Evil Genius Online

Over the coming weeks/months I'll be writing about my time as Lead Artist on Evil Genius Online.
I have to say that these were two of the best years of my game making career so far. I'll be telling the story of the development of the style from the original game to the "updated" (late 1960's) feel of the online F2P game. How we designed and built new props, repurposed old props, and got nearly 1 million triangles drawing to screen in a Flash game (not easy).

October 2016 update
Ok now I am confused. My page on Evil Genius has disappeared. The forces of good will not thwart me... I'll dig out the old images and write a new page.

It is also with great sadness that I have to report that due to dwindling player usage there will be no further updates (not that there have been in a while). I would love to say that the plans for Evil Genius 2 were progressing well, but it is not and seems to be stuck in development hell.
I loved my time on EGo and I think we did some stunning work with a small team on a tight budget and short time scale.

We had some wonderful user comments basically saying that we had created a real game rather than the usual Zynga style WhateverVille or other Give-us-your-money-Sim-Builder. That is probably part of the reason its popularity has dropped off.
Shame really..

Maya for 3DS Max-heads

I am learning Maya for work and it has not been easy, though I am getting there and have discovered some great tricks and tools that are just so off the wall from a Max point of view.

For anyone coming to Maya from Max I have shared my experiences and workarounds in the "Max 2 Maya" page (on the left under "Pages"). I hope it is of some use to someone, though to be honest, re doing things to check what I am saying has been very useful in cementing the new workflow into my legacy Max filled brain.

Enjoy :-)

Hilary Long: Man Down in Overdown book cover

Latest Hilary Long mystery by Margaret Cooper Evans ( @Maggs912 for those who twitter) is now available on Kindle Store and by jingo its a good one.
UK version on Amazon UK here
US version on Amazon USA here

As for the cover, I created and rendered the Walther PPK in 3DStudio Max.
The texture was worked up from several photographs and then a bump map created to make the wear and scratches catch the light. Maybe it is something to do with the NVidia normal map creation software but I found a black and white bump map worked better than a normal map in this instance - OLD SCHOOL BABY! Yes, that's right... I am SOOO Old School I spell "school" correctly!
I then added a purple and green upward facing light to mimic the reflection of the map onto the gun.

The Map was made from scratch in Photoshop, the photograph is one I took especially for this job as were the four layers that went to make up the table cloth.

The gun, map and tablecloth were then comped, colour corrected and shadows added again, in Photoshop.

Click on the images to view larger versions. Any questions, feel free to ask :-)

Ricardian Christmas Cake

Good grief there are a LOT of Andy Evans' out there who are artists or linked to film and television. I guess that will teach me to have such a common name. I had real truoble finding my own blog!

Well maybe if I keep mentioning it on my blog I might, finally, appear in the Google rankings... somewhere!

Anyway, I thought I would give a quick update on some real world icing sculpture.. In other words I decorated the Christmas cake made by my wife.
It is a Yorkist based Richard III inspired confection with York rose and Richards Boar motif.
Next year we might have a crack at a Middleham castle cake!

What do you think? ;-P

Hilary Long: Summertime in Overdown. New book cover

I am pleased to announce the release of the second Hilary Long mystery for which I created the cover. I hope this book sells as well (or better) than the first book as I like it when a royalty cheque comes in :-)
Available for Kindle and Kindle Reade.

Goodwood Revival 2014

Ho ho chaps and what a doosey!
Great shopping, GREAT airshow, and wonderful company. Apparently there was some sort of race thing going on as well but we didn't notice that...
Some photos will be getting added to the "Photos" page (link above) over the next few days.
If you want larger versions without the watermark, get in touch.
Toodle pip!

Forgive me Blogger for I have sinned...

It has been two years since my last post.

So, what have I been up to and what can you look forward to over the next couple of months?

Well, I have worked on two iOs games for Rebellion called "Dredd vs Zombies" which I enjoyed, and the morally bankrupt "Guns4Hire" that has good art work that really pushed the iPhone 4S and iPad1 to their limits, but I had trouble with the notion of making a game where tooled up Yanks run arround Arabia shooting, torching, RPG-ing anyone and anything that moved.

For the last year and a half I have been lead artist on Evil Genius Online and that has been great fun. I think this will be getting a page all to its self.

In the book covers page you will find details of ;
"Uprising" which is about the fictionalised England of King Richard V in the time of witchcraft and demons.
And "Upside down in Overdown", a cracking little tongue in cheek murder mystery novelette available on Kindle, here
Upsidedown in Overdown: A Hilary Long Mystery