pixeljapan - Tumblr blog

[pixeljapan]

Just finished another Savant Ascent enemy: The Scarecrow Hides out of sight in the dark, then flings its own essence out of itself to reap your life. The little guys are slow, but very resiliant, and can quickly overwhelm you.

[pixeljapan]

Can’t like this enough.

Hi, I’m John Su and I may have misunderstood #artvsartist

[pixeljapan]

Hello everyone.

So today I have sad news to bring to you, I’ve been plagied.

I had some messages there telling me if I made a game that I released lastly, knowing I didn’t I asked no and wanted to know why many people asked me this, then they gave me a link to the Facebook page of the company :

 https://www.facebook.com/fortafygames

I looked on it, and directly saw the icon that is, quasi my little pigeons I animate bouncing, then I was like “ mmm … maybe they were inspired but they could ask for permission because it’s way too similar for my taste, it’s really like my animations”  then I saw the videos and it was terrible.

You may already what I animate, but when I saw the video of the gameplay, I had no words.

All of my motions, bouncing animals, Dancing frames are exactly the sames !!

They totally copied my art !!!

So I contacted them, I wanted to be sure, they replied me that it’s for game and that my art is for animation so it’s not the same. Sigh 

So I told my friends about it, many tried tu put messages to discuss with them, no success. Some even were blocked when they put proof of my work.

I’m lost, I didn’t sleep last night because of this, I contacted lawyers and got some explanation, so it’s still going but I have to deal with it and I wanted you to know my current situation.

I share this with you because I’m an artist, this kind of thing happen to us WAY too often and I want to act, for me, for you, for any artists on the internet!

It have to stop!

I have so many proofs on my blog, but also you know me and my art well. 

I can’t let this pass and stay there.

All I wanted was just to spread happiness with my art, now some took all my dreams and hope to make money … but I’m fighting !

Please be aware of this and tell people that it’s total plagiat of my art.

Thank you.

Edit: The Facebook page have been canceled thanks to you !!!

Thank you so much really!!!

Edit, Thank you all so much for your messages !!!

Replying to all is so hard but thank you for taking the time for it !

Also as many said yes, it clearly also look like the trash dove from FB, it’s like they just took our ideas and fused them to make something that could make a buzz  I’m sooo disgusted.

[pixeljapan]

Support Indivisible! Refuting Common Misconceptions

Indivisible, the new RPG from the creators of Skullgirls has less than a week of crowdfunding left with almost half of its goal remaining to be reached. And while the support given so far has been massive, there are still a lot of people who are skeptical. Here’s a couple things I hear regarding Indivisible and my thoughts on them. I hope that if you have second thoughts about supporting Indivisible that reading this may change your mind!

1. The $1.5m goal is too high!

For me and you, $1.5m is a lot of money. For a game studio with several employees, contractors and overhead, it can disappear pretty quickly. The full budget for Indivisible is actually $3.5m (the publisher has agreed to provide the other $2m if the IGG is successful), with the development of the game happening over the course of the next 2-3 years.

So why does a game cost this much to develop? Let’s start at $3.5m and work our way down a hypothetical cost breakdown.

First off, there’s the fees. Normally IGG + the transaction fees takes 10% of what you make, however lndivisible gets a slightly better deal at I believe 7%. So that’s about $105,000 already gone. Then you get to deal with taxes, let’s say at another 5% - a low estiamte. So there’s another $75,000 gone.

We’ve shaved off $180,000 and we haven’t even started development yet!

The game development cycle is about 2-3 years. So now you have to factor the cost of a living wage for 8 people who work in-house at the studio. Let’s say they’re each getting paid $40,000 a year, which for a big city like Los Angeles is modest living at best, arguably even being underpaid depending on the position. Then, consider the cost of each employee in terms of minimal benefits working at that salary will incur another $800 per month per employee. Add on to that office equipment/electricity/internet/rent/etc and all that you’re looking at the very least another $8,000/mo to keep the studio fully functioning. Over the course of 3 years that adds up to about $1,262,400 gone.

We’re now at $2,057,600.

That’s $2 million left to pay all your contractors - this includes dozens of animators (Skullgirls had around 70 and Indivisible will likely have around the same amount), background artists, a musician, voice actors and whatever else is needed for 3 years. They need more animators than anything in both clean-up and color departments. I know this because I worked on both Skullgirls and the Indivisible prototype. Lab Zero is constantly sending out this kind of work and they won’t stop for pretty much the entire development process of the game! The animations are short, but the incredible attention to detail means a lot of care must be given to every frame.

