End to Empires, Blistering thrash from Leeds, they only have a demo out at the minute, and no videos of them so i can’t link shit (for now), but check out their Myspace.

Now you can claim to be one of the cool kids who were into them when they still played the smaller clubs, before they got all big and turned into rockstars!

Mares of Thrace, groove ridden, sludgey as fuck, doomcore. Good times

The trouble with designing a character based on yourself to be placed within a fighting game roster i think, is that it can easily descend into a massive ego massage. I wanted to avoid creating some noble, self sacrificing hero or dark, roguish, anti-hero. As much as i’d like to consider myself that sort of person in real life, the truth is that neither of those archtypes is a reflection on who i am.

It’s been easy so far to create a character based on a friend as i can focus on any single trait or even a joke i like and run with it, this is the apporach i’ve used for everyone so far in the game and it’s worked pretty well for me up to now. With that in mind i started thinking of some of the jokes or observations people have made about me recently that i liked (calling me a wanker, while true, doesn’t give a lot of room for character design, at least not for a character you’d make the mistake of selecting twice).

Now back at my old job, Joey used to refer to me as Grandad because i’m older than her, it got me thinking that i could be the oldest character in the game, not physically, but as i already have a character who has travelled back in time in the shape of AkiraNator a psychotic Japanese Language teaching cyborg from a post-apocalyptic future, i could take this in the opposite direction and have a steampunk inspired Victorian-era time traveller as a basis for my character!

Ladies and Gentlemen, i present to you Mr. B.B.Krillin. In my head i see him as a member of a secret time travelling league or society that operates out of Victorian London, defending Englands timeline from people whose intentions work towards destroying it, in a sense it’s kind of like Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” as i want the group to be comprimised of mostly fictional 1800 and 1900 era literary characters, for a while this bothered me somewhat, but then i realised that this is nothing more than backstory that the player will probably never even be aware of, i am simply trying to establish the characters roots so i have a strong postion to work from in coming up with his personality and style. As it is not the central theme to the game i don’t feel like i am plagiarising their work, you wont even see these people other than in the background of B.B. Krillins stage within the game.

With regards to the people who serve in this society, some names that are currently swimming around inside my head are Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, The Time Traveller (natually, lol), Captain Ahab, The invisible Man, Dracula, Frankensteins Monster and E.W. Barton-Wright, a person who actually existed in real life in 1900′s London.

The reason i want E.W.Barton-Wright is he was one of the first Europeans known to have studied the Japanese martial arts, and certainly one of the first to teach them in the west. Using his knowledge he invented a martial art called Bartitsu, which was a mixture of several different martial arts including Jujitsu, Judo, Boxing and Savate to try and address the problems of self defence in a modern day urban setting. With this he anticipated Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do approach by over seventy years. This offers me a chance to create a unique character with a unconventional fighting style which really excites me

Since coming up with all this, the character has rapidly become my favourite in Roshambo, the backstory has been the most fun to brainstorm over which is why i’m probably enjoying it so much, brainstorming is always a blast, it’s nothing but ideas and creativity!

Say Tuned!

One of the reasons Roshambo ended up derailing originally was that trying to animate a sprite in Photoshop is like placing your testicles on a desk covered in rusty nails and broken glass, then smashing them to a bloody pulp with a lump hammer.

I’m not kidding, Photoshop CS3 will allow you to animate frame by frame, but there is no onion skinning and skipping back and fourth between the frames was a chore, I spent most of my time guessing rather than observing the next frame, it was frustrating and in the end i gave up.

Well the other day by chance i discovered a free sprite animating software called Pixen by Open Sword, it’s pretty damn good, I can onion skin (only the previous layer but better than nothing) and skip back and forth between frames using keyboard shortcuts, meaning i can see what i’m trying to achieve easier.

Now it’s not perfect, it does crash a lot, but so far i haven’t lost anything important, while getting to grips with this program and learning the shortcuts, layout, etc, i’ve developed the frequent cmd-s habit. Also for some reason certain layers seem to darken or lighten slightly, i’m not sure why yet and as the Pixen forum is down i cannot ask why or for a solution, oh well.

Still, it’s free and has allowed me to throw together a rough breathe animation for my guy here, so i can’t complain, i’ll be able to flesh him out in Pixen easily then colour correct as needed in Photoshop afterwards, things are looking up!

Not perfect i know, the knees are floating all over the shop and the muscles are not convincing yet but as you can see this is just the rough, and i’m one hell of a messy artist, next time you see this he’ll be tightened up and looking sharp. Stay Tuned!