places on the title screen.

This version has been primarily about tweaks and improvements, and not so much about content addition. I'd like to get some of the gameplay aspects ironed out before I add additional stages to the game. I figured that as long as I have a solid core, adding content is going to be relatively easy. With that said, have a download and I hope you enjoy it.

Make sure to check the Readme file for instructions.

Download: Copic Fighter 0.3.0 (6.25 MB .rar file)

(I have changed the filehost to a more reliable source.  Please let me know if the link is breaks in the future.)

A time of decision has come upon me, and now has also passed. A time where I had a choice, or so I thought. It seemed as though I could choose the safe road, or the difficult one. It was also a time of determination and confidence, if only for a brief moment, in my strength to overcome the difficult. My thoughts then turned to the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke.


Thus, what I really wanted,was to take the difficult road. It would have been glorious. Yet I had no one cheering for me along the way. I had no one to fly my flag. And no one pledged their support for me, should I choose this way. My resolve weakened slightly, yet I held firm to the belief that this is what I should do.

Ere long the universe conspired with the naysayers to take from me even this choice. Before my eyes the difficult road, which held so much promise, vanished to reveal nothing but a sheer wall. An impenetrable barrier which made it clear to me that the easy road I now must travel. What is easy, is also what is dull. And now I can only hope that I have the strength and determination to persevere through it.

After about a month's worth of work, I am happy to announce that the first demo of Copic Fighter is now available. It features one stage, with enemy formations, and a boss fight.

New additions since the last update include animations for various aspects of the boss battle. Things like an immune hit animation, updated tears animation, a new destructible tear object, and an animation for destroying the boss. To go along with these, I added new sounds for each effect, as well as finally putting in the boss battle music.

This did bring to the foreground some of the audio limitations of Game Maker. Because of my desire for more complex audio effects, I found that performance was being noticeable taxed. In the end, I had to scale down my audio files a bit, but managed to retain the feel I was going for. Having to use .wav format is the primary reason for the game's increasingly large file size.

In any case, most issues have been ironed out on my end. So I hope that you will not experience any problems on your end either. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about my debut to the indy gaming scene. Enjoy!

Please check the included Readme file for instructions.

Download: Copic Fighter 0.2.6 (6.23 MB .rar file) | Mirror (via MediaFire)

Update: Thanks go out to The2Bears for picking up on this. They even said something nice about it!

After spending days upon days of troubleshooting random enemy generation, I realized just how flawed this method was. It was fine for an endless single level game, but presented big problems for what I wanted to accomplish. And what I wanted, and still do, were timed events and enemy formations.

I scrapped the whole method, and researched using Time Lines. It's so simple. Why didn't I do this earlier? Well, whatever the excuses, I'm glad I made the switch. Time Lines have none of the issues that my previous method did. I was thus able to add all the enemy formations for the first level, and the boss fight, all in one day. Hurray for me!

Next I'll be finishing off the boss attack patterns, and then the first demo can be released! Stay tuned.

Being a part of more forums and online communities than I care to admit has certainly allowed me to become more familiar with the idiocies of human behavior. Particularly when that behavior occurs under the assumption that anything goes. Online, some people decided that the rules of conduct we observe in real life do not apply.

Thus, these same individuals terrorize our inboxes, hijack our discussions, and flame us whenever they feel like it. They are sometimes known as jackasses, as in the comic above (via WoW Interface). You may even go so far as to call them, online terrorists. Or net terrorists. How about Neterrorists! Yes, I think this shall be my new term for them.

I still believe... that we... will prevail... in the war against Neterror!

Current work on Copic Fighter has been centered on creating the boss battle for the first stage. I ran into more than a few snags of course. For the life of me I could not get the movement of the object right, and then it was the timing of its actions.

After creating the animation for it and adding them, I ran into even more problems with weird graphical glitches. My solution was of course unnecessarily complicated. But after some research I found a simpler way, and now it works quite nicely. It all basically boiled down to my ignorance of GM's built in variables.

After I got the behavior resolved, I set out to add the boss to the first stage. This would involve destroying all other enemy objects before the boss battle. But finding a way to do this so it looks like they only went off-screen has been tricker than I anticipated. Now I must once again research a method of doing this without creating additional problems, i.e. huge lag in the controls. I have yet to succeed in this.

