One really cool perk of joining Cyan is that I get to capture all of the promotional shots for the new Riven.
Can’t wait for y'all to play this sucker. 📚
One really cool perk of joining Cyan is that I get to capture all of the promotional shots for the new Riven.
Can’t wait for y'all to play this sucker. 📚
Real Talk: It is gratifying on a molecular level to revisit something super-formative from very early adulthood in your late 30s. 🤙 Finally finished up Barney Calhoun from Half-Life 2 and debuted him at Calgary Expo last weekend.
Gotta say to all the folks who recognised this: your kindness and enthusiasm still has me over the moon and will for QUITE a while.
Next steps: finish up the CR2 Pulse Rifle and wear this nerd again at Otafest in two weeks lol.
BARNEY MY BELOVED (and @teadrunktailor my beloved, you never miss)
taldigi asked:
Oh gosh, if you're taking questions I have like, a bajillion. The neopets "style" has been pretty loose over the years but... What sort of guidelines did you have to follow? Were there any hard "no"s? Was there a style guide or bible? In terms of design, what were you most proud of? Anything that was rejected that was disappointing to not see come to fruition?? Pardon my excitement!
From my recollection there was no official style guide, which I’m sure is pretty apparent from the art on the site—we’d run things by our art director Anthony/Tigercatcher for feedback, or by Adam or Donna to get their stamp of approval, but otherwise it was relatively lawless. It is fun to be able to look back at the old art and immediately tell who drew it, though!
A couple memorable anecdotes:
dorkboy asked:
Hello Claire! I was wondering if I could ask about a bit of one of your pieces. In the Mos Eisley Morning piece, there's a bit of writing on the right-hand side (above the astromech). May I ask what it says? Thanks!
Back in college my friends and I had a Valentine’s Day tradition where we’d all make valentines for each other from our respective fictional crushes, Secret Santa style, and it RULED💘💘💘
(Benry valentine courtesy of the ever-enabling @fearsomebeast)
generalghosty asked:
A lot of hay is being made over the fact that they're changing the lineart on some of the UCs (ones you describe as being drawn with the pen tool). Most notably, the Faerie Ixi you designed. What's your take on that?
So it’s tough! I love them, but those earlier pen tool pets just don’t scale as well—and don’t really match the style standards that would get set in place less than a year later. When you zoom into the vector files you can reeeeally see how the fidelity drops when you aren’t seeing them as 150x150px gifs:
the pets drawn with the brush tool, however, are clean enough that you could use ‘em right out of the box:
It would take a deft hand to re-draw the pen tool pets with weighted lines and maintain the appeal of the originals, but I do think it’s totally doable! And they absolutely should have kept the coloured lines, c'mon now. 😑
countandra asked:
You worked at Neopets? THE Neopets? That sounds incredible. It is awesome finding details on the arts and production behind such a huge childhood favorite.
Are you able to talk about how it was like?
I absolutely can, if you have any specific questions!
In the meantime this stream I did with fellow ex- staff Snarkie and SoupFaerie a couple years back is a pretty fun primer, where we shared a whole bunch of old photos and art:
I keep saying we should do another one of these, agh!! It was super fun, but I am unfortunately also… super busy. 😅
OH DANG they're bringin' back the old UC art over on Neopets!🙌🏼🎉
My last summer working at Neopets was 2007, which was riiiight on the eve of the big conversion—I rarely kept track of my more basic paintbrushes (purple, rainbow, checkered, etc), but I sure as heck kept track of all the PBs I designed that required full redraws:
I do not think I realized until this moment how many ixis I drew, apologies to all other pet species 😔🙏
GOD I forgot I also kinda pre-designed the Gnorbu? We’d occasionally have the entire team churn out ideas for new pets, and some of my designs got looped into the 2005 April Fool’s joke:
People liked the llama enough that it got plussed up by Anthony and turned into a proper pet the next year👍🏼
OH DANG they’re bringin’ back the old UC art over on Neopets!🙌🏼🎉
My last summer working at Neopets was 2007, which was riiiight on the eve of the big conversion—I rarely kept track of my more basic paintbrushes (purple, rainbow, checkered, etc), but I sure as heck kept track of all the PBs I designed that required full redraws:
I do not think I realized until this moment how many ixis I drew, apologies to all other pet species 😔🙏