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Messages - BrashMonkey
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I was the first pixel artist at Gameloft New York, where I handled all in-house art needs  and helped procure several high profile licenses by rapidly making mock-up screens of potential licensed games on demand for the marketing staff. I was promoted quickly before moving on to Glu Mobile where I was the lead artist on numerous titles over the following several years, earning frequent praise and promotions, eventually achieving the rank of Technical Senior Artist, which required me to coordinate with senior programmers and producers to help design and improve in-house graphics and animation tools while I also continued to function as lead/senior artist on AAA licenses such as Batman and Transformers.
Since Glu Mobile I've freelanced for the likes of Sega/Wayforward and have done lead character sprite animations and other graphics for games such as Mighty Switch Force and Thor:God of Thunder for the Nintendo DS.


Please be sure to read the testimonials on my portfolio page here: https://bitbeamcannon.com/michael-parents-portfolio/
I'm known and respected in the industry for being fast, highly reliable, and loving the challenge of working within time and technical constraints.

Please email me at mike@bitbeamcannon.com if you think I might be the right artist for your project.




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Two long time pro pixel artists discuss the arcane origins of pixel art and why those technical limitations that defined the art form are still very relevant for modern pixel artists.

Please join the discussion and we might address your feedback in a follow up video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31VWg6D8xOw

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For the next roughly 12 days you can use coupon code : PROMOTION to get 30 percent off anything on our store including the fantastic pixel art and animation program Pro Motion NG.

https://brashmonkey.com/forum/index.php?/store/product/27-pro-motion-ng/


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Here is our official promo video for the contest:



And here is a link to the official rules and contest thread: https://brashmonkey.com/forum/index.php?/topic/4758-spriter-awesome-boss-contest-1000-grand-prize-official-rules/#comment-16008

cheers.

5

BrashMonkey is excited to announce our first ever Spriter animation contest. This contest is for all you great artist-animators out there, and the theme is "Awesome Boss"


Entries must be inspired by this phrase in any way you see fit, but the general idea is to make at least one animation of some kind of cool and intimidating thing you might see as a boss in a video game. (Additional animations of your boss are welcome, especially if you feel more animations are needed to show off the concept.) As all entries must be visible to the public for voting, we'll only accept submissions which would not be considered "offensive" to or "inappropriate" for a general audience.

Any and all art styles are allowed, ranging from the use of 3d pre-rendered bits animated in Spriter to old-school hand drawn pixel-art, or anything in-between, just so long as you're using only original art which no-one else has ownership of (partial or otherwise), and please, no Art Pack usages as a base for your boss. Any entries must be animated in Spriter.

Teams may collaborate on a single entry, but of course would have to split any prize that they might win among themselves the way they see fit.

Three cash prizes will be awarded via electronic transfer (Either PayPal or a similar means. More details in a followup announcement) as follows, based on the number of votes by community members:

      The Grand Prize of $1,000.00 USD
   
      Second place Prize of $350.00 USD

      Third Place Prize of $150.00 USD


All entries must be submitted in their completed form by August 24th, at which time voting will be possible.

Voting will be closed on August 31st. The winner will be announced the following day.

The community will be the judges, and the winners will be based on number of votes for each entry (One entry per person or team). Voters should consider the following attributes while casting their votes:

      Art style and quality

      Animation (interesting, impressive, lively, etc.)

      Originality

      Awesomeness.


No purchase is necessary. Anyone can create an entry using the free version of Spriter which can be downloaded from here.

However, now's a great time to grab the even more awesome, powerful, and fun to use Spriter Pro from our online store at 50 percent off the retail price by using coupon code: BOSS during your purchase! This sale ends July 23rd.

We will have a second announcement in the next few days with the remaining information, including how to submit your entries, etc.

If you have any further questions or comments about this contest, please post them in the official forum thread here: https://brashmonkey.com/forum/index.php?/topic/4753-spriter-awesome-boss-contest-1000-grand-prize/

Best of luck to all you great artists, and let the awesome animating begin!

