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pickassoreborn

A meatsack puppeted by a ghost
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Hello, hello.

Sorry I've not talked to you for a while. I never seem to return your calls or anything, do I? Well, I've decided to get back into DeviantArt and start uploading more bits of artwork. Last year I indulged in a thing on Twitter called 366agogo. Was it the year before? I forget. Anyway, every day I sketched something cool and used Twitter to show it off to everyone. I think it was an exercise in getting my artistic mojo back.

Ever since I co-founded the mighty Atomhawk Design with some ex-workmates from the now defunct Midway Newcastle, I've been involved in a lot of cool things. I designed front ends and animated some cool stuff for a variety of videogames including Watch_Dogs, Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Enslaved, Devil May Cry, Dead Nation, Pottermore, Kinect Sports Season 2, Resogun and other things besides. I designed the UI for the new Costa Coffee machine which will soon be invading everywhere. You won't escape. That was a cool gig though - I got to work with some Top Men like the co-founder of Shazam and the chaps from PininFarina who indulge in Ferrari design.

Now there's a turning point. Time to move on. Returning to my DeviantArt page is a trumpet call to my soul. You know if someone says that you're not a very good artist then eventually you'll believe them and become a not very good artist? Think that record needs to be taken off the turntable and smashed with a hammer. Screw that noise.

First bunch of artwork which will hit DA will be the remaining 346 pieces of artwork created for 366agogo. Yep, 346! After that, I'll be sketching stuff again. I want to get back into the swing of being an artist again.

Thanks for the love you guys give through commenting, faving and the like. It's a nice thing. I'll try not to disappoint.

Love,

Steve

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Please enjoy.

Also please feel free to spread the word about this sucker. I will be uploading a shiny HD version with the small bits I didn't like sorted out in the next two weeks.




Hmm, this short journal entry has brokened my .css template. I'll sort out a new template very soon. In other news - Atomhawk Design is going from strength to strength. We've just moved into new offices, and work is flowing in nicely. Soon you'll see some of the fruits of our labour, and for that I will be most happy.

Also I'm going to start work on a book very soon - maybe two books! One is a kids book, the other will be an insane collection of all the stuff I've done compacted into book form. It'll be a big old scrapbook of stuff, and I want to share with you in its complexities. Since Karl has finished, my weekends and free time are, well, free again!

Maybe I'll do another book too. Aha, not telling. The clue is in this update though.

In case I don't update again, have a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful New Year.


Love,

Steve

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Well, it's been quite an rollercoaster of emotions and happenings which have happened since the last journal entry. Really, it's been a mixed bag of stuff which will benefit greatly by, what else? A list!

Wheelman was released.
The game I worked on for over two years was released to the public around March of this year. It came out to a mixed response - people either loved it or hated it. I think the people who loved it enjoyed the nifty handling, the arcade event modes and the like. The haters wanted it to be GTA4, and it wasn't even trying to be GTA4. What didn't help Wheelman's Metacritic - which appears so, so important to brainless gamers these days - was the hateful IGN review. Weighted averages suck. The game was published in part by Ubisoft, whereas those aforementioned brainless gamers thought it would be a better game now that Midway wasn't publishing it. Idiots.

Necessary Force - New IP!
We worked on a new IP of a game called Necessary Force while we were waiting to see how the Midway bankruptcy stuff would play out. Eventually we brought out a teaser trailer of the game using the rather lush concept art, which was adored by many people. We also got ourselves a nifty write-up by Edge Online - who were the only journalists to ever play the game. The studio played host to many studio reps who came in to possibly buy the studio/IP/etc.

Midway Newcastle shuts up shop.
July 14th was a pretty horrible day - it was the day where Matt Booty came to surprise us all and shut up the studio. We had pitches for another project we were working on, which could have saved the studio - that fell through, and our boss informed us to get our shit together. I could go on about it here, but I suggest you check out my blog post about it. This blog post was soon reported as a news item on many news gaming sites, and I was and still am extremely glad that we got our side of the story out after the dust had settled.

Our studio was the only studio to be closed down - the other studios were bought up and saved by various parties with some reduncancies across the board. I don't think many people were fussed that Midway died - some might even have been joyous, but the company had a strong gaming heritage. Gamers these days are mostly fickle and spoilt, and maybe I'm glad I'm no longer directly related to working on videogames because of this.

I now have a new job!
Our art director managed to create a start-up company from the ashes of Midway Newcastle - he has recruited myself, Corlen Kruger and Pete Thompson - two exceptionally fine concept artists - to work for a marvellously-named company called Atomhawk Design. There's a placeholder site with our artwork on that link, but check back in a few days time for a sexy makeover site which I was a major part of. I also now have mad .css skills and can actually understand the very .css which makes up this journal. Very tempted to come up with a new style soon!

Cult of Karl is in production!
Awesome musician Chris Merritt is paying me some monies for working on the Cult of Karl fan video I'm wrangling. You can actually check out OnDemand recorded videos of me working on the video at the Livestream Cult of Karl page. I broadcast live on my Livestream from 5-9PM GMT - check me out!

My eyes still suck
I have crummy floaters, one mass of floaters in my left eye, much smaller one in the right eye - I'm reminded of them a lot when I'm in the Atomhawk office; it's the purest, whitest place you've seen, and acts as a lightbox for them. I've been reading about how sinus irrigation could help get rid of them(!) rather than LASIK treatment. Or maybe they'll go away. I do remember when I first got them was when I was living at my ex-landlord's place and was particularly stressed. Cheers, ex-landlord. I sometimes fret a bit about possible retinal detachment, but that's the joys of getting old. Kids, don't take your vision for granted!

