joe randel's art dump

Thank you for all the suggestions.  A character has been picked and is currently in rough sketch form. ^_^

Did you like Santa as a kid?  I mean, if you celebrate Christmas that is.  If not them fell free to continue to read and laugh at the absurdity of making you kid sit on some strangers lap.  I don’t really remember how I felt.  I think I was okay.  I don’t have any traumatic events involving Santa to my knowledge.

My kids though… forget it.  They want nothing to do with him in person.  They hide from him if they see him and even burst in to tears.  My daughter never wanted to see him at the mall.  She would only stand at the edge of “Santa’s Village”  and watch other kids have their turn with the red man.  Now that my daughter is 5 she’ll go up and shake his hand because “that’s what you do when your five” she says.

They like the idea of Santa and like to read stories about him.  My daughter loves drawing pictures for Santa about what she wants for Christmas.  It’s so cute.  But the real thing… nope… no way.

So how about you?  Where you scared of the fat man when you where little?

Holy crap on a stick!

With all the commissions I forgot to get on my annual candy cane pic!

I’m usually on the ball with it but this year… Actually, I’ve found that each year it gets harder to pick a character to use. Do I cjoose a new one or use and old favorite (Gadget, Roxanne, Fifi, Babs, etc…)

Quick, I need a roster of characters to pick from!

This guy has decided to draw a wicked picture on his kids lunch bag every day!  Two words… awesome sauce!

This is cool on two levels for me.  One… because it just plain rocks and I plan on doing the same thing with my kids one day (assuming they take a brown bag for lunches) and two, because my Mom used to do this on my lunch bags. ^_^   I’m not sure what I’ll do if they take a lunch box.  Also, I’d want them to bringg the bag home if I really liked the picture ^_^

I noticed that this guy draws pictures of anime and cartoon characters from probably before his kids where born.  This would be a neat way if exposing them to thing he enjoyed as a kid.

Did your parents put fun things in to your lunches, or maybe make them in to cool shapes when you where a kid?

Today I finished Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

Woo!

I’ve been playing it off and on again for over a year now but it all came together this morning before my morning meeting (and during a little.  I love having meetings at my desk ^_^).  For the past week and a bit now I’ve been stocking up on items for the final battle.  Getting money is a bit of a pain in the game so I traveled to the casino and traded in my winnings for items and then took them to the local chef so they could be made in to even better items.  Wow… what a shore that was… o_O  I usually try and find all the items and such when I play though, but because my game time is so limited I’m just going to move on.  Over all though, a very nice game.  Fun to play and actually quite challenging.  I give it 4 out of 5.

So after the credits rolled I got thinking… I don’t remember the last console game that I finished was.  I play DS all the time and beat lots of games on it.  I beat Half Life 2 and Portal on PC earlier this year, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I finished a console title.  I’ve started a bunch, but due to lack of time I’ve wandered away from them.  That makes me kind of sad.

Next on my list to play is Killer 7 (talk about opposite end of the game spectrum eh ^_^).  I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time now.

So what’s the last game you’ve completed recently?  Or, how long has it been since you’ve beat a game.

There, I said it.  People like to ask where I work and while I won’t let that out I figured it won’t hurt to let it known where I used to work.  So Gameloft was the place (Montreal studio) and I was a pretty heavy hitter there from what producers tell me.  I actually had the studio director tell me one day that when new projects start up the local producers would always ask if I would be on their team.  He said he’d never seen anything like it.  I worked there for about 5 years before I packed it all up for greener pastures.

I was generally the guy that designed the menus and interfaces.  It wasn’t uncommon for me to be on my primary project and helping two other ones with their interface.  Ah yes…  good times.

Why did I leave?  Well, I was only allowed to go so high in the ranks.  I wanted to be the lead 2D artist at my studio and they wouldn’t let me (a position I held previously and was screwed over for).  Senior artist was all that I could get and I only got that title because I was the art that was there the longest.  I wanted to be more involved in the creative process and design but what always held back.  So away I went.  But it was also during my time there that I was asked to be a speaker at the Montreal International Game Summit (talked to over 100 people about my area of expertise) and was asked to be in a book called “Character Design for Mobile Devices” so even though the job might have ended on a bit of a sour note I learned a ton about the industry and grew so much in my field.

So now you know.  So next time you play a Gameloft game, you might just be playing a game I was involved in. ^_^

Bad mood tonight…

Fought with the wife…

I’ll do a better post tomorrow…