Team Thimbleweed
Oct 05, 2015
We left pre-production at the end of July and entered the grueling process of production, turning the crank on the big machine labeled "GameTron 3000™", feeding ideas and game design document in on one side as finished rooms rolled out the opposite end on a long conveyor belt.
Along with starting production comes carefully increasing the team size, because endlessly turning a crank is hard and tiring work.
So let's start with the introductions... please hold your applause until the end.
Octavi Navarro, a self-taught pixel artist and former children's books illustrator from Barcelona and the creator of the amazing 'Pixels Huh' , a love letter to pixel art and to all the classic videogames that marked his childhood since the day his parents bought him a second hand Commodore 64 bundled with a box full of games. His work has been featured on some of the world's greatest art and design publications and feels very lucky to work with extremely creative people who share his passion for pixel art and acknowledge it as a legitimate art form. You can find him on Twitter at @pixelshuh and Facebook.
Octavi will be doing animation and helping out Mark with backgrounds.
Lauren founded Dropped Monocle Games with her friend Sox Brooker in 2012. While discussing their love of point and click adventure games after an evening of DnD, and probably too much cider, they decided they could totally make a game! How hard can it be? This led to the creation of a "charmingly crap" point and click called Witchy Woo. In spite of its "flaws" (although it still won the game jam), people seemed to like her writing, so they kept doing it and whipped up a couple more games, including another jam winner, Mess Goblins, and Goatherd and the Gods, nominated for several AGS awards. You can follow her on Twitter at @boosegoose.
Lauren joins the team as a writer.
Jenn hails from Australia and has been playing adventure games since she could work out how to kick her older brother and sister off the computer. With a background in artificial intelligence, Jenn has been working as a game designer for over 6 years. She's made a number of point-and-click adventure games and twists on the genre. Her determination to challenge conventional gameplay mechanics led her to complete a personal challenge to finish 12 games in 12 continuous months; many of which were story-rich games. Her latest game, aglimpse: friends, is a photo challenge game that lets you re-connect with friends in a personal and visually unique way. You can follow her on Twitter at @jennsandercock.
Jenn comes on board as our second game play programmer.
Robert Megone is a Game Designer and QA Tester from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Rob has worked as a tester for Clayton and I on Scurvy Scallywags and for David on his Rube Goldberg game. Rob understands point and click adventures from the perspective of a developer but more importantly from the perspective of a player. His first adventure game was Zak McKracken on the C64, a game that is almost entirely responsible for his obsession with point and click adventures. You can follow him on twitter at @robertmegone or on his website.
Robert joins Team Thimbleweed as its lead tester.
Malcolm was raised by pirates off the coasts of Bristol, England; Malcolm escaped to the circus, where through random fate encounters, he made a living cosplaying Muppets for underprivileged giants. Malcolm had his first game published at the age of 14, and has been working as a tech programmer/game designer professionally for the last 20 years. He now works as an independent contractor under the guise of "Confused Duck Entertainment" and promises one day to finish the website. When he's not working on Thimbleweed Park, Malcolm is trying to finish the iOS game "Naked War". In 2006, Malcolm happened upon the lovely Vancouver city in Canada-land where he and I met while working on Deathspank.
Malcolm has been on the project for about a month and is primarily responsible for the Xbox port.
Please welcome our latest team members!
- Ron
Cool avatars!!
I think it would be nice to add a Team Members section to this site with these brief descriptions so that this post doesn't get buried in time.
When you says "from Anothercountry", do you mean people are actually working from their home far away from you?
I was right about Jenn being Jenn Sandercock! :-) It pays off to watch Sherlock. :-)
Ron, what about a producer to help you out?
Octavi is the best on his thing!
The game is gonna win so much with his addition to the team.
Welcome.
Check out "Scene #10 'The Pumpkin Costume'" Surely some things do look familiar!!
http://www.pixelshuh.com/365821/5103795/-home-/scene-10
http://images.thimbleweedpark.com/edmond_hotel.gif
Speaking of Halloween, it's only 4 weeks away woohoo!
Ciao Milo, il tuo avatar di Max Pezzali da Bella Vera mi fa sempre sorridere :-)
Per curiosità, andrai ai suoi concerti? Magari ci si incontra...
[Italian mode OFF - off topic]
Welcome to the new team members!
I get the feeling the weekly podcast might become much longer from now on... ;-) Looking forward to it!
Could he, Gary, or Mark please write a blog post about how different artists manage to create art in a consistent style? I've always wondered about that sort of stuff.
