Stoo – Page 2 – Stoo Cambridge

Handy Amiga IFF Plugin for GIMP (Windows)

Posted: September 29, 2018 at 2:29 pm

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I’ve been a regular user of the rather excellent art package GIMP for quite some years and have found it to be a fantastic tool for manipulating digital art, touching up scanned sketches or laying out pixel art for use in a video game project; it’s never let me down. If I have ever needed something that wasn’t included from the off, then a quick search online often yields a solution in the way of a plugin or extension that has me up and running in no time. So when I recently wanted to use some of my old Amiga files I was surprised IFF file support was not included. It’s not a big deal as something like XnView will convert the file to PNG and the results from experience have always been great but wouldn’t it be nice to load these image files directly, no conversion, no messing about, just convenience and no excuses.

OCR from a screen grab? Why would you want that? Ahh….Ok.

Posted: June 19, 2018 at 7:42 pm

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Tags : blobbit push game development tutorial

As development on Blobbit Push draws to an end there’s a list of things that need fixing, sorting and tweaking before the game can be published. One of ‘these things’ is to compile a list of all the animations we’re using for the front end UI. Stuff like level select, pause menu, you get the idea. Now I could go with my original intention of just typing the name of each animation into a spreadsheet, not the quickest option as I would manually have to read through every animation and type it up. Not really up for that, especially when there’s artwork to create! Hang about wouldn’t it be great if you could screen grab the text and paste it into a document? Hmmm, well it turns out there’s something out there that does just that and it’s called Capture2Text for Windows. (http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/)

So how does this work then? Incredibly easy me old china, let me show you.

Origins of the Blobbit logo and meanderings…

Posted: June 19, 2018 at 7:21 pm

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Tags : blobbit blobbit drops blobbit push logo design

A 3rd Blobbit game has been on the cards for quite some time, we didn’t really plan it as part of some grand plan; we knew when the time was right a game we would make. That time was late 2017, the game we started was Blobbit Push (1.5).

The very first Blobbit game

Before I write about what the third game I should mention the original game was just going to be called “Blobbit”. This changed not too long after I’d finished creating the main sprite, I started having all sorts of ideas about what this strange green blob was and the sort of world he inhabited. It was then we opted to call it Blobbit Dash, a very simple game that involved collecting lost Blobbit Babies and evading baddies, all played on a single screen. There were no levels as such, the game just kept getting faster and faster with each wave of baddies cleared. We didn’t even have more than a single background, it was quite sparse you could say but fun to play. Despite its minimalist design the base idea was there and this soon materialised into something with a bit more depth; Blobbit Push was born based unashamedly on Sokoban but with the addition of baddies. The naming convention felt right too, calling it Blobbit Push not only kept it under a single branding umbrella but also served to strengthen the IP if we later chose to expand upon it.

At last! The new website lives!

Posted: October 26, 2017 at 2:56 pm

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Tags : life stoo

What seems like an eternity of web development woes, which I should state was mostly down to my own inexperience of server side geeky techie stuff, the new site has finally gone live on this 26th day of October 2017.

The old hobeka.com site will be removed and all future content will be added to this new site. NO more manually editing HTML pages, no more fiddling around with FTP and No furrther head scratching when it comes to browser CSS compatibility!

Revisting the Sensible Golf Editor Part 2

Posted: June 7, 2017 at 11:59 am

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Tags : amiga game development pixel art sensible golf sensible software

Back in 2011 whilst browsing through some of my art archives I found a disc image called “Sensible Golf Editor”. Of course I simple had to try it out even if I couldn’t remember how the thing actually worked!

Well it was a great idea at the time but I just couldn’t remember what keys did what

Love is in the air, Valentines Day artwork

Posted: May 19, 2017 at 10:32 am

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Tags : digital art inkscape vector art

I had a blast doing the artwork for a valentines day game app. Here’s a selection of the art I created, all lovingly produced in the wonderful Inkscape.

One Armed Bandit Twice

Posted: May 16, 2017 at 10:04 am

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Tags : branding gimp inkscape logo design photoshop pixel art screen shot soccer vector art

Summer 2014, I worked on a pretty damn fine slots game for iOS, sadly no longer available; here’s a few shots from it.I provided all the artwork and animations for these games with the majority of the art created in Inkscape with a few of the bitmap edits done in Gimp and effects for speed added in Photoshop.
The pixel art players were taken from my football sprites series which were created for various print and marketing pursuits, drawn using ProMotion by Cosmigo.

Indie Royale – Artwork Post

Posted: May 10, 2017 at 8:53 pm

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Tags : art illustration indie royale inkscape mypaint vector art

For about a year around 2013/2014 I provided all the bundle artwork for the guys at Indie Royale. Most of my work was to create the theme art for each bundle, usually based on the titles.

For the most part I used Inkscape to create these pieces, mostly drawn digitally in rough using MyPaint, occasionally in pencil or pen and scanned in. The biggest challenge was timing, often I would be asked to create the art at the last minute with a deadline no more than 12 to 24 hours away!

Here’s a slideshow covering most of these pieces.

The Art of Little Bird Episode 1

Posted: May 10, 2017 at 9:47 am

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Tags : art game development inkscape little bird logo design pencil vector art

Christmas 2011, the holiday season was about to begin.. I was just about to begin the slow down for the holidays, you know the usual sort of thing, mulled wine, ginger wine, mince pies, backing up my files, fixing things, you get the idea. So mid-bite through a mince pie I’m offered a small project to work on, only catch is it needs to be started pretty soon. Something about needing to be done quick. Hmmm.. Tell me more I say..

So first question is, ‘what’s this all about then?’ Turns out the game is a physics based scrolling rollem’about skillfest featuring a little bird that.

Blobbit Push the 2nd

Posted: March 25, 2016 at 6:42 pm

1 Comment

Tags : blobbit blobbit push game development pixel art

It’s been many years since the first Blobbit game came out and as many years again Mark and I have pondered on when we should work on it again. Neither one of us had the time previously but the planets have aligned correctly somewhere in the Universe and we both agree 2016 is to be the year a new Blobbit game will appear!

But where to start? I’ve thought long and hard over the years of what the next Blobbit game should be. Things have moved on a lot since Blobbit Dash and during that time so as the medium with which games are played. No longer are phones an obscure format with tiny low resolution screens. Neither are consoles all about mega 3D rendering engines and incredibly arduous intro sequences and cut scenes, oh hang on some still are, swiftly moving on…

Work in progress comparison old (left) vs new with alpha shaded shadow too! (right)

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