I finished the map that I am using for the Level Selection screen in the Flash game I am creating. Now on to animating characters.

A quick look at a small part of the progress I've been making on Bunny Slayer. Some of the drawings going into the UI. Isn't that fun!?

It is crazy how fast time flies when you are busy. Anyway, I have by no means forgotten or stopped working on my current projects. In fact, I have made lots of back end progress on Bunny Slayer (It's funny how much I love working on the back end code so much more than getting the visual representation/GUI looking good). Anyway, I am running out of things to do like that, so I will be forced to start working on visuals again. I look forward to getting a working trial edition of the game on the site soon.

The Bunny Slayer game that I am currently working on is available in the APPLICATIONS section of the Gallery. As I create stable-ish versions, I will be uploading them there. It has been coming along pretty well over the last 13 days, and I look forward to getting a lot more done.

When I feel it is close to ready to be sent out (probably via Kongregate) I am sure I will be bugging everyone for any last minute suggestions and testing. In the meantime, I am aware of several areas needing improvement.

Some of those areas are:

• There's a tutorial button but no tutorial (yet)
• There is no background imagery
• Targetting bunnies needs improvement (sometimes the clicks dont seem to register).
• Needs lots more animating. Mostly for each direction you could face (I plan on having 8: N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE).
• More abilities!
• A BOSS fight?!
• The list goes on...

Alright my loyal fan (that's right, I'm talking to you mom)...

I have updated the 2D Animation section of the gallery with the latest iteration of the Night Before Christmas. The Brit has been fleshed out some, and Frans now has his part. I also added a few drawings as a teaser of what's to come to Mr. Effeminate. I am going to switch direction for awhile to work on a Flash game. I'll try to post some updates on it's progress as well over the next couple weeks. After that, I will continue the pencil animation.

I have finished the cast of the animation I am currently working on. Franklin from the Franklin Gloria and Edward sketch plays each character as he recites the Night Before Christmas poem.

The sound track is actually my father performing each voice. He has read the poem each year for as long as I can remember; and he continuously updated the performance, adding voices and jokes.

The cast consists of a Brittish Man, Slingblade, an Old Man, Frans (of SNL's Hans & Frans), an Effeminate Man, a New Yorker, an early 90's Rapper, a French Man, a Hippie, a Japanese Man, a Southern Baptist TV Evangelist, a Little Kid, a Valley Girl, a Drunk Man, a Phillipino Man, and finally another Little Kid.

Professor Farnsworth must be gathering chronitons again because last night I had almost made it the mile walk to North Station from Good Life, when I happened to look at my phone. 12:40 happens to be a half hour AFTER the last train leaves Boston for Salem. Thanks Matt and Brian, I love your sofa! And thanks to Nabeel of Conduit Labs for hosting the party.

Ah the warmth, the new growth, the invigorating feeling Spring brings. Yes, with Spring comes new opportunities for creative development. What, you thought I meant the season?! It is November! No, I mean Spring MVC. I recently finished reading Expert Spring MVC Web Flow and combined with DWR, this latest web development project I am working on is like a breath of fresh air. I suggest Spring to any of you web developers out there. Spring is of course not limited to Web Apps but since that is what I am currently using it for...

We finally went about tearing down the ceiling yesterday. The picture is what it looked like before cleanup... (there is a blue tarp under there).

Today, after work, we cleaned it up. It took us three hours to tear down and only two hours to cleanup. We are an unstoppable team!


(mouseover to see it after cleanup, click to see more)

So after all the travelling that we have been doing, the mail built up a bit. On Monday, I found a letter from our buddies at the IRS. Upon opening the letter, I have to admit, I pretty much soiled myself. Apparently they believe I owe them $20,779 from 2006! So I signed it and sent it in agreeing to pay them their stinkin money...

No, of course not. After a half an hour on hold, I got ahold of an IRS representative who informed me that I probably owed a whole lot less. She really actually was quite kind and told me the forms I should fill out and send in for corrections. This morning, when I did exactly that, I was QUITE surprised to see that in fact there WAS an error on my 2006 tax forms, and instead of owing $20,779, the IRS owes ME almost $1,000! Well, I figured I must have made a mistake, so I waited another 20 minutes to speak with another representative, and she assured me that it was entirely possible and that this happens all the time.

Maybe they were hoping I would just sign it and send it back? Is the IRS into spam mail scams now? Nah, I am sure it was entirely an honest mistake...

Added this flower image. This is the painting mentioned in my list of things to do. Hopefully next weekend we will have the ceiling ripped out and replastered soon after. Why does that matter? Well with that room back in commission, we can get all the crap out of the studio and I can paint again!

I redid the gallery yet again and while at it, I added video controls to animations and uploaded more work. Now I'm going to bed and I entirely blame YOU for keeping me up.

More things to do.

• Finish the Carriage Monster 3D image to use for top right of header.
• Update animation files to new version of SWF.
• Add video controls to animations (still).
• Finish Faith's parents' painting.
• Pick back up on the Blade King project.

Well Vegas was fun. A great getaway from the kids, thanks to my mom and Rob for watching them. The conference had good sessions and some really bad ones, but I did get some good ideas out of it for Loomis. In the end the only real gambling I did was to enter two Holdem tournaments, after which I walked away up 300 bucks. Sweet.

Progress has been good. I'm excited to be done with the major changes. There are still a few things I'd like to do in the gallery, but if there's time tomorrow, I'll probably just focus on putting up new sketches. Then it's VEGAS BABY VEGAS!

Just a list of things I want to get done soon:

• Add capability to email me directly from the site.
• Make 'Sketch of the Day' functional.
• Rewrite About.
• Retune Gallery's look.
• Add video controls to animations.
• Add functionality to subscribe to news feed.
• Create a page to make adding/editing news easier for myself.
• Make the news archive.
• Make the sketches archive.
• Create page for me to more easily update sketches and gallery images.

Well, I threw up a quick site a couple weeks ago over the weekend. Now I've made several commitments, one of which includes creating this News page and updating it relatively regularly. I know I'll probably just be talking to myself, but whatever keeps me motivated...right?