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6
Pixel Art / Re: Brash Monkeys Spriter software
« on: August 17, 2014, 02:39:57 pm »
Hi everyone,

Sorry I'm late to this post.  Here are examples of very fast sprite work I created using Spriter for a client, and a couple of videos showing the general workflow etc I used to achieve them:







cheers,
Mike at BrashMonkey

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Pixel Art / Re: Puppet/Modular Animation: how when and why?
« on: August 17, 2014, 02:06:30 pm »
@ Conceit,

Thanks so much for the kind words and for supporting Spriter with your purchase.  We are finally very close to releasing 1.0 and after that Skin mode is the top priority as far as features to finish.  This is a feature we really love and understand the importance of, so want to make sure we do it right before making it an official feature, with finalized data-format etc (and we want to avoid the potential limitations that could come from rushing the feature out.)

We hate that we are late, and are "hauling butt" to wrap up Spriter 1.0's initial release, and then "skin mode" (deforming).  We really appreciate the patience and will not be satisfied until both are released and proves to be very much worth the wait.

We are extremely appreciative of everyone's support and patience.  We are completely dedicated to making Spriter as flexible, powerful, and joyful to use as possible...catering to as many work-flows, animation styles, and visual requirements as possible...it's something we are very passionate about.

cheers,
Mike at BrashMonkey

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Pixel Art / Re: Puppet/Modular Animation: how when and why?
« on: August 08, 2014, 02:43:31 pm »
Hi everyone,

Thanks Indigo for bringing this thread to my attention (as it might have taken me a long time to spot it myself) and for clarifying some things about Spriter.

There's a few matter's I'd like to further clarify which I hope will be useful to anyone interested. (DISCLAIMER: I'm the founding member of BrashMonkey and co-creator of Spriter, so HUGE pro-Spriter bias is a definite possibility. ;)  )

Image deforming/warping: While image deforming was introduced as an experimental/proof of concept feature several builds back, it's not yet finished.  The UI and even data format are going to change drastically, so in it's current state, its only useful to play with and provide us with feedback and feature additions/requests.  It's a feature we're very excited about, but must take our time to arrive at the most intuitive and flexible UI and data format possible. Luckily The initial release of Spriter 1.0 is almost ready, and finishing this deform feature will be a very high priority after that point.

Are Spriter and Spine redundant products?:  Even if the two tools completely overlapped in features (which they do not), the drastically different work-flow and UI alone can make each tool more or less appealing to any particular user depending on their own preferences.  On top of this, the large differences in price-point also separate Spriter and Spine into two different sub-markets.  Spriter Pro is substantially less expensive, and the free version of Spriter is not crippleware, in that all core features are fully functional and there is no legal/licensing limitations on any original work you create using the free version.  Luckily, on top of all this, there are several distinct feature differences which definitely can make one tool more appropriate than the other depending on the specific technical and artistic requirements for a specific project.

This video explains the overall feature-set of Spriter, and how it offers great flexibility to work-flow animation technique and animation style:



One of the most important differences (in my opinion) is that Spriter offers a pixel-art friendly mode, which not only uses nearest neighbor scaling (no filtering), but also forces sprite coordinates to integer (whole pixel) coordinates as opposed to "floats"(partial pixel coordinates).

Even for those precreating all animations as full frame sequential images in their 3d or 2d tool of choice, Spriter can offer many benefits, All individual frames can be instantly loaded in as animations, where per-frame durations can be set, along with triggering sound effects at any point in the time-line (even between frames), as well as placing and setting limitless collision boxes, variables and spawning/anchoring points at any point in the time line...all tweened or not, according to your needs.

Modular animation VS pixel art?: I use Spriter frequently as fast and efficient intermediate part of my process to create low-res, indexed color per frame sprite animations.  The benefits to this method are numerous, especially in the profession, where deadlines and compensation vs time spent ratio are critical factors.

Here's a video showing my general process and examples.  Please note this video was recorded before pixel art mode and export to sprite-sheet or .gif was added to Spriter Pro:



Another important note, Spriter can be used to create high-res, tweened modular animation, or actual per frame pixel art animation sprite sheets or gifs, or to actually create a hybrid of the two, where pixel art is animated on the fly (tweened or not) in a manner that perfectly preserves every last pixel of the original art. This last option is perfect for creating retro style games, especially modular pixel art bosses  such as those seen in classic games by Treasure, but also to recreate methods similar to those used to animate countless classic video game characters (Rayman, Vectorman, Alien Soldier etc).

Spriter's late. (very late): It's hard to discuss or explain such situations without coming across as defensive or making excuses, and most importantly, words mean very little compared to actions and the results of those actions...so ultimately our goal is to not excuse our lateness with words, but to actually make the wait worthwhile, and provide the most useful, fun to use, and best supported tool we possibly can, as soon as possible, and with focus on the long term.

