With the 15th of December only days away, I thought I’d throw out a quick freebie for any Trenches fans eagerly awaiting the Friday launch.  I’ve turned the massive poster art into dedicated iPhone and iPad wallpapers! So you can adorn your iDevice with some rich WW1 artwork to get in the mood :)

Enjoy!

Trenches 2 was previewed on Destructoid last night, so I thought I fire the link up…

• Destructoid Preview

While I’m at it, here are some others too…

• Touch Arcade Preview
• Slide to Play Preview

Only 13 days to go…its almost here :)

It looks like Trenches 2 has had a slight delay and wont be released until the 15th of December now.  Sorry guys.  To partially make up for it, here’s a sneak peak of the British and German tanks :) I’ve also included an image showing how the main two soldiers have evolved from Trenches 1 to Trenches 2. As I hope you’ll agree, they’ve come on quite a bit :)

Roll on December 15th!

Hey Everyone,

Well, I’ve been tweeting about this project for about 8 months now, possibly even longer and its now been announced! The worldwide AppStore smash hit Trenches now has a sequel!!!! Trenches 2 will be hitting the AppStore on December 1st and is being published by none other than EA!

I’ve been working on this on and off for the best part of a year and let me tell you, it’s probably the biggest war/action/strategy game on the iPhone…by a LONG stretch, it’s MASSIVE! I’ve been drawing, painting, airbrushing, vectorising and designing for this puppy for soooooooo long and every second has been insanely awesome!

First up I want to cover what has to be my biggest creative accomplishment in my entire 12 years in the industry, the HUGE A1 promo poster that I created recently.

I was blessed with a 2 week budget to create this poster and was basically given something that as an artist you almost never get…the right budget!  As I’d been given such a generous project (as part of the much larger project) I wanted to make this my show piece, the one piece of art that would allow me to take my next step up and genuinely improve my abilities. Needless to say, I spent a significant amount of time sketching and ran through an entire sketch pad putting this together!  Once the sketch was roughed out, reviewed, amended and put into its final state, I was VERY, VERY excited!

My goal was to create a cartoon image in my personal style that reflected the stunning Udon/Capcom character collages that adorn the stunning Udon comics and posters, and while I know I’m no Alvin Lee, I was determined to make this MY take on such a composition.  I started with the star of the show, the German soldier and wanted to create a story around him that portrayed the game.  The overall vision was to tell the story of the Germans out weighing, out gunning and standing terrifyingly tall over the allied forces of WW1. Trenches 2 now has multiple nationalities, so I had to include each of these within the poster, each one displaying his own very distinct character.  All very tongue and cheek too which made it even more fun :)

With the sketch completed it was time to get into the colour rendering…this was going to be fuuuuuuuuuuun!

As I had the time to do so, I had chance to lay down some colour schemes before getting started and after a few iterations I settled on the warm glow of a fiery, war torn battlefield.  This just seemed fitting, and all the browns, oranges and yellows just made for a really indulgent palette that soothed my eyes :)

The scene just seemed to explode to life as each drop of colour adorned the screen, it was a spectacularly rewarding illustration to be working on and I simply couldn’t wait to move onto the next bit as the current part was completed.  My mind was so focused on the final image that I was almost dreaming about this poster whenever I was away from it.  And without further ado, here it is…

One of the other elements that made this so exciting was the final scale of the image ( A1), so my detail level had to be about a gazillion times higher than my usual ‘on-screen’ work and boy oh boy did that make for some memory challenges…

This puppy rolled in at a whopping 1.5gb as a PSD (I like my layers ;) and was quickly becoming a beast to deal with. Even with 8 cores and more RAM than you can imagine, this sucka was still loading after I’d finished making my morning espresso!

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I’m babbling.

I hope you enjoy looking at this as much as I enjoyed making it!

Oh, and here’s a couple of cheeky screenies of Trenches 2 to whet your appetite…

…now I’ll save my rambling on these until my next post :)

Lastly, and VERY importantly, I want to say a MMMMMMMMMMASSIVE thanks to Thunder Game Works for inviting me to be their lead artist once again.

Mike.

Yesterday’s Stenches launch was little short of mindblowingly epic! Not only did we get reviewed as TUAW’s Daily App, but we also got a killer review from Touch Arcade & Slide to Play…but that’s just the tip of the iceberg…we also got the AMAZING accolade of Apples (US) ‘iPhone Game of the Week‘! OH MY GOD!

