Thursday, June 30, 2011

PG-MEN - Puppy

Growing up, the X-Men were always a controversial subject in my household. My brother and I were huge fans, traded the cards, watched the TV show, read the comics, collected the action figures... And, of course, played the Arcade Game RELIGIOUSLY... But it took some work to get there.

See, my parents were of the more conservative nature. While my brother and I saw superpowers, action and make-believe, most parents at the time saw sacrilege, violence and overall filth. Even the name, "X" Men sounded a little wrong. I remember the first time my brother brought home a pack of cards, my mom caught a glimpse of it and was like, "X-Men? What is that?"... So she proceeded to look at the cards my brother had purchased and, naturally, there happened to be a character named "Lucifer"... You can only imagine the reaction which occurs in a Christian household when a child brings home a picture of Lucifer. What my mom didn't know was that "Lucifer" was the name of an alien in the comics... Not the prince of darkness as one would assume. But then, what parent read comics?

For a long while X-Men were banned in our house and to this day my mom is always suspicious of Mutant protectors of America. In my eyes, the fact that a villain was named Lucifer was a good thing, cause nobody wants the bad guy to win... It all equaled Christianity to me! Not a convincing argument. Now that I'm older, I doubt I'd go very easy on my (hypothetical) kids if one of them brought home a picture of the devil... Though being a child of comics, I'd probably read about the character first before deciding whether or not to burn my child's playing cards... I don't think my mom burned the card, I'm fairly certain it's still in the attic.

On a side note, my mom may very well be an X-Man herself... She has the uncanny mutant ability to turn whatever it is we're watching/listening to/reading into something horrific and foul just as she enters the room. I'm serious. You could be watching Barney and the second my mom walks in, Barney will rape a child and curse the church, thus resulting in your immediate punishment for watching something so horrible. There was no winning growing up. Did you ever think, growing up, that by muting the television when your parents walk in the room that you'll avoid any and all suspicion on their part that you're watching something you shouldn't be watching? Yeah, I think it's actually safer to just let it happen... no need to add deceit to your list of broken rules.

I'm seriously portraying a twisted version of my parents for the purposes of this blog. They weren't that strict, but X-Men was a problem. And it all stems back to that freaking Lucifer trading card. Oy.

In any case. I got to thinking, maybe it's time the X-Men had a simple re-visioning for the purposing of children programming. I think what the young world needs is a new breed of worthless heroes... We need... The PG-MEN!! Because "X" is just a little too pornographic for my taste. And nobody likes letters that remind them of algebra.

My first subject: Wolverine.
Everybody's favorite X-Man, possibly favorite hero, ever. Which is ironic. How come the hero that cuts people with giant blades in his hands is a childhood favorite? Why does Marvel keep attempting to put this character in every cartoon and PG-13 movie they come out with? Blades cut. Cuts bleed. Blood is a BIG problem for Television producers AND movie producers. If you're going to make a film or cartoon about Wolverine, you have to accept the fact that there is going to be some serious violence involved... Typically they cop-out and have Wolverine fight the Sentinels, or have him try to slice somebody and miss or hit armor, or use his claws to stab a garage door opener to keep bad guys out of a room... It's pathetic.

My vote for the re-visioned Wolverine is the following: No more blades... Now he has pipe-cleaners in his hands! His whole skeleton has been infused with... Wire... And fluffy stuff. He can get tangled up in high places and he can scratch you just enough to annoy you... As a diversion while the other heroes call the police and wait for the negotiators to arrive to allow a peaceful outcome! And he cleans a mean pipe! He's so handy!

Oh, and as for that pointy mask of his, someone could poke their eye out on that, let's (as my parents have told me many times in the past) put a cork in it! There! Now those won't hurt anybody! ... And while we're at it, let's just change his name. The Wolverine is a very aggressive animal, children might get the impression that they can count on a wolverine for help or pick one up and hug it only to have their faces chewed of in the most unpleasant of fashions. Let's name our hero... PUPPY! Yeah, now that's something we can market. Who doesn't love puppies?? I'll tell you who doesn't love puppies... Satanists. You want your kids worshiping the father of lies? Yeah, I didn't think so... Buy them a PUPPY action figure and go to church!

Berserker Rage! ... er... Cuddly Aggression!
~ Mark

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sonuva DNA Tree Finisher

Back to Son'Uva! Don't get me wrong, it's been fun playing with Turble animations this week, but I gots a game to finish! ... Someday.

