So I had this idea for my next batch of business cards; something to make them a little unique, give them a bit more value, and encourage people to look at them more than twice.

Basically, on the front of each card there will be a character and some stats, while on the back, along with my contact info, will be the (very brief) rules for the game.
The line art I did in ink with my favorite Hunt bowl-pointed nib,  at about twice the printed size, then scanned the drawings and vectorized them in Inkscape.
My original intent for the art style was to emulate Victorian children’s card games, this is where I got my colour palate. Then I stumbled across some old bubblegum trading cards, and adopted some ideas there. I used the pencil tool to rather haphazardly trace out areas of colour, then I shifted them a little, to emulate cheap colour separation when done by a chainsmoking little old lady during the 1930s.

I’ve only got three coloured now. the rest I’ll colour eventually, as well as adding a few more characters. The old paper texture is just for effect. The final print image will be printed on antique style cardstock.

For the record, these characters BASICALLY have no relation to any of my current storylines. Most of them are just random people (things) that’ve popped into my head over the past few years, except the Cait Gypsie, from a dead storyline; the wandering Mad Scientist, an ancestor of another of my characters; The Metal Snail, my mascot; and the Aer Pyrate, who is so painfully genaric it makes my head hurt. Yes they all look pretty threatening, and maybe that is undesirable on a business card, but this is to be a combat-based card game. So, yeah

Once I’m done I’ll put all the cards here for download, along with some alternate rules, (I’m keeping the stats nice and ambiguous) full size SVGS of the lineart, and blank card templates. Because of my current kick, the whole thing will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, meaning: do with it whatever you want as long as what you want doesn’t include making money or removing my name and website. You can even use this image if you want, but the full size SVGs might be more use…

Gotta go to bed soon, gonna make it quick…

Today I started, (for the third time) work on my experimental Passive Space Unshooter, Crez. Basically the idea was to go back to the classic space shooters of the Taito era, and remove the essential game play concept, IE, “Dodge and Shoot”. This demo represents about a solid half-day of work…

This is just a quick demo. The graphics suck, there’s no scoring or menu, and the game play is poorly executed, but the gist is there. Use your mouse to direct the crez and deflect the green bursts to defend the sphyres. If all the sphyres are destroyed, you lose. If you destroy all the aliens, another, faster wave takes their place.

Download Crez Demo 1 (382Kb, Windows Exe)

(I figure if I put a play-by-play of my development process on my website I might actually get the thing done. Hah, I know right? But it’s a nice thought anyway… That said, I’m off to work and won’t be able to touch this for two weeks.)

Interactive storytelling of any kind is enough to get me all geek-jittery, (gji#R3) but a form that is also real-time sensitive AND requires nothing more than animated gif/gif technology? *Swoons*

I see some real applications for this, especially if combined with something like the JavaScript rollover as seen in Sam and Max: The Big Sleep

The coolest part is that this is a guest comic. I guess you can expect something really cool to happen when the writer of an experimental interactive comic guest strips an experimental clip-art comic. (Although, both Dinosaur Comics and MS Paint adventures have been running long enough that I don’t know if they still count as ‘experimental’. But they were for like the first ten strips anyhow…)

(Younger readers -or their parents- may want to skip all of the comics in this post for reasons totally related to swears, occasional gratuitous violence and immature sexual dialogue)