If you haven’t checked it out yet, Flipn’ Monsters! is up on the App Store for $1.99. Check it out and leave a review!

I recently ended a nice block of crunch at work on our current project. So naturally, I kicked back and relaxed… for about 3 days then the hurt started again. But this time it was my fault.

When not working on a massive AAA title at work, 2 close friends and myself have been trying our luck at something much smaller and hand crafted. We’ve been working on a teeny tiny iPhone app called Flipn’ Monsters!. It’s a memory / puzzle game of sorts w/ a cool theme and nicely illustrated monsters… that you flip. Got it? I’ll be sure to post something when we get a bit closer to putting it out. Until then, become a fan of the Facebook page!

As if that wasn’t enough I’ve begun co-authoring a book on game art. This too has a rather short deadline so I should be posting more on it soon.

I had the chance to visit the Art Institute of San Diego - CA last week and see what some of the students are producing. Overall, the quality of work is greatly increasing. I spoke a bit about how important a solid work flow is and then gave some critique on their current projects. And, as promised, I’m posting a few links to some commonly used Maxscript library’s I use everyday at work.

-HaywoodTools - lots of good scripts in here. There is also a nice table on the site to quickly browse whats in the script pack
-SoulburnScripts - again, another great library of stuff. SoulburnScripts is by Neil Blevins. I had a chance to meet him and check out some of his stuff first hand at last years Siggraph.

Cheers!

I’ve added a new sub-d test model to my portfolio. It’s currently WIP. Not sure if I’ll be making a low and baking this down or not. We’ll see how much time I have.

As well, I’ve been adding some new features to bakeTools and well as fixing bugs and prepping some simple docs / tutorials for it. I’m getting much closer to releasing the first version. 2 bugs left to fix. I’ve also just finished adding in the multi-bake options. So now you can bake a Normal, AO and Mask map all in one go.

More to come!

It’s a new year and its time for a fresh site. Ok well, I re-did my site in August but that was before my old host ate my website and shit our a turd. And with that, I’ve moved over to WordPress to handle all the nitty gritty and customized the heck out of a pretty cool WP theme. I don’t get to do a whole lot of graphic design stuff at work (but hey I’m not complaining). I do however get to tighten up the graphics on level 3. So, its nice to do the graphic stuff now and again and doing so for my website is a win win.

As each new year begins, plans for bigger, badder, cooler projects start to brew. Here’s to hoping the ship schedule at work isn’t so tight that I can’t squeeze in a few projects.

Well, some bad stuff happened to my last blog w/ my old web host. Some stuff got deleted, no one was making backups, and I got caught with the bag in my hands. That being said, this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I was already on the look out for a new web host and this sealed the deal. I’ve switched over the Media Temple (MT) and thus far am really impressed. Super fast load times on the grid service and the iPhone web app / control panel is just awesome. On top of that tons more disk space and bandwidth means I’ll be posting up my tutorial content real soon.

Lastly, because I’ve switched hosts, my custom blog is no longer. It was written in ColdFusion back when I actually did web work to pay the bills and since (MT) supports PHP I thought I’d just make my life much simpler and go w/ a sweet WordPress blog instead. Should make updates easier and smoother.

Happy New Year!

-Tyler