This week features a lovely finisher for an older stage.

I debated actually having a finisher for this stage, it didn't lend itself to a lot of violence (though that giant ribcage in the back has been very tempting... but I think we've impaled enough combatants), so I analyzed the elements of the stage and decided the only logical course of action was to use the vegetation which is obviously a dominant presence.

So clicks it up thug-style forealz!


Lil' Flash o' Horrors,
~ Mark

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

kill turBle

When I was concepting some villains for Turble back in the day, I came up with this guy... He's a little mutant thing in a ball. I only had time to animate him rolling around and messing Turble up for the time being, but he'll do some thangs I'm sure...  Ahh, time. Actually, time is the reason I went with creating an Orb for a bad guy... What's easier to make than a circle with some limbs? Eh? Yeah... Maybe I'll just end up scrapping this guy, but he's simple and I wanted to accomplish SOMETHING today... Especially after just attending a design conference, I think you're supposed to be inspired after those...

This particular character has no name yet... I've been referring to him as either "Ball" or "kill turBle" (because of the scrolling text on his screen). Maybe he has potential.


Alright, enough reading. Do the usual. Click the image, watch an animation, up my analytics, then let them drop until the next post... I'm sure if this little ditty keeps up long enough I'll be filthy rich in no time...


How exciting! He rolled!
~ Mark

Monday, June 27, 2011

Turble Taters!

This new character might be a little twisted... But it's a cool enemy and I'm keepin' him gosh dangit! If you remember the days of Mario there was a character called "Bob-omb", a walking bomb which would explode if you touched them... Well I've created a character named "Taters". It's a creature stuffed inside a potato sack with a bomb strapped to its mouth. Get too close and it blows up. I actually got the idea from the animé "Ninja Scroll", where one villain would sow people up and stuff explosives in them. Only this character isn't an unwilling creation, he's more like a really diabolical teddy bear.

Ironically, I animated this character while waiting in an airport this morning... Yikes.

As you could probably guess, the name "Taters" comes from this character being a walking potato sack with a label on it that says "Taters"... Anyway, I'm thinking of having him be a creation of "Ragavont".

You can click the image below to view his animation work. You'll notice there's a "hurt" animation for Turble now as well. Boo yah!


Gimme yer' tots!
~ Mark

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Turble Robot

Good things come to them that wait... Everyone else gets this post.

So I've been in Chicago since Wednesday at the HOW Design Live conference and thanks to the Hyatt charging you for every dump you take in their toilets, I've been avoiding the "internet fees" as best I can. So no posts. But all is not lost. The great thing about attending conferences is that while you're sitting through self-centered artists talking about how far the perfectly designed stick up their anus goes, you actually get some quality doodle time in (it's actually not like that at all, it's pretty interesting stuff, but there's been a few gems, blech). On one particular morning, I sketched up a delicious little robot for Turble to duke it out with. Then after a night of doing what it is we do in a new city, I stumbled back to my room during the wee hours of the night/morning and did some VERY sloppy Flash work...

Today I went back to that Flash file and did it over... This is the end result.


 The robot enemy is actually a revised version of a robot Dan sketched up a while back for the game.


I've incorporated the previous Turble post's animation to put it into perspective as well. I'm happy with the end result. Sadly the conference is a little more intense over the weekend (and quite good), so I doubt I'll have much time to do anything else before I get back home to my lovely wife on Monday (who I miss terribly right now).

Anyway, that's all I got.

$13.50 for this post,
~ Mark

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Turble - Martini Madness

Another Turble Update...

My good friend Dan, when I originally showed him my concepts for Turble, thought the game should be called "Martini Madness", due to the fact Turble's cannon looked like an olive... I love that name. I love it so much that I decided to name Turble's tank "The Martini Madness". However, I wanted to take the tank a step further and hopefully introduce some new elements to the game.

The Martini Madness is now going to be more than just a vehicle... It's going to be a metallic ball made up of rings which will rearrange themselves to form various weaponry and vehicles. This will be Turble's main weapon throughout the game. I imagine as the game progresses the player will be able to upgrade Martini Madness to create new weaponry, etc... Below is a quick animation of how it will probably look in the game. Click the rings and view.
 Yeah, a lot of text for such a little animation, but I'm on a tight schedule this week.

