Update for 2023

Let’s be honest… three years is too long to wait between updates of the Screenhog Studios blog. (Fortunately, it’s only been two years, eight months, and twenty-four days, which is perfectly acceptable.)

What have I been up to in that time? Quite a bit, actually. My biggest project I’ve been involved with is called Space Game: Star We There Yet?, which has launched on Steam and is being tested on Android (as of this blog posting). I’ve been able to contribute game design, art, and for the first time in my professional career, writing! It’s been a blast to work on, and I invite you to check it out!

There have also been some music soundtracks that I’ve composed or contributed to, including Cabin Fever, Theme Park Shark, Party Parrot World, and Box Critters.

If you’ve been dutifully checking this site every day to see what new things I might post, I’m sorry for heavily disappointing you. I’m still on Twitter (@_screenhog), and you can chat with me there, or you can contact me directly from the form on this page!

I hope 2023 has been going well for all of you, and thanks for checking in on me!

Box Critters - Tavern

Box Critters, a new virtual world from some of the creators of Club Penguin, has asked me to do music for them! So, for the first time ever, I attempted a song in the genre of “electroswing”, which takes the synths of today and mixes them with the swing principles of the ‘20s (the 1920s, that is). It was very fun to compose!

Orchestra of One - New YouTube Series!

If you, the intrepid Internet adventurer that you are, have scoured every corner of my website, you may have discovered a page entitled “An Orchestra of One”. It’s a collection of blog posts that I made in the early 2010’s about the composition of music in an age where a single composer can sound like a hundred musicians.

Well, good news! This series is now inspiring a YouTube video series under the same name. Here are the first two episodes for your viewing pleasure!

Pangolin’s Puzzle Music

Today, Pangolin’s Puzzle by Hero Factor Games is launching on iOS and Android. I was honored to work on the game’s character animation and audio, and while I’ve showcased some of the animation work earlier, I haven’t put up any of the music.

Until. Now.

Katiti is the main character of the game. She is a pangolin, one of the most trafficked animals in the world. (For real… pangolins are the only mammals with scales, and their scales are prized for “medicines” in Asia.) Early in the game, she and her mom get stolen by poachers, and this is their theme:

The game itself is a tricky logic puzzle game, where you follow clues and use spatial logic to solve problems. Some of these puzzles involve being sneaky, which is where this third piece of music comes in:

I’d appreciate you checking the game out! It’s been a fun project to work on!

Club Penguin Music - Behind the Scenes

I’ve started a new series on YouTube called “Club Penguin BTS”, where I go through various songs that I composed for Club Penguin and tell the backstory behind them (and whatever event/game they accompanied). Here are the three newest videos:

2008 Medieval Party

Sled Racing

Aqua Grabber

New on the Unity Asset Store: Tracker Music 8-Bit Package

I have a great deal of respect for the video game music composers of the 1980s. Using technology that looks extremely primitive and limiting now, the greats like Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu were able to create amazingly catchy songs to accent the games that we played.

Using the sound card limitations of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), I've composed some songs myself, and they're now for sale on the Unity Asset Store! Click on the image below to check them out!

Examples of the songs included are below:

Pangolin's Puzzle Animations

It occurs to me that those who don't follow me on Twitter might not know what I've been up to recently. First of all, why aren't you following me on Twitter? And more importantly, I should tell you about things!

I've been doing contract work since October of last year, and one of my biggest projects has been for a game called "Pangolin's Puzzle" by Hero Factor. It's a game starring Katiti the pangolin as she uses her wits to protect herself from poachers and find her kidnapped mother.

I've had the opportunity to provide animations, music, visual effects, and other assets to the game. I'll be uploading the composed music soon, but for now, here's a selection of animated assets that I've created.

From a technical side of things, these animations were created using Spine. Spine is a tool that lets you take a static piece of layered art from Photoshop, apply puppeteering bones to it, and then animate it.

Iroh

General Iroh, from Avatar the Last Airbender.

Technically, there were no marshmallows shown on the show. But if he had some, he'd totally toast them himself.

Daylight Savings Time

I admit it. I love Daylight Savings Time.

Not the actual day when it happens, of course. The morning of Daylight Savings can be a disorienting mess. But to me, it's all worth it, because at 6 PM that day I'll be looking outside and have the sudden realization that the sun is still out.

