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Kristen Campbell: Designer
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE INTERVIEW AND SEE HER GALLERY
Media: Wacom Cintiq
Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice Artwork
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I have really enjoyed Disney’s Prep & Landing Christmas Specials. They have a new one called “Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice” which premieres tonight December 5, here in the USA on ABC. So I asked Disney if they could send me some pre-production artwork from the show. They have done such a magnificent job on these specials, I knew they would have a lot of wonderful artwork, and I was right. So below is some of the artwork Disney was incredibly generous to share. Enjoy, and make sure to watch the Christmas Special tonight. , Thank you again to everyone at Disney that helped out!
Brave
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The brand new trailer for Pixar’s Brave came out today… I am interested in what everyone thinks. Are you excited for it, or does it fall flat? Do you like the designs. Do you like the art direction? Do all of the characters feel like they are in the same design world?
Please leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
Dungeon Raid
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I thought I’d finally kicked this thing, I really did. I’d been clean for a couple months. The other day, though, I happened to see someone playing it on the Commuter Rail- “Hey,” I foolishly thought to myself, “it’s been a while since I played that- I should give it another try!” Three days later, I was trying to figure out whether a Changeling Raider with Enchant would be better than a Halfling and trying to break 700 turns on Normal.
Dungeon Raid for the iDevices, like its cousins in the Puzzle Quest series, is a combination match-three game and RPG. Where most of the variants of Puzzle Quest are centered on a story, however, Dungeon Raid is simply a run for high score.
The puzzle portion of Dungeon Raid is fairly standard- you’re looking at a grid of tiles of five basic types: swords, skulls, potions, shields, and coins. Tracing a path through a series of three or more adjacent tiles collects them; the types have different effects. Skulls represent monsters; these have life totals and hurt you every turn that they’re on the board. Tracing a path through skulls damages them; tracing a path through both skulls and swords damages them a lot more. Collecting potions restores your life; shields repair and upgrade your armor; coins are used to buy better equipment. You’ll occasionally see much tougher ‘special’ skulls as well- these typically have some sort of special effect and are also much hardier and stronger than normal skulls.
The RPG portion is where the game gets interesting- as you defeat monsters and collect gold and shields, you’ll level up and earn upgrades to your weapons and armor, given in the form of a random selection of three or four potential upgrades. Defeating monsters gives you experience, which makes your character earn levels- in addition to increasing your statistics, this gives you the opportunity to learn ‘skills’, which can be used to trigger special effects. There’s a pretty wide variety of skills with a decent range of effects- each time your character gains enough experience to level up, you’ll get two of these at random. At the beginning of the game, you’re prompted to pick a race and class- each race has a unique ability, and each class has a unique skill (which is very likely to be offered to you at level-up).
Although it probably sounds pretty basic from the description, I’ve found that the resource-management aspect of the game is tremendous fun, and it’s what keeps me coming back for more- what skills do I want to focus on first? Is gaining levels to earn skills more important, or should I focus on the often-unique abilities that equipment upgrades grant me? Which race-and-class combination is the best?
My only real complaint about the game is that the method for unlocking and leveling up classes is atrociously slow- I hate to say it, but it feels a bit like it was tacked on to encourage people to play longer. Older versions didn’t have a race/class selection; honestly, I think it may have been better that way.
All that being said, it’s great fun and hazardously addictive- last I checked, it was only on the app store, and it’s well worth your time.
- HC
Dan Seddon Interview
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Dan Seddon: Designer
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE INTERVIEW AND SEE HIS GALLERY
Media: Prismacolor Pencils, Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom Cintiq.
Meg Park Interview
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Meg Park: Artist, Animator and Illustrator.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE INTERVIEW AND SEE HER GALLERY
Media: Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom tablet
