it's been over 6 months since i last updated my journal.
im sorry.
things have been insane.
so, 6 months ago, i brought you the news that Fez had recieved 2 nominations at this year's Independent Games Festival. well, we won one of them! excellence in visual art. GDC 08 was by far the single greatest, most fun and amazing week ever. seriously.
Fez ended up being one of the most popular and talked-about game of the show. a piece of gameplay footage we gave to 1up ended up being viewed over HALF A MILLION TIMES, which is just insane for a little indie game like ours.
oh yeah, in order to attend GDC, i had to quit my level design job. my employer wouldnt let me go to san francisco, and left me no choice to but to resign. so i took the big jump. i was working my last friday, and saturday morning i was on a plane to SF. so since then ive been working full time on the game. survining on the prize money, some private contribution and a few graphic designs here and there. oh and tax returns. ive been really lucky. i havent actually had to take up a job and ive managed to pay rent, feed myself AND my drug habit!
speaking of graphic design. ive been making a lot more of it recently and i feel ive grown a lot as a graphic designer.
my influences are obvious, but i dunno, i kinda really dig all the logos, book covers, game assets and visual identities ive been doign lately. theyre not all posted here, but im working on a little something to show some work i did for a book cover.
oh another thing, Jason, Fez's composer/business guy and i ended up starting a company, Polytron, to handle all the business surounding Fez's unavoidable publication. Fez started life as a KOKOROMI project, but since im the only kokoromi member working on it, it is now a POLYTRON project. but you know, whatever. shit is gonna overlap all the time anyway. Jason is moving back to canada after 8 years spent in japan. he's moving to montreal in august, and then, we're getting ourselves some OFFICES and its gonna be AWESOME. like i told jason the other night, "dude, do you realize? we're gonna have a COMPANY BONG"
Im also working on a couple of other projects on the side, too.
super preliminary work on Fez's follow-up has started, as well as work on this year's GAMMA. which we might rename to GAMA.
Work on fez is going well. Polytron decided to keep everything under wraps until the game is almost done to avoid any kind of over-hyping and fatigue, which i think in the long run will be best, but right now, FUCK, i have all this amazing new art for the game and i wish i could show it off. the game has become about much more than just blue skies and green grass. the world it takes place in has taken shape, and is becoming rich. we're all super excited about it. its gonna be awesome. i hope.
in a couple of weeks we'll know whether or not were getting financial help from the government. because as jon mak so nicely puts it: in canada, if you ask nicely enough, they'll give you free money". so we asked really nicely, and they listened. we got through 2 rounds of "judging", and we're now waiting for a final decision. we didn't ask for a lot of money compared to the maximum they can offer, and i think they know Fez is a solid project. so hopefully we'll get that soon. it's funny because my little brother just received HIS grant, to go study in iceland for 9 months starting next month. infact, FREE MONEY ALL AROUND!
and finally, we're soon to launch our new POLYTRON website at
[link] (under construction ATM).
its gonna be structured somewhat like the kokoromi website, because i seem to only be capable of designing one kind of website.
so yeah, all sorts of cool things in the work. Fez is gonna come out one day in 2009, there's definitely a GAMMA 3 being planned for this year, and im also working on a bunch of collaboration with esteemed colleagues of the independent field.
oh and kokoromi is definitely making a game for this year's GAMMA.
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