Thanks to everyone out there that is saying amazing things about Stenches you are all so, so awesome!

Thank you world!

Mike.

One of the recent iPhone games I’ve been busy on, is the sub-story follow up to the worldwide AppStore hit, Trenches,  attractivly entitled, Stenches!

After the phenominal sucess of Trenches and the huge expression of love from the players regarding secret unlock-able ’Zombie Horde Mode’, Thunder Game Works decided to create a whole game based around this awesome little mini-game.

So you can imagine my excitement when I was tasked with bringing this vision to life!  I love anything Zombie related, so couldnt wait to get my teeth into this!  New characters, environments, branding, menu’s, everything!  Absolutely awesome fun!!!  Just to give you a preview of what’s to come, I’ve showcased the main zombie characters below, and as you’ll see, there’s quite a mix in this new game :)

The game is crammed with awesome new features and game modes, but I wont babble on about those here (you’ll hear more in the press real soon) and I’ll leave you take a look at the concept sketches.

If you’re a fan of Trenches and/or Zombies, you’ve got to grab a copy of this puppy when it launches as I can honestly say it’s absolutely SUPERB!!

I hope you like them :)

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to post up this bit of promo art I did for the epic new update to Trenches.  As the guys over at TGW put A HUGE amount of work into creating the amazing co-op and vs mode, they wanted to have a new piece of art to promote it, showing the British solider and the German soldier facing off in a true 1 on 1 fashion.  This was great fun!

Also, to go along with the update, they are giving away a free iPad!  If you fancy winning yourself a free iPad, check out the competition over at TGW, as lets face it, getting a free iPad for playing an awesome game is pretty much a no brainer ;)

Here’s the link: http://www.thundergameworks.com/blog.tgw

Enjoy :)

Mike.

2009 was simply a brilliant year, so many fun projects and so many fun clients! The past year was a dream come true for me, as after 10 years working in this industry, it is only now, since setting up on my own, that I am finally doing the kinds of work I’ve always dreamed of. I want to say thanks to all my awesome clients and the ace folks that keep popping back to this little site to see what’s been going on!

My dream had always been to be working with games companies, and just shy of 2 years into my voyage, I seem to be living that dream and I feel so thankful to everyone out there that has helped me to this point. My very first games jobs were for the guys at Toribash and Data Realms, so to Hampus and Daniel, I say a BIG THANK YOU for both your business and your kind referrals, as I truly believe that it is you that helped set the wheels in motion.

2010 is shaping up to be pretty bloomin exciting too, I’m soon to be launching the Joystick Generals with Chris Wilson, I have a lovely line up of exciting projects and to top it all off, Trenches, the first major iPhone game that I was the Art Director on, has hit the top 5 best selling paid apps worldwide, blooming awesome! Anyway, I’m starting to get all emotional lol, so without further ado, I want to say a big hello to 2010 and I cannot wait to see what you have in store!

Mike.

Just got news from the guys at Thundergameworks that Trenches has been featured on Touch Arcade!  There is a full video preview of the game along with screenshots and artwork, all of which is exclusive to Touch Arcade.  Take a peek…

http://toucharcade.com/2009/12/19/an-exclusive-preview-of-iphone-warfare-game-trenches/

From the comments so far, it looks as though everyone is excited about this game which is totally awesome!  So much time, love and passion has been put into this game so its great to see it getting the warm welcome we were hoping for.

Stay tuned for the official release date, its coming VERY soon!

Mike.

I posted an entry recently about a collaboration I was part of with the guys over at www.thundergameworks.com, and this weekend they officially announced the game!

Its called Trenches and as you would expect is based during WW1 and features trench warfare…and that’s all I’m saying ;)  There is a lot of chatter around the web about the genre of this game, and the guys at TGW are keeping shtum for now, so I’ll keep up the secrecy and say no more here.

This project has been one of my all time faves, its been BRILLIANT from start to finish, and hopefully you’ll all see the amount of time and love that’s gone into it.  Take a peek at the two peices of preview art below and rest assured, this isnt just flashy promo art, the in game art is of the same ilk…only smaller :)

You can follow Thunder Game Works updates on Twitter here as much more will be revealed over the coming weeks leading up to launch.