Start to finish of the Ring-a-Ding boss arena for Antonblast: rough concept sketch -> clean line drawing -> traced pixel art -> detailed & coloured pixel art

By the way, if you have an art post and it doesn't have the reach you’d like it to, you can just repost it and a new wave of people will see it. You're allowed to do that. I somehow didn’t figure this out until recently

fun Weird West dev anecdote: there was a decal on a gun shop that said "riffles" instead of "rifles", i pointed it out in the slack and this was the fix that came through and shipped

Harmyarders doodles from mid-2022

Harmyarders: Donkey Kick (September 2022)

Like am I just crazy???? Is a personal site just that useless now or are we at that stage of learned helplessness?

i'm forever being shown ads for the marvel thing "thunderbolts". don't really know what it is. but i can't watch that shit! it's too desaturated. citizen kane is more saturated. come back with colours idiot

how it feels to show someone your oc

In Antonblast, the "Halfway Down" endless staircase room in the Big Bath was named after a poem by A.A. Milne my dad used to read to me when I was very small, about being at the halfway point on a staircase

The classic Mike Ploog Ringwraith (1977) #lotr

Your power bill has tripled and you can't afford new PC parts just to create this.

Comm for the awesome @toiletdragon.bsky.social 💚🍄

Pair of commissions I made for @toiletdragon.bsky.social.

this applies extra if you do your own environment art you gotta let the art intermingle with the design to really help sell the whole thing

i think scene composition is an important skill that a lot of level designers lack

I don't ask for much. I only want to live in Maple Treeway

still looking for level design work! I can work in Unreal, Unity, and probably whatever in-house engine you'll throw at me. I have worked on DLC for Sniper Elite 5, various community mod projects, and custom maps for TF2 and Half-Life 2. portfolio ➡️ iibo.games

Keep thinking about this term "pre-digested" that Kojima used to describe art that's instantly gratifying. And how it's better when people grow to love something instead. I've gravitated, as player and designer, toward the latter, but that term "pre-digested" is new and feels very strong.

Harmyarders: Donkey Kick (September 2022)

Some of my Annie design notes from Antonblast dev, #1-3 from mid-2022 and #4 from early 2024. We were aiming to reinterpret her design from Antonball Deluxe to fit alongside Anton's updated design. Really proud that I got to work on two iterations of a character as fun and well-received as Annie 😌

Every time, dude. They're always so sheepish about it too. Like they know no one likes it but they just can't help themselves

Exactly one year today since I got let go

Something that I feel is often overlooked is the role that freely available Flash/browser games played for a generation growing up. The fact that, without owning a console or buying any games, you used to be able to pop on a website and play games without a download is kind of huge in hindsight.

Still looking for work!! I'm a 2D artist and game designer with experience in concept art/visdev, character and environment design, pixel art, and level design Portfolio & contact: maxfreeman.carrd.co

Some of my Annie design notes from Antonblast dev, #1-3 from mid-2022 and #4 from early 2024. We were aiming to reinterpret her design from Antonball Deluxe to fit alongside Anton's updated design. Really proud that I got to work on two iterations of a character as fun and well-received as Annie 😌

Bitter bone head

More Antonblast level maps that I couldn't fit on my website

Still looking for work!! I'm a 2D artist and game designer with experience in concept art/visdev, character and environment design, pixel art, and level design Portfolio & contact: maxfreeman.carrd.co

"tip the scales" #blender3d #donkeykong

Here’s my Spotify Wrapped 🎵✨

what the fuck is in this game that it warrants some kind of weird unseen collusion to kill it and the studio making it. Like forgive me for taking a conspiratorial tone here but this absolutely comes off as targeted. What the hell is going on here man.

it's really cool how our medium is effectively monopolized by less than a half-handful of storefronts obsessed with infantilizing and coddling an audience against anything provocative, while still somehow stocking thousands of factory-churned AI hentai slop games.

anecdote from yesterday's stream on why you should probably not take your laptop to a computer repair place

I think it's helpful to avoid using "good" and "bad" or other value judgement descriptors altogether, and stick to "effective" or "ineffective" for the project's goals. If you can suss out what the intended outcome or goals are for the piece, you can use how well you're approaching that as a gauge

Like, to the point that "what's a game you love with terrible design? How would you fix it?" is a question I ask in interviews

This is the number one issue I find with junior game designers (and unfortunately, non-designers who think anyone can design). So many people cannot tell the difference between "a game I like" and "a game that's designed well" and they get REAL mad if you point out there's a difference

i shipped my first game today, and it only took 4 years. thank you to all who made it possible. it truly is a showcase of some of the finest work i've seen from my team. go buy it today! you won't be disappointed. just make sure you turn the volume all the way up.

CAPTAIN WAYNE IS AVAILABLE NOW!!! 💰 $9.99 + 10% Launch Discount! -8 Expansive locales -Endless fun in Riptide Rampage -Fully hand drawn cutscenes -GREAT on Steamdeck Time to set sail! captain-wayne.com

"there are no third spaces anymore" wrong. blast furnace

We did something different with the credits for Demonschool. We used this format: name, title, lengthy description of what they did. Often you see credits in games where you don't know what the credited developer was actually responsible for. We wanted to give people proper, actual credit.

[marooned in an obsolete texture projection method] well, this is affine mess we're in

Visdev for a project. Jurassic forest.

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2". I wrote it up over on Mastodon (I find it's better at long threads): mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF/115589...

Took some pics of Crash Nitro Kart, the game that first got me interested in environment art 😌💖

You know what someone should do if they wanna make a Crash fan game and have the resources and team? Crash Nitro Kart but it’s a traditional Crash Bandicoot platformer. Mainly because I’d love to see a fan rendition of Velo and his henchmen performing warp messages.

First Half Life, 3 Screenshots

Put your claws together for a villain most cruel, cause this time, he's here to ROOL #Bd3 #DonkeyKongCountry #DonkeyKong #kingkrool #diddykong #dixiekong #crankykong #blender

yeah this is fucked up? If the people who did the shit the award is for don't work there anymore why would you give the award to their old boss. bunch o' shit