Back to Comicking

While things have been a bit busy lately I've been trying to chip away at the next Blade Kitten comic.
It's slow going because
A)I'm out of practice and
B)I want it to look better than the previous ones
C)Skiffy keeps deciding that my lap is the best place to be when I'm trying to draw. (At least he keeps my feet warm)



On the plus side I've already penciled the next 4 pages so the hard work is mostly out of the way. Still there's another 30 or so pages to do after that so I'm not going to get ahead of myself with the counting and chickens and all.

Also actually writing the Scripts for the game today - at home because it's the only quiet place to do it :(

Where do Blade Kittens come from part 1

Over the years I’ve had the habit of coming up with a lot of ideas for bit’s of universes. I’m pretty sure that’s not just me, a lot of creative people tend to have the same problem of too many ideas. You quickly discover that life is really short and there’s just not enough time to do all of them. I found it was best to start focusing ideas into different universes. By that I mean story universes not actual other universes, although that would be a pretty neat trick. I’d always want to go down some new path when inspiration hit and I hit a wall where while an idea was cool, it just didn’t fit in a certain story reality.

Sure some properties like TY let you do wild stuff like giant marsupial robots but even then there’s stuff that I just wouldn’t put into that series because it would be… well wrong.

Since the mid 90s I came up with a good half dozen sci fi concepts that really seamed to fit into a similar universe so I started reusing elements and back histories when I would start new ideas. Eventually I found that they all ended up linking together in a grand tapestry of a sci fi universe and thus the Blade Kitten universe was born. This was around 2001 (before the first TY game was even had a publisher) and I’ve been working on it in my spare time ever since.

BK is my universe of cool ideas and designs all strung together. It’s a cool playground that can be as dark or as funny or as dramatic as I need it to be – sometimes even all at the same time.

Next time I’ll go into the design of Kit.

New year and a new home

Since its the the start of a new year I figured it was time for a bit of a change in my life - blog wise.

Previously I've kept a Live journal mostly to display may drawings and designs but all to often to whine about my life like so many others. After a bunch of years of whining about the same stuff I realize that that won't change unless I make it happen and my god that really is boring to read.

So what I'd like to do with this new forum is to keep posting the art but maybe concentrate a little more about expressing my views and thoughts about the games industry, game design and just things in general.

So for the uninitiated I'll give you a little background on myself. My secret identity is Steve Stamatiadis, billionaire playboy (of please...mild-mannered is so freaking dull) Creative Director and co-founder of Krome Studios. We're now in out tenth year of making games and growing larger like a little Aussie Katamari of game development. I say that becuase we were lucky enough to form two more studios outside of our Brisbane office when we formed a Studio in Adelaide of Ex-Ratbag members when they got shut down and later when we picked up Melbourne House. I'm pleased to say that both studios have worked out really well and its an honest pleasure to be able to work with them.

Gameography wise you've probably never heard of me but might have heard of or played some of the games I was involved in.

The old shareware Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage where I did a lot of game design and all the art andanimation.

Flight of the Amazon Queen which I did all the art for an co designed.

Zombie Wars - a sequel to Halloween Harry but this time running on Windows 95 and the first game I had htat got published in Japan - which was very cool at the time for me.

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger Series - I co-designed and co-created the games, designed the chracters and art directed the series. It was Krome's first BIG seller and one of the biggest selling Australian games. TY 2 was also my debut as a voice actor giving life to the character of Gooboo Steve.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, PS2, PSP versions) - I'm listed as the director on this one A) because I did a lot of different things on the project form design to artdirecton to character creation and I thought it would look stupid having my name everywhere.
B) If you can tell me there's anything cooler than having your name come up as "Directed by" on a Star Wars game when John Williams end credit theme start's playing and I'll just call you a douche.

TFU has sold amazingly well (not surprisingly) and will probably easily outsell the entire TY series. Oh and they made toys and stuff from some of our versions designs with possibly more to come.

That's just the stuff you may have heard about there's a lot of other titles out there that aren't as worth mentioning. Hey I've been doing this for over 15 years now - people don't realize it's hard enough just to get a game finished having somethinhg that's better than good is a minor miracle.

So that's me and my day job for now. I think next itme I'll talk a little about what I do fun fun, a little project I like to call Blade Kitten