For those interested in the actual facts behind the massive delay in releasing version 1.0, the best way is to surf through the official Kickstarter updates on our Kickstarter page, but long story short, The very long hours and very infrequent breaks Edgar (Spriter's programmer) endured while developing Spriter prior to and during the Kickstarter campaign exacerbated shoulder and back injuries from a past automobile accident...suddenly forcing lots of visits to medical specialists, unpleasant and risky injections, and basically a distressingly prolonged amount of time away from any keyboard...causing a massive initial delay, followed by many months of drastically reduced production speed until physical therapy and carefully controlled work environment and work habits finally allowed Edgar to get back to full speed development.

But again, we don't care about the reasons or excuses, our goal was and is to firstly make modular animation  methods available to (and common knowledge to) all game developers, no matter how new to the art form or how small their budget, and then secondly, to make Spriter a highly useful and affordable tool towards those ends.  Despite technically still not having released Spriter version 1.0, It is important to keep in mind that the expectations and standards for what Spriter 1.0 would need to be drastically expanded during the entire process of it's development (which obviously also further delayed the release of 1.0), and even the beta version of Spriter for the last several months actually surpasses the originally promised feature set and accessibility (cross platform, for PC, mac and Linux) by a very large degree.

I do cringe to discuss this topic, because firstly of course we do feel terrible about the delay but also because, as I mentioned, I find excuse-making and being defensive to be very distasteful and hope I am not coming across that way.

I just wanted to make it clear that we are very committed to Spriter, and always have (except when medically forbidden) worked very hard and long hours to make Spriter a better tool, and to support its users in as timely and courteously a manner possible.  Any day not directly contributing to Spriter's development is spent helping users (of Pro or free), fixing bugs, responding to forum posts and emails, and discussing (often with our users), how we can make Spriter a more useful tool for everyone...not just to paying customers.

Sorry this ended up so long, but before I stop typing, in a final effort to counter-balance the obvious bias I might have in the favor of Spriter, let me just add the following:  It was during that really tough time of the injury induced delay that Spine was introduced...and despite the obvious and detrimental financial ramifications of suddenly having a very polished and much more complete competitor, Edgar and I were relieved that anyone who needed to create modular animations at that moment wold not have to endure the delay in Spriter without having a very viable alternative.  For those who need to do something now, and not "some day down the line", a polished and immediately useable (and supported) tool is drastically more useful and attractive than an unfinished and not yet supported tool.  Luckily this is finally beginning to change.  There's very few features left to be added to this first release of Spriter Pro, and the list of known bugs is very short and Edgar is going through them at a fantastic speed.  Once Spriter 1.0 is released, we'll be switching gears to perfecting the image deforming features, fully documenting the data format, and working with the developers and communities of all popular game authoring systems in order to get complete Spriter support implemented as quickly as possible. Things are already shaping up nicely for Unity and Construct2 in that regard, with several other authoring systems Spriter support making excellent progress as well.

That's all for now, but I'll be sure to check back in on this thread from time to time to respond to any questions or requests, and to keep you all updated on Spriter's development and impending 1.0 release.

cheers,
Mike

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Hi Everyone,

This is Mike from BrashMonkey. I wanted to share with you a new video I made which showcases the new features In the latest build of Spriter which can be extremely useful to pixel artist or anyone making a pixel art based game.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np-XNmSSp-c

If you're new to Spriter, it's a modular animation tool which lets easily create highly optimized 2d animations for games, which you can either export as sequential PNGs, sprite strips or sprite sheets, or, ideally use the actual Spriter project file you'd use in your game engine to recreate the animations on the fly with just the handful of “body part” images. For those who can use the actual Spriter data in their game engine, Spriter offers the ability to not just create animations, but to also designate an unlimited number of collision boxes and “action points” per frame, as well as to trigger sound effects and even variable changes at any point in each animation.
You can download the latest version of Spriter (build B8) from http://www.brashmonkey.com

You can see a quick overview some of Spriter's key features in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnkiZAA_jg&feature=gp-n-y
 
If you'd like to provide feedback, suggestions, or feature requests, please join our forums at http://www.brashmonkey.com/forum , or email us directly at mail@brashmonkey.com


Thanks very much for your time and much valued feedback.

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I've just finished my latest contract and am once again availible for work.

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