I love that! The moment I realize that, it feels like spring has arrived, even if there's still snow on the ground. DST is the beginning of spring, and for the next 8-ish months, the days feel longer.

And at what cost? Beyond the minor disorientation of this weekend in March, what am I losing? 4 AM sun in the summer? What am I going to do with sun at 4 AM? Listen to the birds chirp an hour earlier?

I know I'm in the minority. Everyone wants to get rid of DST... and over the past few years, that argument is something I've also appreciated. We, as a society, are running out of things to be united about. Many major topics that used to be debated in relatively rational ways have gotten political and partisan. It used to be that we could at least talk about the weather with a stranger, but now that's even a potential hazard if the topic of global climate change pops up.

But Daylight Savings Time... everyone hates that! We can all gather together, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, and hate it together! The only people stopping us are those crazy few that actually LIKE Daylight Savings Ti...

Oh.

I did not think this through very well.

WRONG

Hey, you. Yeah, you.

There's something important that you should know about me.

I'm wrong.

I have no idea exactly what I'm wrong about, but have no doubt, I'm wrong about something. I am a human being, with imperfections and a limited view of the world. Yet, to survive in the world, I have to form opinions about what I see and do, and then act on them. And, because of that, something I believe to be right is, in fact, wrong.

I don't like thinking about that. I like being right. And in some cases, I don't know which of my beliefs is right and which is wrong.

So, I have two choices. The first is to huddle around other people who are like-minded, to not have my beliefs challenged, and to learn how to strengthen what I already believe. The second is to expose myself to contrasting beliefs, and to learn about everything around me, whether or not it conforms to what I know to be true.

If I only do the first, I'll become ignorant and stubborn. If I only do the second, I'll have no foundation to base my life, and become unstable.

And so, I must do both. I must be who I am, and live as I believe I should live, but I also must pay attention to what's around me and consider the differing views that cross my path, because that is how I'll grow as a person.

You know who else is wrong? The ten-years-ago version of myself. That guy had a lot of things wrong. I'm glad I'm not him.

Finding New Paths

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. - Proverbs 3:5,6

You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen. - Michelle Obama

A little over two months ago, I was let go from Hyper Hippo Games. It's where I had worked for 6 years (including the time when it was Rocketsnail Games).

My feelings about my termination of employment have been conflicted. I'd been waiting to write this blog post until that conflicted feeling had gone away, but it never has.

I've never really been let go from a job before. When I was at Disney Online Studios, I left on my own terms. It was my decision to make. At Hyper Hippo, it was unexpected. I was walking up the stairs into the building, my mind racing about what new wonders I was going to accomplish on the game I was developing, but before I could get to my desk, I was asked to go into a conference room and informed that my employment at Hyper Hippo had ended.

(At this point, I suppose I should address the natural question of "why". Why was I let go? To that end, the only answer I can give is that the focus of Hyper Hippo has narrowed to a specific kind of game. You are invited to examine the games Hyper Hippo launches from now on and ask yourself whether or not Chris Hendricks would have thrived making those kinds of titles.)

So here I stand, and life has been good. I was treated well when I was let go. The severance was generous, which is by no means a guaranteed thing in the game industry. I've received more contract work in the last 2 months than I'd expected, and my level of stress has actually gone down compared to most of my time at Hyper Hippo.

But a question looms: Do I keep making games?

I could just keep doing only contract work. People need music, people need art, people need animation. Or, I could get a job somewhere in town. Kelowna has a larger-than-average number of media companies for a city this size.

Here's the thing: remember how I mentioned that I was developing a game at Hyper Hippo when I was let go? Well, I have permission to keep working on it. Hyper Hippo had every right to say that they owned my work on the game up until that point, and that I had no right to continue development, but they've said that the project's mine to complete, and I'm grateful for that.

But should I?

This is an early concept of the game that I was working on. It takes place on an island, and the only inhabitants are you and the memories of your past, which are revealed as you solve environmental puzzles. If you've ever seen the movie Inception, a portion of the movie occurs in what's called "Limbo", a dreamlike state – that's basically where this game would take place.

