In recent years, I’ve been working with my brilliant programmer friend Jeff Faust of Faust Logic on adapting my card game Squirmish into a videogame. It went into early access on Steam in May 2024, so you can download now it here to check it out. It is playable as single player or multiplayer PVP. It has been a delight to work on. In addition to getting to create and animate a number of new characters for the videogame using Spine, I’ve had a whole lot of fun designing, voice acting and making music for the game. Here is the trailer for it that I made:
A couple reviews:
“Gonzo, crass, and hilarious, Squirmish is one of the weirdest, most amusing digital board games out there—but its gameplay also carries its weight. The voice acting made us cackle.” – Recommended by Steam Curator Noteworthy Video Games
“The first thing that stands out about the game is how much it looks and feels just like the card game in terms of presentation and artwork. All the cards the game has are in this digital copy with bright neon green background, crazy colors, characters zany and the whole thing feels like it was vomited up by a unicorn who had a fantastic day at the carnival eating all the candy and taking all the rides. And let me make myself clear, this is not a bad thing.” – Dad Geek at Geeks Vs. Geeks
I love birds, don’t you? Thus, I was delighted to recently get the opportunity to make a video for the National Audubon Society to promote their Audubon certified seal. You can check out the resulting video below.
I had a fun project a couple months ago with my friends at Whittier doing some animation for a video on the homepage of the website for Equality Charter School. This project was done in collaboration with Montana Scheff, Ava Penner and others at Whittier. My part was making the lines and other animated elements dance. You can check it out on their website here, or just view the video below.
I’ve made a number of short Post Cereals social media animations for my friends at Public Works (in collaboration with Brian Hurley, Chris Henderson, Derek Bitter and others). These are intended as ephemeral content for various brands’ social media presences to keep them current. They are generally accompanied by copy-writing to give them some context, they usually are very short, and they often loop. Besides the long series of them that I did for Pebbles cereal featuring some anthropomorphic animated cereal flakes, I have done a lot of other ones for Pebbles and a number of other Post brands. Here is a sampling of some of them.
If you like your food to be all the colors of the rainbow (even blue- thank you very much George Carlin), you may like these. I made a series of social media ads for my friends at Public Works featuring friendly anthropomorphic cereal flakes. These were made on very tight deadlines, but with a whole lot of creative freedom. Creative lead Chris Henderson generally gave me a theme or loose description to go with, and then he generously trusted me to come up with whatever seemed funny to me. They may not be the best animated things I’ve ever done, but I think I succeeded in making them funny.
Here are some animations showing how some interesting products work for putting medicine into or sucking the snot out of children. I animated these for my pals at Public Works in collaboration with designer Paige Gregory.
Back in 2014, my oldest daughter became obsessed with Pokemon cards. I enjoyed the creativity of the cards, but when we sat down and figured out how to play the game, I found it pretty disappointing… but inspiring! The things that I did not enjoy about that game got me thinking about how a better card-battling game could be designed… and thus SQUIRMISH was born.
After spending a year or so developing, illustrating and testing the game, I initially self-published it using the print-on-demand service The Gamecrafter. I’m more of a maker-of-things than a seller-of-things, though, so I decided I wanted to find a publisher for it. My favorite game publisher, Gamewright, had an open submission policy, so I decided to send a copy of it their way. They were enthusiastic about it, and picked it up to publish in 2018.
Here is the promotional video I made for the game:
As the audience for the game has grown, it has received a number of reviews. Here are a few of them:
“There is a ton of replay ability here… All of the boys, including Dad, are fans of Pokémon and Squirmish has provided a fresh and simple take on card battling games. The variety that is found within the game is really amazing.” – 8 0f 10 Stars at The Dice Have It.
“It’s really fun to play, really funny cards, and really fun to see all the different types of abilities and how you can try to utilize those during each game.” – Landon Squire at How Lou Sees It
“Squirmish is a fun, family-friendly game which surprised me a bit with the depth of play. When I read the rules, I thought that it would be too kiddy-like. While the artistic style and the humorous text on the cards makes it appropriate for kids, the actions on the cards does give the gamer something to work with! … If you’re looking for a game to introduce the concepts of individual card actions and combat, this would be a good choice. It also will be a good filler for gamers looking for a few laughs mixed in with their gaming.” – Dale Yu at opinionatedgamers.com
I had a fun, quick project last month doing a whiteboard animation for the i.e. network. Technically, I didn’t use a whiteboard, though… I used big sheets of paper, and shot frames of me drawing and moving around post-it notes (or did they move themselves?). It is always a treat to get away from the computer for a while and actually shoot some stop-motion animation. Rick Kupchella at the i.e. network provided me a script to work from, and gave me a generous amount of leeway collaborating on coming up with the visuals. You can see the results below.
I recently built some fun HTML5 banners for Kung Fu Panda and Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereals in collaboration with creative director Brian Hurley and designer Erin Julin. Grab a bowl and a carton of milk and view some of them at the links below.
Along with these projects, I also built a fun little Fruity Pebbles New Years video in collaboration with Brian Hurley and Chris Henderson for the client’s social networking purposes on the holiday, which you can view below.
