It's 2009, and a whole year since I've been seriously using Newgrounds and tinkering around with Flash.
But my dry spell has ended! Oh yes it has :)

Now I'm currently working on the graphics of a game in the early stages. In simple terms I guess I would describe it as a tank platformer of sorts.
Firstly you can pick from a variety of tanks, then you control this tank and use the mouse to aim and fire the cannon, and the tanks also come with a healthy vertical boost. The limiting factor is battery power which is reduced in varying amounts by all activities, but recharges automatically.

There there are the main concepts of the game. The idea originated by my coder, Lewis, with his initial engine. He's quickly taken to AS3 and the game so far is being converted, this seems like a very promising project indeed.

I have been looking into AS3, trying to learn about classes, objects, functions and variables with little success, but hopefully even if I cannot code games and such, I should at least be able to understand Lewis's coding.

A fresh start.

As I'm from the UK the school year has only just finished, and I've got one week of work experience before I laze around my house for the following 6 weeks.

I got one of my friends interested in ActionScript, and he's been learning really fast so we're making a platformer together. The basic description is:

"The world is under mind control and it's your job to uncover the mystery!
Go through a variety of levels defending yourself against the onslaught of mind controlled madmen who block your path, using an array of weapons."

Things have only just got off the ground, we have a growing game engine and I'm working on the graphics; the thing is it's the first game for both of us (well in Flash anyway) so I guess its a bit unpredictable how it will end up.

I really hope I can still enter the animation competition, but this could end up eating away at all my time so we'll just have to wait and see :]
Teh update :]

Lots, of tutorials, studying, practise, blablabla...
And guess what, after a couple of weeks I've improved! Considerably.
This pic is one of many I've been drawing; and now I can:...
- Draw faces in proportion
- Draw noses
- Draw ears
- Draw faces from different angles
- Draw the body including arms, legs, torso, hands and feet.
- Some other stuffz

Full size of the pic below

I've done lots of practise drawing guys, so now I think I should move to girls and kids, but soon I really need to start doing some proper animation instead of merely artwork.

--------------------------------------

On another note, I've been informed of a local animation competition (Canterbury Anifest) which is covering my area. This would be an ideal opportunity for me to:
1) Get some real practise at animation and improve
and 2) Raise some money to get a new PC.
So over the summer I guess I'm gonna be animating like mad trying to make a decent flash, and in the meantime I'm gonna get together a load of ideas because... I WANT TO WIN :D

Chao 4 now

It's been almost a year since I've done anything flash related, and I think it's finally time to return.

Since I lost my pen to my 'trusty', 'quality' old Trust graphics tablet a few months ago, It's high time I got a new one. I'm to be replacing it with a nice and clean Wacom Bamboo Fun (medium). Over the past few weeks my urge for art has grown a lot, I just feel the need to be creative and scratch up on my skills, enough for me to cash out on a new graphics tablet anyway. And I'm well motivated to start flashing straight away, although you probably won't see anything from me for a while as I need to get back into the groove and do some experimenting.

I'll probably post a few sketches or something tomorrow when I get my tablet, bye for now :D

**************************************
Edit: Yahaarr! It arrived before I got up, found it next to my door =]
I must say it's by far better than my previous tablet, the Bamboo Fun (medium) just oozes with syle and quality. It has a glowing blue light surrounding an ipod-like scroll wheel, 4 customisable buttons and a textured active surface which makes it feel papery.
The pen is feathery light with no need to worry about batteries ever! It also has an eraser on the end which acts much like the nib being pressure sensitive, but it instead rubs out.
Anyway, I'm quite happy with my purchase so I'll add in a sketch or two as I get used to this awesome pad.

Here we go, my favourite is the UFO =]
Sketchy Clown Thing...
Substandard Face
UFO :D (full quality)