There are so many sketches now I can't possibly put them all up. This is a selection of best over the past couple of months. I am happy with my continuing progress and I am even seeing a lot of improvement in my full body poses, though I have to start on drawing clothing because currently they all look like potato sacks.  

For the next couple months I am going to continue to work of sketching bodies and heads with various expressions. I am also starting work on a new game project so I may be including more game related sketches including environmental art. 

I haven't had a chance to  sketch or work on game development this past month due to renovations being completed at home and it has made it a little hard to get work done. I also have been putting more effort into looking for full-time employment. These images are all from one source, my travel sketch pad and second main sketch pad are both currently missing.

Currently listening to: Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep OST

It's been a while since I last posted anything. Still sketching but I found I did less than previous months. This may be because during the month of February I was working with Adrian Tosello (@AdrianGenerator) on a project as the project's artist. The pieces below are some of the work I prepared for the project but was unfortunately cut due to the clashing of later styles. I also tried to implement some animation into the work, half of which I felt worked the other half I would happily cut. 

I find these days I'm sketching everywhere and it's become quite hard to keep track of where I've drawn and at what time. Some days I feel like drawing with a sketch book and sometimes I happen to sketch on a scrap piece of paper I had on my desk.  One change I have tried to implement is to have more of my sketches on display. For example, the sketches I've done of the small pieces of paper I've displayed them just under my monitor to show the progression of my work, rather than have it hidden away in a sketch book. 

Over these months, I have also tried to vary the mediums and styles I usually use. I've had my hand at water colours, and sketching realistic images rather than comic based as well as looked into pattern making to help improve my UI design. 

Currently listening to: Golden Sun OST

A bit late this month with my blog posts and project goals. I found that after I had published the Talkative Tea Game, I took a bit of a break from all work and with the holidays coming around, with the house being full of people I have been finding it harder and harder to get my work done.

I don't expect to get as much done as I normally do this month but before listing my new goals, let's reflect on last months:
- Finish Talkative Tea Maker: I managed to finish and publish a game! A huge achievement for me. This was not only a monthly goal but also I goal I had set myself from the start of the year. I am also quite proud of how I shared it on social media for people to see, I could and was quite tempted to keep it to myself, publish the game but not notify anyone besides a select few. 
- Work on body construction and poses: This was a complete failure, I didn't even attempt to draw this month. I found that I had so much on my plate that I left sketching on the side-lines. I drew a small amount as seen in the previous post but again not nearly as much I would like to.
- Finish Part 2 of Curse of Monkey Island Puzzle and Hint Analysis that I started writing. Draft version: This project is much larger than I anticipated. I have been slowly working through it but to say I would get Part 2 of the game done was much too large a goal considering it took a month to get Part 1 done and that only had about 3 rooms to explore and interact. I, at the moment, am still in the initial exploration of the island that occurs right at the beginning of Part 2.
- 4 blog posts: I was able to complete this goal with ease due to the MIGW recaps and the CMI Puzzle Analysis post I had written. I had a lot of content last month and only hope I will be able to achieve again this month.

This months goals:
- Start and finish a new game: This is the major goal of this month starting and completing a game. Being half way through the month I am a bit worried that I have bitten off far more than I can chew. None the less, I plan on trying my best to get this project done. It also doesn't help that I decided to explore a whole new genre I know nothing about, but hey, it's a challenge.
- Work on body construction and poses: Continue to work on improving my poses and proportions. With every day of practice I will slowly get better. 
- Continue working on Part 2 of Curse of Monkey Island Puzzle and Hint Analysis. Draft version: Not so much pressure this time as long as I work on it a little bit. I want to write enough that I can put up another blog post about it within this month.
- 4 blog posts: Again another 4 blog posts, technically I already have two done so let's see if we can get another two done in two weeks.

Don't know how well I'll be able to keep to those goals. As I said before, December for me is quite busy and with everyone in the house providing distraction, who knows how much work I'll be able to do.

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A quick post of most of the sketches I have done during October and November. I didn't get to focus on body shapes as much as I wanted but I am still happy with my progress in drawing. I didn't draw as much as other months because I was spending a lot of my time working on the art for my tea project. I also included some of the images I developed for the project

P 1.3: Object Combination Puzzle: Obtaining Skeleton Arm and Cutlass
There are no real hints for this besides a comment about needing to use the Ramrod with something else. Once the Ramrod and Plastic Hook is combined there are still no hints of what is the next task, besides the newly formed Gaff needs to be used on something else.
Using the Gaff the player must use it on the Debris in order to gain the Skeleton Arm and Cutlass. Examining the new items we don’t get much feedback, except for a line when uses the cutlass, “I don’t wanna use this cutlass for no reason.”

Inventory Hints: Location: Hull

P 1.4: Environment Interaction: Use the cannon
From exploring the environmental and listening to hints the player is led to the cutlass on the Cannon Restraint Rope. Looking at the Cannon Restraint Rope after the interaction will lead to another hint, “The Rope has been cut. There is nothing restraining the cannon now.” Implying to the player that they can now perform an action that they couldn’t before with the cannon. As the player explores their options, (Look, Pick Up/Use and Talk to) with the cannon they will most likely use the correct interaction (Use) that will lead them to the next section.
After a cutscene the player appear in a new location and is informed of losing an inventory item, Cutlass. Though this may not seem to be a direct hint to the player it implies what is required in the next solution is something that is sharp and can cut things, as that was the main descriptor of cutlass in the previous scene.

