If you didn't already know, over the last year I've been working with Jazza, Moonkey and a bunch of other fantastic people on a huuuuuge RPG called Ortus. Because it is so large the development time has become a financial strain on the team. We'd like to crowdfund through kickstarter so we can finish the game much more quickly and smoothly and spend more energy on polishing during testing.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/te djazzastudios/ortus-the-rpg-of-your-dr eams

We're offering some nice rewards in exchange for supporting us. A $10+ pledge will let you join the earliest beta testing and for $50 you can name and design your own NPC character. The $300 pledge reward is pretty sweet (I wish we could do this cheaper, but its creating a fair bit of work for us) as you get to design a custom enemy creature and a custom NPC that gives out a quest chain with their own custom designed house.

At the start of December I'm going to drive from Adelaide over to Melbourne to hang out with Jazza for a week or more. It should be productive, as we'll work face to face, crunching on a bunch of projects. One of them is a music video I've had in the works for a while now, currently titled "Comet". The plan was to have it done by last Christmas, but my character skills are no where up to the standards of my background art, which was a huge roadblock. With Jazza helping out, a release this Christmas is much more attainable. And, as a bonus, every 10% milestone we make it on our Kickstarter, I'm posting a new Comet screenshot to my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Bar tlett-Artist/367648106022

Here's Team Netherlands entry in the game jam to the theme "elephants riding shaking wrestlers"

Elephant Heavyweight Champ
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
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First time I've participated in something like this, and it was incredibly fun! I liked the random themes, think it resulted in many very weird and interesting games. Unfortunately because of time not all the planned features made it into Elephant Heavyweight Champ but they might get added later.

Now... back to work on some other interesting projects, Including creating buildings for an exciting game that I'm working on in a team with Jazza, Moonkey and lots of other talented people!

Reasoner's album "Prologue" is now on iTunes and CDBaby.com

I personally recommend the album - the songs are amazing! One of the songs "Chasing Comets in my Garage" I have been making an official music video for, it will be on NG in time for the winter contest. Being a fan of Reasoner's music, I've found the song to be incredibly inspiring for colorful space and night backgrounds. I'm trying to squeeze as many pretty space vistas as I can into a 4 minute flash!

Lately I've been working with Reasoner to animate a music video for a song in his upcoming album. The animation is about a boy's dream on Christmas Eve and his journey through space. The flash will be released before Christmas and for the NG winter contest, giving me about 7 and a half weeks from now to finish this project.

I've posted a fancy background to the art portal for you to check out. Here's its storyboard sketch if you're interested!

If you want to make me work faster/see more of a sneak peek, check if my Livestream is up. I usually stream a couple times a week for a few hours. If you want more updates of the animation's progress, my Facebook is the place to go.

Other things: I've almost finished my 2 year course in 3D game art, unfortunately going to be tough juggling my time between animating and the last of my assignments + putting together a portfolio. Also I went on a 12 hour night rogaine on the weekend. Rogaining is a sport about endurance and navigation where you have to hike to and visit as many "control points" as you can during the event. The whole map was filled with extremely steep, windswept, grass covered hills with a full moon the whole night.

Here's some more art from the upcoming flash:

I feel like making a music video flash for my next project and I'm using an abandoned hospital I visited recently as inspiration. I'm searching though the audio portal for a song that is fast paced, suspenseful and spooky. The song needs to be 2:30 to 3 minutes in length. What kind of crazy monsters or story is in the animation depends on how the song I choose inspires me.

It would be really helpful if you could suggest any songs you know of that fit the theme.

Picture is from one of the floors of the building.

Two weeks ago I was at AVCon (An anime and video games convention here in Adelaide) where I went as the Team Fortress 2 spy. I put together a video of me doing the spycrab walk around the con.

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Also, I have been working on part one of my animated series called Khicken and I am now about 80% done. Here is a screenshot.

I haven't submitted anything since a year ago, but I have been putting some effort into animating Khicken the last couple of months.

At the moment I have about a minute and a half of it animated, and I'm thinking that an episode will be about 6 minutes. A quarter done is a good motivational point because it feels like I'm now in the middle of making it, rather than the beginning. My exams and due assignments are approaching soon, but afterwards I hope I will have plenty of spare time to animate. If nothing consumes my time after school is done, I hope I can get the first episode done by January.

Here is a screenshot from Khicken of Preston.
NG Alphas doesn't seem to be working for me, I was thinking about submitting an alpha sometime.

Its been almost a year since I submitted anything, but finally I have a new animation.