Deal,
~ Mark

Monday, June 20, 2011

Turble Animations

Sometimes it's healthy to take a break from one project and dabble in another... I'm the king of this process . I'm certainly not going to stop working on Son'Uva any time soon, but for today I wanted to just play with another toy... Turble the Gerbil!

Up to now it's mostly been concept art and animations which would never fly in the real world of gaming. So I decided to crack down and create Turble in all his animated glory. You can view a brief demo animation below... Ignore the dullness of the background, that's something I'll have to work on later. The focus of this little ditty is Turble. Click on it!


On major difference you'll notice is that he's not riding on his trusty metallic steed, "The Martini Madness", he's on foot... I think his cannon-mobiles will be acquired as you play and upgraded. For now, he's got a cool little space-pistol for cappin' cyborgs, mutants and cryogenically frozen yet now reanimated fiends from the past! ... None of which are in this animation. So enjoy this breath of fresh air because there isn't any in the future!

Adorable,
~ Mark

Son'Uva Status Update

You know, I've put in about 5 or 6 hours worth of work on Son'Uva this weekend and yet I have nothing to really show for it... The sad thing is, once you get to the point I'm at with a game like this, a lot of the work becomes technical and less creative.

For example, this weekend was almost entirely devoted to duplicating the animations for the fighters on the receiving end of the finishers... So if I had an animation of one person getting burnt to a crisp, decapitated, mauled to death, etc... I have to make that same animation for every other character... Which is tedious at best. I've spent so much time swapping out symbols that I literally looked for a "SWAP" button on my cloths this morning when I needed to get changed... I also looked for an "Undo" button when I passed gas in church.

Needless to say, I'm not going to show you 10 animations of Gazael finishing each fighter sequentially (though it was a tempting thought), I'll just show you Archfiend's "defeated" animation and call it a night. It's the only real updated I made this weekend that's new from a visual standpoint.


It may be this way for a little while,
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Adventures of D. Carota!

My good friend Kevin has been hard at work promoting/producing a play titled "SMUDGE a new play by Rachel Axler"... For a viral tie-in to the film, he asked me to create the following ad... I won't go into any details for fear of giving away it's purpose, but the gist is that it's a happy carrot with a Saturday Morning cartoon!

So here it is... The Adventures of D. Carota!

The ROOT of all evil!
~ Mark

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Son'Uva HUD work

In all the animation chaos I forgot to focus on one of the more important aspects of any fighting game... The HUD (Head Up Display). I figure the fight would just go on forever without a health meter or a time limit (a concept which I hate, but sadly must conform to for classic gaming's sake). I was struggling with where to go on this one, traditional boxes with a red and yellow bar, percentages, etc... I went with skulls, spines and tubing. I think it fits. Check it out:


So you'll notice in the above animation that there's a bunch of purple glowing orbs next to the health meters... The purpose of these is to represent how many more times the fighters can use their special moves... I've been referencing this concept since I started talking about the game and I really think it'll take the "cheap" factor out of the gaming experience... Preferably avoiding cheap nonsense like this.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. The only downside is that I have to illustrate each number on the timer... As you can see, I only had enough patience for the "2"... Maybe I'll do "3" tomorrow and make a REALLY useless blog about it...

I do anything for blog content,
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.  

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Son'Uva: Pinkerton Tower Finisher Update

I felt like updating the Pinkerton Finisher to not be so much like the other stage finishers (one, two)... So here's the direction I took... Not that much different, but enough of a change to make me happy... Cause it's all about my happiness, y'heard?? Click. Pic.


Is there something in my eye?
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

Monday, June 13, 2011

Sonuva Legacy Updates

Legacy always feels incomplete. So today I decided to freaking complete him already! The only move missing for him was a second special attack. It feels like everything he does is already so devastating that I couldn't think of anything else he could do without being a rip-off of some other big boss out there. Fortunately I had one last idea which I decided to execute... He wraps himself in "soul hands" like armor and charges at his opponent. Hopefully this move won't be too cheap...

In addition to finishing up his moves, I thought his finisher could use a little tweaking. The ribcage didn't seem to match the cartoon nature of the animation/illustration styles, so I updated it. There are also a few other tweaks which I won't bother going into because... well, they wouldn't really make any sense unless you've been glued to this game's development like I have.

