New Project: AustinCraft

I've enjoyed the popular game Minecraft since its pre-alpha days, and I am very impressed with its amazing potential, scope, and replay value. It's especially fun multiplayer. But this weekend my brother and I got into exploring another aspect of Minecraft: Its customizability! The game has the option to add downloadable Texture Packs to the game, and I hadn't realized until this week how easy it was to make your own texture pack.

My brother and I are each working on our own texture packs now, with several things in mind. First of all, I don't mind the original texture pack of Minecraft. I actually prefer it to even the high-resolution texture packs available online. The classic look of Minecraft is what I began playing, and besides its timeless "cartoony" look I really like, I also enjoyed not having to worry about updating the texture packs as new items and blocks became available.

Despite the classic Minecraft look, there are some things about it that have always bothered me, and this is my chance to not only fix them, but add my own personal touch to them! For example, clay in the game is gray, and hard to distinguish near stone, gravel, and other gray blocks; so I'm coloring it red, like it should be. One of the things my brother and I had fun thinking about was more practical ways to construct tools with materials at hand.

Some of the other things that I've changed are the faces on pumpkins, the saturation of lighting blocks such as Glowstone and lamps, and the coloring of ripe crops. My brother's even changing diamond completely to emerald, making for an Elder Scrolls glass-like array of weapons and armor. I'm excited to be able to play Minecraft with the same gusto as before, with the exception of the blocks and items that always bothered me. It's going to be a fun project! I'll keep you posted with the details, and I'll of course publish it for you to download (provided you play Minecraft at all (I recommend it)) once it's done.

EDIT: Click the link in the sidebar to download it, or click here!

Wormie Graphic Novel

Here's a compilation of all of the issues of the Wormie graphic novel on one page, with a couple of tweaks in some of the panels. I think it did the story of Salem/Slame good! Examine the Wormie RPG page to download the game!

NOTE: The best way to view these (at least on Firefox) is to CTRL-click them in a new window and zoom in.

Role-playing Life

I made this a few months ago as an experiment. Not much meat to it, and I wish my wife had been home in the last shot so I could've done some sort of dialog sequence. Heh, you can even see me looking around for her.

EDIT: I have no idea why the quality is SO CRAPPY. Working on it.

Wormie Page 4 - Conclusion!

It sure was fun making these. Hope you enjoyed them as well, and I hope to come up with more projects like this in the future. Lots more!

Download the RPG game of Wormie on the Wormie RPG page! I'll be doing an actual spotlight of it sometime in the future. Thanks for reading!

Quite Small Tales volume 3

I need to do these more often. I keep forget to copy them down when they show up.

Jango and his family had been living in New Hampshire for three months. It was wintertime, and they were amazed at how cold it was getting, especially when the sun went down. Despite turning their heater all the way up, they still had to put their kids to bed in snow clothes to keep them from freezing. Jango called the landlord, who couldn’t guess what the problem was. Finally, one day Jango was looking at the windows and realized that in New Hampshire, some windows can open from the top or the bottom. The windows were all cracked open at the top behind the curtains. Jango realized that every day a train came by, vibrating the windows and sliding them down. Jango closed all the windows, and within five minutes the house was boiling hot.

–

Timbo was an American who lived in Germany. One day he and his friend got on a train with their bicycles. The driver kicked them off, saying there was not enough room for bikes. Timbo was an irritable person, and went to the customer service desk to rant. Being American, he instinctively used formal German pronouns during his venting. There was nothing they could do, of course, because the train had already left. So they went on the next one. Later, Timbo’s friend Tümbe said that her neighbor worked at the train station and said that she had talked to them. Her neighbor had said “They came to me with a problem about our service, but they were so polite!”

–

“Open your mouth and say  ‘Eee’!” said the worst doctor in the world.
“Everybody say ‘Choose’!” said the worst photographer in the world.

–

Domba went on a date one night with a young man she knew from school. At the end of the date, he sent her a text message that read “Thank you for going out with me, Domba! Want to do it again sometime?” Having also had a great time, Domba replied with an appreciative “No, thank you!” The boy never called her again.

Wormie Page 3

Page 3/4 finished! I was drawing this one not really expecting it to be a good one, but I really like how the art turned out. When all these are done I'm going to fix a few of the frames and put them on their own sidebar page.