I hitched up with a potential Mrs. Pick!
Hello, Suze :)

So it's been quite a crazy mix of adventures and things which have happened to me. Losing my job sucked, but I was so happy that I got myself back into gainful employment so quickly - there was the danger of being cabin-fevered in this place, but now I absolutely love listening to podcasts while walking to work through the lovely surrounds of Saltwell Park. Atomhawk is a very promising company - I love being part of it and I'm sure there's a great future ahead of us as a company. I look back on the Midway stuff and it does make me sad - seeing the photos of the empty studio was quite a depressing thing. If I think of that as one chapter ending and another one beginning, my mindset is in a much more shinier place.

Thanks for reading!

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So, yeah. Two updates in the space of a year - you lucky people! I did lament the fact I didn't update this journal much in the last journal entry at the start of the year. Well, for a limited time only - I'm here! I also noted the New Year Resolutions I set myself on the last journal update, and I'm sticking to them kinda closely - well, two of them. I'm working less due to the fact we're no longer crunching, and I'm steadily losing weight again thanks to running and the joy of Wii Fit. It thinks I'm overweight, though it used to think I was obese. That means something... Wii Fit definitely needs some DLC though.

The mural on my wall is something I'd like to try - get a load of videogame characters up there in one fantastic collage. Maybe I'll restrict my palette depth to a few choice colours, but I want to try and get the same look and feel as the videogame-related office decor I saw (and can't find on the internet, grrr) of black and white sketches "painted" along with flashes of rough painted colour underneath. I think I've saved it on my work PC, I'll update this journal with the photos when I get the chance. Surely I didn't dream it... it had really cool caricatures of Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Gah. Oooh, did find this though -

So the mural is "in progress" while I finish the DIY job in my kitchen (plastering, painting, applying awesome Blik vinyls)... the Cult of Karl video with music by the wonderful Chris Merritt is also "in progress" - bits have been done on it, just need more motivation and time. I'm extremely tempted to start broadcasting my desktop on Ustream and show me working on it in real-time - I'm sure Chris would approve. Weekends maybe... if it's a regular thing, it could get all popular and have my Twitter blocked up with Ustreamers thanks to Ustream's new turd of a chat system. Yeah, Twitter. I gave in - it's great for finding hidden gems though, although I'm not a hardcore full-time Twitter kind of bloke who has his desktop took over by a massive TweetDeck, constantly updating and scouring the internets for its collective opinion.

Wheelman also recently came out to an extremely wide selection of opinion and reviews - some great reviews, a lot of average reviews and some low-scoring reviews. Well, I say *reviews*. One of them was a full-blown rant with GTA4 deep in the mind of the reviewer in question. It's also interesting to learn that Metacritic's average is anything but - the doom-laden IGN review is a "weighted" average as the site is a trusted source. What the fuck? Ah, well. We can't do anything about it and carry on with the next project - life at Midway Newcastle is reassuringly productive although the dark doom-cloud of bankruptcy still worries me somewhat. I dreamt last night we were thrown out of the studio and all lived in tents like some funky commune right outside.

For those of you who downloaded the Wheelman demo, bought the game and gave us level-headed reviews and positive feedback - thank you.

One last thing before my next update in Christmas (I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case..) - I saw King of Kong recently and really enjoyed it. The strange thing is that in those extras, Billy Mitchell comes across as quite a nice chap. On a Facebook reply, the Walter Day linked off to the King of Kong section of the Twin Galaxies forums and... well, it makes very interesting reading. Let's just say that some of the facts in the King of Kong documentary were kind of... twisted?

Take care, m'dears.

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Happy New Year!

5 min read
I've neglected this poor journal too much. Yep, I'm updating my blog more often than this, but all this slackness is ironically down to me working too hard on a videogame known as Wheelman. Last year I spent as much time as was humanly possible in the studio working on the game and now I feel kind of weird sitting about in my pants with nothing to do except shoot things in the head in Fallout 3. Oh, man. That game is so good and sooooo addictive. It's been keeping me company during this extended break from work.

It's been a tough time for the company I work for - Midway Games - recently they shed 25% of their workforce due to these horrific economic times (and maybe other factors which I shouldn't really discuss on such a public forum). Needless to day, it was a horrible time for it to happen so close to Christmas, but everyone in our Newcastle studio kept their jobs and I think it's down to the quality of Wheelman as it stands. I really can't wait until the thing is released and in the hands of gamers. We've worked so hard on it and there's a lot of polish and loving in there.

The news is the main culprit of misery and the moment. It gives nothing but grim tidings and seems to have a mission to depress the entire world - all because a couple of crooks in suits decided to fool the world. I do have hope in my heart though - hope that the world's going to get its shizzle back and we can go on patting ourselves on the back and being awesome. The next game projects which are being looked at are pretty exciting. Oh, man. All those canned prototype projects... there were some pretty decent-looking things there. They may turn up, but it saddens me to see them hidden away like that.

So I hope you all have had some great New Year celebrations. I've got some pretty awesome resolutions which I shall share...

1. Produce awesome animated video for Mr. Chris Merritt. I've already produced the animatic for it, which you can check out here!

2. Lose some weight. This is down to the insane hours I pulled last year (as mentioned) and the free takeaways which came with it. This leads me to...

3. Work less. Sounds weird until you realise that I couldn't have worked any more last year. So I need to work less or else I will surely burn out. This also means I can produce more "me" work as I miss being, well, an artist.

4. Paint a sexy mural on my living room wall. Buying a flat (although this means "Having a lot of debt with the bank") means I can do this. I'm wondering what to paint up there, but I'll keep you posted. It currently looks like a blank canvas - which to an artist is most inviting.

So there you go. I shall be taking more of an active role on DA - it should be very exciting! Thanks to everyone who came by to visit here in 2008! Here's to a more optimistic and fruitful 2009!

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