Ok, so update number 2 is here, a little later than expected, with less info than expected, but its here :)

For now, I’m running the dev blog through this blog until a few things are sorted out. Why? Well, the name of the game, and thus the blog is still in a state of flux (the basis of the name is sorted, but I’m toying with how the words are arranged) so I cant launch the blog under the wrong name or I’m setting myself up for a fall from day 1 ;)

So, what’s been happening?

• Wireframing:  This is currently the focus as I’m nailing down the flow, structure and features of the game. This is lengthy and detailed stuff and most likely wont be complete for another month or so.  But you dont care, as you don’t want to see that stuff ;)
• Location hunting and research:  Now this part IS exciting, very exciting in fact! As I nail down the specifics of the story and try and to pin it to actual British historical events/timelines, I’m travelling around parts of the UK to experience/photograph places that I want to influence and/or feature in the game.  This stuff is really enriching my soul as being a native here (as far back as 3/4 of my genealogy goes anyway, the other 1/4 is Spanish) and researching my ancient origins on this island is proving wonderful!  I’m lucky enough to live on the fringe of the countryside in a rural area, so I have great photographic reference material all around me.  Below is a handful of some of the scenes I’ve photographed so far:

And a few black and whites for the real drama…

I’ll soon be following this post with the results of my first ‘official’ shoot (these above are more random snaps while out and about) at one of the UK’s lesser known stone circles, Castlerigg.  The results from this shoot are possibly the most inspiring shots I’ve ever taken. I cant wait to show them! More coming soon.

Enjoy!

Well, a few weeks ago via Twitter, I declared that I had some big news to announce, and now I can finally spill the proverbial beans!

As all of you will know, games are my single biggest passion and have been for as long as I can remember.  I live them, I love them and I’ve always wanted to make them!  Now, after many years of working with some of the worlds greatest Indie’s, they’ve finally rubbed off on me and I’m diving in to join them!  That’s right; I’m officially working on my very own game as a true Indie developer!

So how does that work?

In conjunction with the development of the amazing new iOS Game Dock, Fully Illustrated has commissioned Cascadia Games to be the programming powerhouse that brings my dream game to life!  As part of the Game Dock’s Kickstarter campaign, their highest funding option ($10,000) included the glorious perk of getting your game made for the Game Dock! Now, as Cascadia are a client of mine, I had the chance to talk to Chris Jorgensen (founder) directly about exactly what was possible.  It turned out that my dream game, the game that has been toiling in my creative mind for decades was going to be achievable! This was just too good to be true!  Couple this with the fact that my game is going to be playable with an actual physical joypad rather than ‘just’ touch controls makes all this simply perfect.

Fully Illustrated has been squirreling away funds for years in the hope of getting enough cash together to fund a kick ass developer to realise my dream.  So when all this came together, and was within my small budget, I was little short of teary eyed.  Actually I was running around like a headless chicken for about 5 days out of pure uncontrollable excitement.

So what’s the game? Can you tell us more?

In short, I’m not saying too much right now, but that’s only to allow me chance to copyright and trademark everything first. I’m going to be launching a dev blog to cover this game from sketch through to release, so you can expect a very candid and open display of the development throughout.  I want this to project to be quite a social experience, so you can expect no stone to be left un-turned.  I’ll even be covering the costs and sales figures once launched (if there are any ;)

As an indication of what to expect though, I’m going to say this. This game is going to be the realisation of a dream, so you can rest assured that this is going to get every last drop of my creative ability and passion. I will make this my greatest work to date, that I can promise.

As far as what I can give away about the game, there are a few things I’ll say now. The game is going to be set in Britain, in a time way before the Roman’s invaded and will be mixed in with a touch of fantasy and old British folklore.  I want this game to have a very gritty and old English feel to it, something that I’ve never seen in any other game. Imagine the visual intensity of open misty moorlands, driving rain, blistering cold and sprawling eerie forests. This country is stooped in myth and magic that spans thousands of years, and I want to grasp the essence of that!

What about the gameplay mechanic?

I don’t want to give this away right now, but if you look at the rough concept image at the top, I’m guessing you can work out the basis pretty easily ;) It’s going to be retro, very retro indeed.

When’s it coming? How will it affect your normal work?

Dates wise, I’m working on it right now in my spare time, and have dedicated November 2012 – January -2013 to work on it full time. Its got a very loose release date of March 2013. So besides that couple of month window, I’ll be taking work on as normal :)

Ok, that’s a fair old amount of babble there; I’ll draw this to a close.

Watch this space over the coming months when I announce more information and launch the dev blog. I hope you’ll all wish me luck as I step forth into realising my lifelong dream…its as scary as it is exciting!

Mike.

Hey Everyone!

Its been a while since my last post but this time I come bearing goodies :)

With the upcoming released of Gibs n Glory for iOS, I wanted to pass out some free Retina wallpapers for both iPhone and iPad! The game is due out on June 28th and is my latest collaboration with Thunder Game Works.  My involvement with this game hasn’t been quite as deep as with Trenches 2 due to my schedule, but the concept art, main character art, branding, UI and some level elements are courtesy of yours truly.  Keep your eyes open for the release on the Thunder site www.thundergameworks.com and the subsequent feature on here :)

Enjoy!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to say a quick thanks to the wonderful Illustration & Animation Students at Bolton University for being a fab audience last Thursday!  I was invited in to give a talk to the 3rd year students about working in the industry and they all did a great impression of an interested audience ;)  I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did!