Location: LeChuck’s Treasure Hull

P 1.5: Environment Interaction: Diamond Ring on Porthole
After exploring the environment the player should of obtains two new inventory items, bag of wooden nickels and a diamond ring. WIth no great hints the player should se the new items around the scene, with several interactions implying that the diamond ring can be use to cut or scratch things.

• Diamond Ring with Champagne Bottle: “I don’t want to cut this wine bottle open with this ring”
• Diamond Ring with Home Appliances: “I’d hate to scratch the pristine white finish”
• Diamond Ring with Record Collection: “There’s no way I’d scratch up classic dance track like these!”
• Diamond Ring with Flotation Device: “If I scraped the ring on that I’ll pop it.”

All these hints indicate that the ring needs to cut something, in this case the porthole. Doing so will cause the game to continue.

The idea of making a document analysing the hints system within a specific game came to me during MIGW 2016, when I found myself talking about my past research in dialogue and puzzle design within Adventure Games. It had been a while since I spoke about the topic in great detail and the more I spoke on the subject, the more I recalled wanting to write a document like this, a document that listed all the clues within a game that are presented to the player for them to interpret.

This document is an analysis of the hints and clues featured in a game that is written alongside playing the game, in this case, LucasArts "The Curse of Monkey Island". It will list out all the possible clues or hints that may lead the player towards finding the solution to a puzzle. Some clues may be a blatant as a character telling the player to talk to a certain character to progress, some may be a visual clue that allows the player to subconsciously go where they need to, and in some circumstances the clues may be anti-clues, telling the player that they can't do an action yet. Along with listing the dialogue that is spoken upon each interaction, I also wrote a brief line explaining the significance of the hint. 

So why choose LucasArts "The Curse of Monkey Island" as my first game to study? There were a number of reasons but it mostly came down to the number of verbs are only three and the game has a number of self-contained scenes. The fact that there were only three verbs in this game meant that the number of possible dialogue outcomes that would be dramatically reduced however there is still enough interaction to prevent the verbs from becoming less like clue facilitators and more like immediate actions to be taken. The game is also split into a lot of self-contained scenes meaning that there are more hints that led directly to a solution rather than a puzzle that may occur much later in the game. It's helpful in this study as it will mean that the number of locations and interactions are reduced so shifting through unneeded information is also reduced. I was also interested in how much the visuals were used in the hint system. They often tried in the past to have visual clues but due to the limitation of graphics they weren't clearly shown. This game was made at a time where visual clues were becoming one of the main staples of Adventure game design. One final reason of why I chose this game is, "The Curse of Monkey Island" is one of my favourite Adventure games which I haven't played in awhile, however, I still remember all the solutions so I believed it would fit the parameters I required. 

Currently listening to: Various Instrumentals by Hans Zimmer. Some of note: The Holiday OST, Prince of Egypt OST, and Muppet Treasure Island OST.

It's mid-November so I think it's about time to announce my goals for this month as well as reflect on how I went last month. Why have I taken so long to write this? Well, due to taking the first week of the month for MIGW (Melbourne International Games Week), which you read about here, I then took another week to recover, reflect and write about my experience. It was nice to take the time off though I did find myself itching to get back to game development after spending two weeks away.

But enough about MIGW, how did I go with Octobers goals? Overall, I say I went reasonable well. I achieve most of my base goals;
~ Complete base mechanics of the new project: I was able to meet the goal I set which was to get the base mechanics done. I would have been able to further develop the project if I didn't waste time trying to make the art look amazing, however, it did allow me to add some much needed good quality art to this website's gallery.
~ One page of sketching per day: I wasn't able to meet this goal as a lot of my time was spent working on the art for Talkative Tea Maker. So I was still drawing, however, it was individual pieces rather than focusing on practicing human poses like I originally intended.
~ 4 posts to the blog: I only posted 3 times last month which was a bit of a disappointment. I started writing a few articles but time seemed to slip away and I didn't have time to finish writing them.
~ Re-establish my work schedule: I was able to get back to my normal schedule of work, starting work at 9am and finishing at 4pm. One thing I do have to be caution of is that I do stop working after 4pm. I find myself sometimes working on something till 7pm at night and I know that is a quick way to burn myself out.

I felt like I got four-fifths of these goals done this month. Yes, I could have done better but I am pretty proud of this result considering how large all of these goals were. My whole point of last month was to see how much I could do and I plan to do the same for this month.

My new goals for this month are as follows;
- Finish Talkative Tea Maker: By the end of this month I want this project completely done including the Visual Novel elements and basic transitions. I will be amazed if it can be done but I'm going to try my very best to achieve this. This time NO WASTING TIME ON ART!!!
- Work on body construction and poses: I've changed this goal a little since last month. Although I intend to practice each day I think my focus should be on what I want to improve rather than the amount of time I put in. So this month I going to try and improve my human proportions, angles, and different poses.
- Finish Part 2 of Curse of Monkey Island Puzzle and Hint Analysis that I started writing. Draft version: I started on this new project last week and have already finished part one. Basically, this document I am writing is an analysis of all the hints indicated through the dialogue of how to proceed in the puzzle. This means using every possible combination of items, environment interactions, and dialogue options to see what clues may be revealed. The reason behind doing this is that I want to see and note all the time we a lead down a pathway without realising.
- 4 blog posts: My final goal is to write up four blog posts for this month, the same amount as last time, which I believe will be reasonably achievable as I have already written up three posts this month about MIGW and I have plans for at least two more posts for later this week. ​

I feel more comfortable with the goals I have set, though I believe that these goals are a lot more demanding than last months. This is mainly due to re-establishing my old schedule and I believe if I stick to it, I'll be able to achieve all of my goals plus more.