Roode News Dump 2016!

Screenshot of Simon Slots. Reel and background art by the talented folks at Present Creative. UI art by me.

I think it's now abundantly clear that I was not born to be a blogger. However, as there's no easier way to assure my friends and peers that I do, in fact, do Art Things, I return to my poor neglected corner of the Internet to show off a little of what I've been creating.

For the past two years, I've worked at a startup called Blue Crystal Labs with several members of the team from Rivet Games (and a few new folks, as well!) developing an innovative casino game that combines competitive memory game mechanics with traditional slots. As Art Director, my job has been to fill the game with the highest-quality graphics, which I've strived to do with the help of an extremely talented and supportive group of people. Now that the game is live on all mobile platforms (and I do mean ALL), I'm excited to show off some of the art and animation that has gone into this awesome project.

You can see here a few gifs of reel symbols I animated for the game, but I was also lucky enough to design most of the UI art, and help polish the beautiful paintings that my coworker Jesse and our external partners produced. UI design stretches a whole different set of art muscles, so it was pretty educational to refine the design over countless iterations and play tests.

Meanwhile, some other big things were happening in our very Roode life, as our second child was born in late 2015! The cheek-chubbiness quotient in our house just got a lot higher, that's for sure!

And finally, our last huge piece of news.... We're moving to Boston! Gorgeous and exciting though California is, we've long hoped to bring our family back to the East Coast, to enjoy the snow and the company of relatives and childhood friends. I've only visited the area once so far, but I completely fell in love with it and cannot WAIT to move!

As always, I have grandiose plans for how I will become a diligent daily-sketch artist, a gourmet cook, and general supermom after we move, so I'm taking bets now on the probability of any of those actually occurring. Wipe that smirk off your face....

And please play our game, available on iOS, Android, Kindle, and Windows Phone!

More Game Animation Tests!

Here are a few more character cycles I animated for some game tests:

In other news, I've been doing quite a lot of UI and graphic design lately, so I expect to post some samples in the near future. It's a completely different set of design muscles to flex, and I'm really enjoying it!

All characters property of TinyCo.

Some Animation Tests

A few months back, when I was seeking a position to follow up Rivet, I completed a couple of animation tests that I have recently received clearance to show.  Though neither company had an available position at the time, they are both very kind to allow me to post my work.  So, without further ado, here they are!

The character is the property of MinoMonsters, a cool mobile game company in San Francisco.  Though the test was fairly wide open, I decided to make it an exercise in speed.  I completed the build (rig), animation, redrawn frames, and FX in four hours from start to finish.

This character is the property of Mindsnacks, yet another awesome mobile game company in SF.  The test was likewise wide open, so I decided to take the opposite approach here and make a longer animation, mostly redrawn, more of an acting piece than the game action of the previous clip.

In both cases, the motion came out somewhat fast, which I attribute to the fact that they were animated at 24fps, while for the previous year, I've been animating mostly at 12fps.  I'd like to take the time to do somewhat more carefully-paced, hand-drawn animation in the near future.  Meantime, however, it's back to work, and wish you all an excellent (and cool) rest of the Summer!