So go on and give this little image a click and view the carnage!

Charge!!
~ Mark


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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Sonuva Weekend Updates

I was sadly out of town Thursday and Friday and was unable to make any updates... So over the weekend I did an extra amount of development on my never-ending project "Son'Uva"... I was debating spacing these updates out over a couple of days so I could take some time off of working on this game, but I thought a nice long post with lots of content would be more fun to my very few readers...

I realized this past week that I never had any kind of defeated animation for the fighters which would cue the player to finish off his opponent... So that's exactly what I began working on. Defeated animations for the fighters... I have four done and should have the rest finished before the end of the week. Fortunately, they're really quick to animate/illustrate. And that makes me a happy designer. Click the image below to view the animations to date.


Having done these animations, I saw it fit to revisit a few finishers I felt were lacking... Hunter's is the first. I have never been 100% satisfied with how this finisher comes out looking... I've redone it at least twice now and it keeps failing to live up to the others... So I cracked down on it and tried to figure out what made it suck so hard... Not sure if I can explain it, but I think I figured out what the problem was and I believe it to be in a good place now... But you can be the judge, click it.


Gazael was another finisher which I feel I may have cheaped out on due to either time restraints, laziness, or my wife watching me animate a character based off of her... Regardless, the concept was spot on, the execution was off the mark. I went all Michael Bay on it and decided to go bigger, badder and more epic. Not sure how well this one will cooperate when it comes to development, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there... You know how this works. Image. Click. View.


And speaking of bridges to cross, how about bridges to fall off of? I gave a sneak peak of the floating bridge's gruesome ending, but never actually delivered on the goods... So without further adieu, I saved my favorite for last... Here's the Bridge Finisher. Click dangit, click!


Alright, I hope you got your fill of updates for this game, cause I'm fresh out! I'm sure to have more as the week progresses, and who knows, maybe when this game is actually complete, I'll go back to doing some art work everybody can enjoy! ... Don't get your hopes up.

Son'Uva II, maybe?
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Sonuva Nark Specials

So Nark has the ability to manifest his artwork into reality... I wanted to work on this concept a little more, and touch up the sketches to make them more animated. Nark now creates a giant demon which swipes the opponent if he/she comes into contact with it. The attack where Nark creates a giant fist underneath the opponent needed a touch up as well to be A.) more noticable B.) more animated. The fist closes as it goes back into the ground. Anyway, I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this update than it really is... But with all these Son'Uva updates, this blog needs some written content...

Click the image below and watch away!


Have I mentioned he's kind of me?
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Sonuva Throws

Just a quick posting...

I went back and modified two throws in the fighter line-up; Hunter and Canaan. I thought their throws were a little weak and needed some beefing up... Hope you enjoy!

CLICK IT!


Kiss the pavement!
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Sonuva: Nark Finisher Update

I was never terribly happy with Nark's original finisher... It didn't appeal to any of his characteristics. I had previously just slightly altered Hunter's finisher, seeing as Nark was nothing more than a "color-swap" of Hunter. So I went back to my old sketches from when I first started concepting the game and used that as a starting point... You can see from the image on the left what the idea is... He's got a pencil, I suppose he should do some erasing. Though that implies that he makes mistakes. Maybe if you're fighting him that means that YOU'RE the mistake! Take that.

Click the image below to view the new finisher animation. Love it.


Do-over!
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Sonuva: Edgell's Tomb Finisher

Real quick cause it's late/early and I needs my sleep! I worked on a stage finisher for Edgell's Tomb... I'm pleased, but it needs a little tweaking.

Click the image below to view and have a good weekend!

* UPDATE: I touched up the animation, should look a little better now... Played with some lighting, etc... Enjoy!


Split decision!
~ Mark

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Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Sonuva: Edgell's Tomb

About a year ago, my good friend Edgell sketched me up a design for a stage in Son'Uva. I've been meaning to get this stage created for a while and just never got around to it. Well no more of that! I cracked down this week and done got her done, y'hear!

I've tweaked his design a little to fit the mood of the game, and it's going to have a pretty sick finisher integrated into it... Basically the concept was an old Egyptian tomb. Hence I'm going to name it, "Edgell's Tomb"... for now.

Click the image below to view it and be sure to comment and give Edgell his well deserved compliments!


You da'Man, Edge!
~ Mark

Creative Commons License
Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.