Factor in Murphy’s Law and Lab Zero will be fortunate to have anything left by the end! Making games is expensive, and what they’re asking for is an honest budget that will allow them to create the game and be able to survive while creating it. If you want to know more about this topic, have a listen to MikeZ talk about it on a Skullgirls stream.

Though this leads me to another point that I see often..

2. But i’ve seen other games made for less money!

The cost of a game’s development is proportional to the amount of work and number of people required to finish it within a realistic timetable. There are games today being made anywhere from a couple thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars. All things considered, Indivisible falls somewhere in the middle of the road.

(Above: an animation I did for Indivisible - Zeibei fainting)

Hand-drawn animation is an iconic part of Lab Zero’s style, it is time consuming and requires a lot of skill and experience to create. For the amount of detail and complexity of animation required for a game like Skullgirls and Indivisible, many people are needed to help create it. All of these people need and deserve to be paid for their work.

Another thing to consider is that many crowdfunding projects undersell the true cost and over-promise features on their project pages. I don’t want to point fingers at specific projects, but i’m sure you have seen it before - a game with a ridiculously low goal for the scale of the game promised, complete with an ambiguous hype trailer dotted with concept art and not much more. The idea here is to present a perfect game with a lot left to the imagination and a seemingly feasible goal, with the hopes of smashing it quickly and presenting the “stretch goals” which will fund the true scale of the game. Some games also have the backing of a publisher and extra funds but will not outright say it. All of this is a deceptive marketing tactic to make the idea of pledging more palatable. And in the end, these practices can sometimes doom the projects after they are funded, resulting in an underdeveloped or sometimes even nonexistent product. These experiences have left a bad taste in people’s mouths.

What the Indivisible campaign is offering is the exact opposite of these kinds of misleading tactics. Presented to you is the full cost of the game, the name of the publisher, chart of the budget, and an actual proof of concept prototype of the game you can play yourself and be the judge oft. I think this is the kind of honesty in a game crowdfunding campaign that players deserve, where everything you need to know is on the table so you know your money will be well spent.

On top of this, the Skullgirls Indiegogo campaign delivered on everything that was funded, so Lab Zero already has credibility when it comes to crowdfunding.

3. I will just buy a copy of the game when it’s released! 

Unfortunately, if the game isn’t funded, you won’t be able to do this! Please keep in mind that Indivisible’s Indiegogo page does not have Flexible Funding - which means that if the game doesn’t reach its goal, all the money is refunded.

505 Games, the publisher, also will not give the rest of the funds unless the goal is met - so it’s truly all or nothing!

4. I don’t think it’s going to make it!

To me, this is the same defeatist logic that you can try to apply to almost anything - the idea that you don’t make a difference. Yes, sometimes as humans we feel small and that our contributions to the things we care about aren’t felt. I think we often forget that when we are pushing towards something, we forget to look to our left and our right and see other people next to us doing the same thing, working together. Humanity is at its best when we remember this. 

There are millions of 2D animation and RPG fans - only a fraction of them are needed to come together to make Indivisible happen. You might not feel like your donation alone is going to help make the goal, but what if everyone had that same attitude? Many incredible games that were funded by fans would not exist.

If it doesn’t make its goal, you have nothing to lose - your money would be refunded and that would be the end of it. But if it does, you helped breathe a little life in to a game, dozens of artists, animators, voice actors and musicians for the next few years - and you’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of that in the future. And that, to me, is the coolest part about crowdfunding - the fans being able to take part and closely follow the development of the game they helped to create.

Don’t focus on the numbers and the charts and statistics. Believe, and be a part of it!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this post has been insightful. A lot of this stuff is  my opinion, and I might be a little biased, but I wanted to get this off my chest. And, for good measure, here’s one more link to the Indivisible campaign.  👌

[pixeljapan]

Artist: www.rebeccamock.tumblr.com

[pixeljapan]

Refunding is needed on the Playstation Store!

There are no demos nowadays.

I just bought the new Need for Speed, and I don’t like it. I’ve purchased many digital games but this is just terrible, boring. I want my money back to buy another game. 60€ is too much for this game, I’m very unsatisfied.  I’m curious which support is better. Xbox or Playstation? Because I can’t find any solution for this problem on Sony’s website. - This Is For The Players…

[pixeljapan]

Soldier vs. Skull from last week’s Silent Assault article.