Best Kickstarter ever :-)
Just kidding here. I am a computer and video gamer since 1979 (when I begged my father to buy an Interton VC4000 console) and I can honestly say I have never looked forward to a game as much as I do to Thimbleweed Park. The whole Kickstarter project, including this blog, the weekly podcast, the openness regarding the budget and everything else so far have been nothing less than exemplary (and having backed about 50 Kickstarters I know what I'm talking about). So I'm sure Ron has picked exactly the right team members to help the project move forward.
But enough with the compliments - back to work! ;-)
http://www.cinemapioxi.it/zak/MMwendy.png
Confess!! :-)
Welcome!
Now, this is going to be THE game of the year 2016! (or was it 1987?!)
Questions:
1. When working with multiple different artists with they own styles how do you keep the art work consistent?
2. Same with the writers and writing - How do you keep it in the same style?
Cheers,
Steve
But to ensure things fit the game world properly I will draft something and then send it to Ron for approval so he can determine if it's up to scratch and give notes. Additionally I have info about the characters and game that I can refer to so I have a good foundation to build from. If I'm not sure about something then I go back to Ron, or David and get some clarification.
Basically for me it's a mix of good communication and already being a huge point and click nerd.
I made an in-depth study of Gary's characters and Mark's backgrounds to see which aspects of my own style could be suitable in this case. And of course, all the art goes through an approval process by Ron and Gary to make sure everything looks as it should.
Ron wants be the very best, like no developer ever was.
To catch bugs is his real test, to explain them is his cause!
He will travel across the land, conventions far and wide.
Each presentation to understand, the programming that's inside!
Parkémon!
Best fan art in ages!!
But I don't know which I find most insulting, me as a fat old guy.. Or the fact you've put me in a suit! :-)
This will probably be super exciting (read: stressful *g*) times for you all to see and feel how things fall into place and ideas converge.
Best wishes,
Martin
... uuuum .... do you have a deviantart page? Do you take commissions? XD God I'm terrible!
http://octavinavarro.deviantart.com/
http://pixelshuh.tumblr.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8jGg0D_YjLSx38umBcDMMw/videos
https://www.behance.net/onavarro
Ron, Gary, David, Mark, Jenn, Octavi, Lauren, Robert, Malcolm.
(For anyone confused by this, I'm not really part of the development team; they're just joking around about me having replied to a bunch of questions on the last Friday Questions episode.)
Is your team's size commensurate with the sizes of the teams who did Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion?
Not bytes, I supposed. With full talkie and digital soundtrack, it would hardly fit on a few floppies. Monkey Island did, but it had no talkie and only a MIDI soundtrack back then. We aren't talking about the Special Edition either, are we?
Which one of you had to put a rat in the Vichyssoise just to get the job?
You all know it already, but it looks like an awesome team. Can't wait to play your game.
Hello everyone.
OK, I may have to try my hand at pixel art with my own gravatar image. Mark did such an excellent job with the all the team members, I'm inspired to see just how horrible I am.
Welcome to the team! Looking forward to hearing about different aspects of game design from the new team members as well. Nice to see you posting comments already.
Btw, I really liked Ron's thoughts about playtesting. How about a "How to" blog post about the topic sometime in the future? Or perhaps a wrap-up about the process after playtesting is finished on TP?
Btw, on the Internet there is already fan art for Thimbleweed Park to be found, for example this wonderful HD recreation of Mark's radio station:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--qapXeS0s1M/Vg0-8q7ElDI/AAAAAAAAETk/5Qfdf9TLFzc/s1600/Radiostation_HD_final_JPG_title_4000p.jpg
And @Lauren, @Ocatvio, @Jenn - how did you get in contact with Ron and the pack? Would be interesting to hear how such a team assembles, where everyone got in contact, n' such. Mind telling us briefly?
#IconsAndCharacters
I liked quite much the one in the first video.
Well... I think it is one of the most important thing in a game.
Probably 50% of Monkey Island success is because of the soundtrack.
Player souls of Monkey Island gets "warm" just listening to the music and looking at the first screen of the game.
Twice (but probably more) in the past 20 years I noticed people passing by me whistling MI songs, and I do it myself without even wanting it.
Im sure you what I mean if you'll ever going to read this :)
So I think the soundtrack will be heavy on the guitar.
i just didn' tsee that.
I don't know is it easy to teach the depth, but they are quiet different, if you compare markferrari.com and pixelshuh.com.
The page itself is still there: https://thimbleweedpark.com/team