If anyone wants to be bored with the details of the whole process, please be my guest.

Yesterday Nikki and I both had the day off. We decided to spend it doing something enjoyable that did not include sitting in front of a monitor or TV screen.

Our adventures took us to Fort Fisher, which I only then learned was actually an earthen fort from the Civil War period. What I also learned, is that you can see the nuclear power plant from this historical site. In fact, I didn't even know we had one here.


I couldn't help but think about the slight irony in this. Here we are, at a historical and natural preservation site, and we're enjoying the scenery of the nuclear power plant. Hmmm, something to ponder. Please stand by, pondering in progress.

Our recent mongo scores included a nice lamp, and a few weeks later a nice shade for it.

We found the lamp outside our building, where various things keep turning up, and decided to show it some love. It sported an ugly cracked lampshade which did not suit its design, and the lamp no longer worked. It was actually a reading lamp, and the wiring had gotten twisted and frayed inside the swivel arm. Since the connections on the swivel arm were just about impossible to take apart (I think they were welded or epoxied), I got rid of that thing altogether and just made it a normal lamp. A couple new brass fittings to replace the arm, a little wiring, and the lamp was back in functioning order.

The shade had been discarded from another house on our block, and we ninja'd it in the night. It had a nice modern fabric exterior, but the plastic body was cracked to hell. That's right, the secret level in Cave Story!

Anyway. I digress. So because the body was not really removable, I decided to bandage it with a lot of clear tape. This worked well, because you can't see it on the outside.

We put the shade and lamp together, which matched really well. I love the body of the lamp itself, and I love the shade too. It worked perfectly with our new '70s wicker chair against the backdrop of our DIY solid white screen.

Chalk another one up for the mongo hunters. Check out our previous find here. And if you have any good mongo stories or finds, we'd love to hear about them!

My current game project has at last received a name: Copic Fighter. I suppose this also means that now I have to explain it. Very well. The term Copic is a brand of markers made for illustration. They have fantastic colors, and allow you to blend well. Copic markers are made by the Japanese company Too, and have been used extensively in the anime and manga industry.


As you might have discerned from the screenshots, your "ship" is actually the top part of a Copic marker. You "bullets" are in fact short strokes of ink. So the basic idea is that you are eliminating parts of anime faces using a Copic marker, with a limited ink supply. Each part that you eliminate, in this case eyes, leaves behind a little ink which you can pick up to replenish your supply.

The gameplay is that of a basic shooter, which should be familiar to most gamers. I am not aiming to create some masterpiece of a shmup. I'm not even aiming at creating particularly original gameplay, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of shmups out there which will probably play better. Instead, I am trying to create a game which plays well enough, but is more interesting in terms of context and visual style. So you might even say that it's an art game more than it is just another arcade style shooting game.

Due to my recent involvement with Thruster, among other projects, I have been posting a fair amount about the independent gaming scene. One of the major sites for news on this topic is Indygamer, providing a great deal of quality information on a daily basis.

In recent developments, I have been given the opportunity to contribute to Indygamer, an offer which I have gladly accepted. With so many indy games out there, it's just about impossible to keep track of everything. Indygamer does an admirable job at chipping away at this mountain though. Now, with another set of eyes scouring the intrawebs, I think that mountain will have a few more chunks missing.

You will find a link to Indygamer in my sidebar now, so feel free to peruse the multitude of wonderful indy game information available there.

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, what you have all so eagerly been waiting for! Thruster is out for PC now, featuring original artwork, sound effects, and music by yours truly.

Download links are provided after the jump, courtesy of Vilmos via Pocket Dimension. If you have a GP2X or a Zodiac, you can also get Thruster for those respective platforms. I hope you enjoy my music, maybe even enough to throw it on whatever mobile device you're attached to.

For Thruster desktop wallpapers, please check my previous post here. And that's it. So without further ado, here you go...

Windows Download: Thruster 1.3 (17.6 MB)
GP2X Download: Thruster 1.0 (18.0 MB)
Zodiac Download: Thruster 1.0 (15.9 MB)