[pixeljapan]

[pixeljapan]

Yesss!!

[pixeljapan]

Tudom, eléggé elhanyagoltam az utóbbi időben a tumblizást, és nem is garantálom, hogy a közeljövőben megsűrűsödnek majd a posztok (túl sok mindent csinálok manapság és erre pont nem jut idő :D), de úgy gondoltam ezt mindenképp meg kell osztanom. Aki nem ismeri JonTron-t, hát itt az ideje! :) Általában szörnyű videojátékokat kritizál a retrotól az újabbakig, de sokszor filmekről és egyéb témákról is beszél. A stílusát meg imádom!

Ja és egy picit megint változtattam a designon, de tényleg csak kicsit. ^^'

[pixeljapan]

Egyre jobban várom a Super Smash Bros-t 3DS-re. Ebben a trailerben bemutatják, hogy milyen lehet a saját Mii avatarunkkal harcolni. Példaként az AKB48 nevezetű japán lánycsapatot készítették el. Már nem kell sokat aludni hozzá! ^^ U.I.: A trailer elején Donkey Kong feje priceless! :D

[pixeljapan]

Design frissítés

No adtam egy új kinézetet a blognak, ami leginkább a fejlécben mutatkozik meg. Próbáltam egyező stílusban összeválogatni képeket azokról a témákról amik érdekelnek engem, így van bőven játékszereplőkről, konzolokról, kütyükről :) Hope you like it!

[pixeljapan]

Megy az előrendelés, amint lesz rá itthon is lehetőség. *_*

[pixeljapan]

No bejelentették az új 3DS-t és 3DS LL-t. Nekem alapvetően tetszenek, szépen finomhangolták a hardvert minden téren, a jobb oldali stick nagyon hiányzik a mostaniról. Tetszik az új sima 3DS-nél, hogy cserélhetők az elő és hátlapok, sokkal személyre szabottabb lehet így a készülék, főleg, hogy az új OS frissítéssel hozzá illő témákat is beállíthatunk a rendszernek (ez a feature szerencsére a régebbi eszközökön is elérhető lesz). Ennek ellenére nem hiszem, hogy becserélném a mostani 3DS XL-emet az újra (egyelőre:). Egyrészről amíg nincs rá exclusive játék, amivel mindenképpen játszanék, addig felesleges, másrészről nem kizárt, hogy jövőre be fognak mutatni egy új hordozható kézi konzolt (és asztalit?). Persze játékügyileg pont ez az év vége és a jövőév lesz igazán erős a Nintendo-nak, nagyon jó címek érkeznek, így szerintem ezeknek a sikerétől is függ majd, hogy lesz-e új hardver, de biztosra veszem, hogy már dolgoznak rajta ezerrel. 

[pixeljapan]

Ezt a képet volt szerencsém élőben látni Japánban. Íme :)

Sega Visions magazine Sonic the Hedgehog 2 cover.

[pixeljapan]

Raiden in Mortal Kombat X!

Enter the #Thundergod! #MKX #ThunderStruck

[pixeljapan]

Mostanság a Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of fate című játékkal töltöm az utazásaim nagy részét. Ez a darab egy átvezetőként szolgál a LoS széria első és második része között, és mivel alapvetően kézi konzolra fejlesztették (később kijött xboxra, ps-re és pc-re is), így a klasszikus oldalnézetes stílust választották. Nekem nagyon tetszik a játék, változatos, szuperek az átvezetők és a BOSS harcok is szépen kivitelezettek. Néha kicsit beszaggat a komplexebb jeleneteknél, illetve többször elég távolról látjuk a terepet, így nehézkes kivenni a főszereplőnket, viszont a 3D mód sokat tud segíteni, hogy el tudjuk különíteni a szereplőket a háttértől. Ezután valószínűleg ki fogom próbálni a széria többi részét is, bár elég rossz kritikákat kaptak (ez mondjuk nem tart vissza, lehet, hogy nekem pont be fog jönni :). Tervben van még, hogy a régi Castlevaniakat is kijátszom, hiszen eléggé meghatározó játékok voltak anno és, ha szeretnék majd platformer játékokat készíteni a jövőben, ezek nagyon jó alapot fognak szolgálni.