The world would be benefitted by this game. I believe that. But does the world need it? I don't know. 80+ games are launched on Steam every week. 500+ games are added to the mobile app stores EVERY DAY. Most video games that were launched in 2017 are not going to make back the money that was spent developing them. I should know. None of the games I developed at Hyper Hippo ever made their money back.

There are a lot of creative reasons to make this game, and a couple of pretty powerful business reasons to ignore it. So, what do I do?

I don't know yet. What I do know is that, if this game is to succeed (or even get built at all), I can't make it alone. The main character of this game might be able to survive with only his own memories to keep him company, but I need others who are interested in this.

I need you.

Conquest of Catan

Have you ever played Settlers of Catan? It's this great board game that's won loads of awards. Well, in preparation for a local art show this Friday called "The Games We Play", I created this old-timey map based on that board game:

Now, the funny thing is that, when I was first planning to do something Catan-themed for the art show, I was not planning to make a map at all. I was going to make a realistic-looking painting of Catan as seen from the air (the kind of thing you'd see advertising an island paradise in a travel brochure). It's why I practiced painting water for my previous Nemo-themed artwork. But I didn't like that idea and went with a map instead. Oddly enough, even though I absolutely love maps and study them frequently, I've never attempted to make one at this scale before. It was quite fun!

Just keep painting

I decided a few weeks ago that I would make a painting. Not a digital painting, but a good ol' paintbrush-in-acryllic-paint painting. Here's how it went:

It started with this. I wanted to do an underwater scene. It seemed like a fairly straightforward thing to paint – relatively few details to mess around with. Here were the flat colors, as well as a display of my ultra-sophisticated horizontal four-legged artists easel (otherwise known as my dining room table) and circular ergonomic paint palette (a disposable paper plate for mixing the paints).

Not shown is a cup of water and paper towels. If you decide to paint, make sure you get the paint off of your brush as soon as you don't need it any more. A paintbrush with caked on paint is no good to you any more.

After doing the initial flat colors, the comments from others were that the top was too green, like a grassy hill, and that the water got black too quickly. I had to agree, so I repainted the whole thing. (In digital art, this would have been accomplished with a gradient tool. Acryllic paint technology has not acquired one of those yet.)

Next, it was time to put some texture in. The water received some rays of light (known in CG art as "caustics"), and clouds were added. I'm not great with color theory, so it was a pretty bold choice for me to go as purple as I did with those clouds, but I'm glad I did. I like them.

Note for acryllics... a lot of techniques can only be done well when your brush has very little paint on it and is nearly dry. Both the shading on the clouds and the light rays in the water relied on a dry brush.

When I started the project on the first day, my thought was that it was the type of water that Nemo might have swam in. I even looked at Finding Nemo stuff for reference. It seemed only natural that I just try to paint them in, and now was the time to do it.

Step 1 was sketching Marlin and Dory out in a sketchbook first. I needed to be confident of the pose before painting it. This was my first try, and I liked it enough that I left it at that.

Step 2 was to lightly sketch the two fish in pencil directly onto the painting, and Step 3 was to put the flat colors of the fish onto the picture.

Then, I added shading to the fish and a suitable movie quote to make the painting vaguely inspirational. And that was it! It was started and finished in 5 nights, a total of about 8 hours of work. It turned out decently, though nowhere near perfect. (The fact that I can see the imperfection in the art is probably a good sign that I'll try painting more in the near future.)

Hyper Hippo Games Music

I've added a new music playlist to my page: Hyper Hippo Games!

Hyper Hippo is my current employer, and I've made a decent amount of music for them, so I figured it was time to collect most of it in one place. Enjoy!

When a World Ends

“Yes and I did hope,” said Jill, “that it might go on for ever. I knew our world couldn’t. I did think Narnia might.”

”I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die.”

— The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

There's no easy way to say goodbye to a virtual world.

When a TV show ends, after producing seasons' worth of content, it gets to have its finale. The fans will be upset, begging for it to continue, but after the show is done, they still have the opportunity to relive it exactly as it was by catching reruns or watching DVDs of it.

When a series of video games ends, the fans get upset, but they still usually have the ability to dust off the old game console, pull out the controller, and play the game as it was.

But a virtual world... they never die gracefully. The moment the plug is pulled, it's gone. It ceases to exist, because it was never about the art, it was about the community.