I was also shown some examples of the current students work… very impressive stuff!! The current 3rd year work is light years ahead of what I was producing at that stage in my creative development…I’m going to have to watch my tail!

Thanks again and good luck with the remainder of your final year!!

Mike.

Hey Everyone!

I was rather overjoyed to see Trenches 2 featured in this month’s GAMES TM in a new feature entitled ’69 iOS titles for 69p’.  Here’s what they had to say…”A stirring metaphor for the futility of WW1 trench warfare, this tasks the player with moving between the bits of cover dotted throughout each level, and making it to the enemy base one step at a time. Its unique, its surprisingly deep and it has a great art style.”…I kinda liked the last part the most ;)

Thanks!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year!!!  I’m a little late off the mark with that comment, but hey, it’s the thought the counts right!

I’m massively excited about 2012 as there is SO much going on here at Fully Illustrated. Loads of new releases, announcements, you name it. It’s going to be a majorly busy 12 months.

Part of my new year resolution is to get back to the two things I love, fitness and photography, and in view of this, I’d like to share a photo that I took today on a cross country lunchtime trek!  It’s such a still day today so I thought it would be great to get down to a local forest/reservoir and get some great reflection shots around the water’s edge.

If this little shot takes your fancy, I’ve also included a fully functional iPad & iPhone wallpaper of it too. Enjoy :)

Here’s to 2012!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick message to wish the world a Merry Christmas and to let you all know that I’m away for the next 3 weeks :) My creative batteries need a turkey, mince pie and Christmas pudding fuelled re-charge.

I’ll be back work on the 9th January where I’ll start to work my way through my emails.

Thanks to everyone for a bloomin fun year, escpecially my awesome clients.

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

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!

Hey Everyone,

As you’ll have heard via twitter on and off for the past 6 months, I’ve been restoring a classic Sega Daytona USA arcade machine in my (limited) spare time.  I’ve become obsessed with arcade machines this past 4 years and my collection has grown from none to 5 in pretty short space of time…its damn addictive!  My two main machines were covered in previous blog posts, but more recently I’ve picked up 3 ‘dedicated’ cabs, Mortal Kombat 2, Killer Instinct 2 and Daytona.  The difference with my Daytona, as you’ll see, is that it was rather beaten up, and in dire need of some love and restoration.  With Daytona being one of the biggest selling arcade games in history, it stands to reason that this little workhorse has been beaten to within an inch of its life.

I’d never taken a project like this on before and it was all rather daunting to be honest, but I was determined!

My first job was to remove all the painted metal parts that were rusted, dented and corroding.  These battered parts were going off to a local steel workers to get shot blasted and powder coated back to their original shiny black…very exciting! Lots of folks bling they’re Daytona cabs turning everything to polished steel or chrome, but I wanted to go back to basics and return this beast to its original self.

The bits came back looking beeeeeeautiful and this was a very inspiring moment as I could see just how perfect I could actually make this machine!

Next was the time consuming, but very easy part. Scrubbing down, paint stripping, filling and re-painting! This took aaaaaaaaaaaages!  Look at the state of that paintwork!

After many, many hours of sanding and repainting (about 10 coats all in all) she came up looking factory fresh!

Now with this part done, it was time to get onto the damn scary part! sawing off the broken foot-well pieces and replacing them with new ones! This was a MASSIVE undertaking, as if I got this wrong, I would have basically sawn off a large chunk of the machine that could not be replaced…it had to be done with clinical precision.  Now, as I’m not a carpenter, I realised that cutting the replacement pieces was, well, beyond me. So I decided to turn to what I know…a computer! With a little (well, a lot) of measuring and template creating, I drafted up a mm perfect CAD drawing of the pieces I needed. With these done, I contacted a local woodcraft company and had them CNC cut. Oooooooooh this was getting technical.  Bizarrely, they came back PERFECT! And fitted like a glove. So with a bit more work (chiselling, sanding, screwing, hammering) I got them fitted.

I genuinely couldn’t believe that I managed to pull all this off, especially as 99% of this was being done for the first time with no prior experience! She just needed painting, polishing and then to have her lovely new rubber matting attached. Oh, and to screw back on all the stunning powder coated metal parts!  Wahooooooooooo!

With all that done, I then stuck on the brand new t-moulding (imported from the USA) around the edges, did some paintwork re-touching on the side art (that bit actually took an age!) and she was finished!!!!

And here she sits alongside my other two dedicated cabs!

This project was epically enjoyable and I already want to do another :) I just want to say a massive thanks to all the kind chaps over at www.jammaplus.co.uk for all their tips and advice, as I’d never have managed this restoration without them. Cheers guys!

In early 2012 Fully Illustrated is moving into a new little studio where these three cabs will be joined by my other two and the whole family will be complete! Joyous times :)

I know this post isn’t really related to design, or illustration, but it’s totally related to what inspires me and makes me tick, so I figured some of you may enjoy it :)

Mike.

P.S. The side art in these pictures looks really faded, but its due to it being fluorescent orange and I couldn’t for the life of me photograph it without it looking odd.

Hey Everyone,

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 :)