On March 29, Club Penguin will close its doors.

I hadn't visited Club Penguin in years, to tell you the truth. But when I heard the news a few days ago, it still hit hard. Club Penguin was my introduction to the video game industry, and what a way to begin. The silly virtual penguins and their furball pets that I helped to create have been seen by over 1.5% of the people on Earth.

To distill the experience of Club Penguin into a few paragraphs is impossible. Any attempt to do so brings to mind a thousand memories, from the absurd to the serious, from the insignificant to the monumental:

• A digital clock that was somehow powered by throwing snowballs at it.
• Kids using the game to learn how to read.
• Hot sauce as jetpack fuel.
• A western party that was voted for, but that no one seemed to want when it actually happened.
• Secret agents that were horrible at keeping their identity a secret.
• An autistic child whose experience in making friends online gave him the confidence to make friends in real life.
• Wearing snowshoes, a sweatshirt, a bowtie, and a hat made out of fruit all at the same time just because you could.
• A Friday afternoon with a dozen other artists sketching ridiculous concepts about what penguin sumo would look like.
• Seeing Club Penguin gift cards pop up in my local supermarket for the first time.
• Rejoicing at the Club Penguin Beta Party that we were able to cram over 60 penguins into one room without the game crashing.

From May 2005 to May 2009, my job was to help make Club Penguin awesome, and it was magical. There was stress, there were conflicts, but when I look back at it, the good parts easily outshine the bad.

And that is what I hope for you. You, the faithful fans of Club Penguin, whether current or former, I hope that when you look back at this little world of flightless birds, you remember the good outshining the bad. I've heard many stories of people being inspired by Club Penguin to follow career paths that they might not have otherwise pursued. I've seen others get their first taste of caring for their community by donating to Coins for Change. Even with Club Penguin shutting its doors – a decision that I believe is unwise, considering the population of people that still care about this virtual world – examples like those mean that I can't dwell on the negative side.

Club Penguin isn't truly going away, of course. Club Penguin Island is coming out as a mobile app, and I have hope that it's able to build the same sense of community. I hope that the team working on Club Penguin Island will value their fans and listen to their feedback, and I hope that the Walt Disney Company will allow that team the room they need to make the same kind of frequent improvements that made Club Penguin great.

I have more to say, but for now, I'll end the blog post here. I'm thankful that I and the thousand other past and present employees of Club Penguin were able to make you smile. Now go, waddle on, and make new memories.

Toad Ya So

Phrase Shift

I, like most artists, am pretty horrible at self-promotion. This extends to games that I have created, which is likely why I haven't yet mentioned Phrase Shift on this blog.

Phrase Shift is a word puzzle game that I created for Hyper Hippo Games. It's already shown up on Android and iOS, and is launching on Steam this week.

Sample puzzle. To solve, you slide the words in the definition left or right until the answer is spelled down the center line. To answer "Jam's glass container", you spell JAR down the center. Simple enough, right?

So, here's the thing... I really want this game to work. But the game industry is telling me the following things:

• The game should be free, and then you sell level packs.
• Word puzzle games don't sell well. Most of your audience will just see them as edu-tainment.
• If you wanna make a popular puzzle game, for heaven's sake, don't make the user think! Make it as easy as possible to solve, until the solution is just out of reach, and then charge them more money to be able to solve the thing.

I hate this. I just want to go back to simplicity: you buy the game, you play the game. No unfair tactics, no shady business dealings. I also would really like to believe that there are a few of you out there that enjoy word games.

If this is you, please purchase Phrase Shift. I'd really appreciate it. The Steam version is launching with 600 puzzles (and the mobile versions will be updated to have those puzzles soon as well). It's less than a penny a puzzle!

Thank you for your time.

When News Breaks...

This is almost exactly the train of thought that went through my brain a few days ago. I was reading news articles online, and wondering why they'd all gotten to be such a pain to read... so many advertisement barriers and nastiness surrounding them. I yearned for a simpler solution, and then remembered the humble newspaper, which is going out of business around the world, replaced by the "superior" alternative that is online news.

There's something wrong about that.

Autumn Air

Avatar the Last Airbender is my all time favourite animated TV show. Period.

Carving

Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween both happen in October. For some reason, they connected in my mind today, and this was the result.