Art, music and Starting Kicks! news

So we've been quiet for a while, but we're back, and we have quite a selection of things for show and tell!

First of all, we've gotten some new artists on board, and have a few others on the side waiting to go when the time is right. First up, Rachel's back! You may remember Rachel's work in the character portraits, shop artwork and pretty much most of the architectural concept work from very early on in the game's development.

Rachel has been hard at work doing all of the new weapon art that you've been seeing, but has also recently been creating dozens of new sets of armour for the game, which are look SPECTACULAR. But I'll be doing up a separate blog post about that.

Secondly we would like to welcome Carrie Oglesby to the project. Carrie is a wonderfully talented young woman who has been creating some fantastic loading screens for us lately, but will soon be moving onto some really cool new stuff which we'll have to show off when she's done. For now, here's a personal piece of hers to show you just how awesome she is:

We feel very lucky to have her on board for the project, and can't wait to see some of the things she comes up with!

And lastly, we welcome on board Angus Olsen, who we met down in Sydney while we were presenting at the GAME convention. He was kind enough to come and visit us in person with voice actor David Doyle and help us pitch the game to the public. We've been very eager to have him involved as he has the distinct honor of having DISNEY on his resume. Not many artists can say that!
Angus is doing some character design work for us, and it's coming along fantastically. It's currently in rough sketch form for now, as the specific details are ironed out, but ALREADY it's looking incredible!

We'll be sure to show off some of the finals when they're ready to go! We really are honored to have someone of Angus' level involved with the art team!

Waiting in the wings we also have three other artists who will be revealed soon. They are quite high profile and do INCREDIBLE work. They will be doing some promotion-specific art for the game, including box-art and matte paintings for posters and banners, so we'll keep you posted on that when it happens! We're very excited!

On top of all that, our composer, Nicolas Lee, has been hard at work making some STUNNING music for the towns and buildings (which you'll get to see in some gameplay videos over the coming weeks) and you can get an early sneak peek of the tracks in this awesome showreel that he's put together for the project's musical score! Check it out!

Now, something a bit serious, I'm afraid...

One thing I didn't particularly want to have to bring up publicly is a bit of a trolling problem we seem to be having of late. One past team member - who will remain nameless - had to be removed from the project, and a large group of their friends seems to have taken it upon themselves to try and spam the project wherever possible. I have no desire to name names, point fingers or any of that, as that's not what I'm about - disagreements and conflicts of interest just happen - but in case some of the sometimes awful, hateful troll messages do slip through the filter that we try very hard to maintain, please accept my apologies. As I said, I didn't particularly want to make mention of it and have tried my best to keep quiet since it happened, but the trolling gets quite bad sometimes and you all should know that we're doing our best to keep it quiet and to recognize it when you see it.

But on to happier news. We've been working quite hard on putting oceans into the game. BIG oceans. They are quite imposing when you find the coasts. Sometimes large, sheer cliffs just loom out of no-where and drop into the rolling sea. It's quite a sight to behold but it IS quite buggy. We had no idea that the math of creating these things in 3D would get quite so complicated.
Regardless, here is a quick video showing the player wandering along a coastline. So that you can see it better, all of the foliage, debris, etc has been stripped away so it's just the raw terrain data and the ocean itself. Sorry it's a bit dark, it was night in the game when we recorded!

So they're coming along. As I said, they're still QUITE buggy, but they're getting there. Aside from some personal life nonsense, the maths behind these has been the main reason it's been so long between blog posts! However, we've decided to take a little bit of a break from these and move on to towns, so that you can all see the amazing plans we have for them, especially since we now have access to the incredible 3D assets from the generosity of Arteria3D!

If you're a game maker, please check them out! They're great guys!

So we'll have more about the towns soon, too! But believe it or not, there's even MORE news!

Firstly, a big thank you to The Penny Arcade Report, which featured our Kevin Bacon article on their site yesterday. The blog got so much traffic from it that it actually crashed! Lots of fun and games... But it's awesome! Every little thing like that is a real plus for the traffic of the game! We've also had three separate stories run over at Gamasutra! We were also interviewed recently by Alistair Doulin of Bane Games, and the interview went up yesterday if you'd like to have a read of it.
Alistair is actually a good friend of ours and is the creator of the game BATTLE GROUP! Definitely worth checking out.

But the biggest news of all is that we're trying our hand at crowdsourcing again! Remember how we had a shot at it on IndieGoGo but just couldn't get the traffic? Well, we're trying again, this time using KickStarter! We know a lot of you wanted us to go with them in the first place, but we couldn't due to being based in Australia. However, we now have an American wing based out of Seattle thanks to Nicolas Lee, and are running the campaign through that! So please, head on over, check it out, and even if you can't contribute, share the link as MUCH AS POSSIBLE. The more eyes that see it, the more chance we have of reaching our goal! We've also got some new perks for you, and you can use it to PRE-ORDER THE GAME!
One special thing you'll notice... There is a limited offer, $1000 pledge (only 5 available) that will receive a prototype copy of the official Malevolence Card Game that won't be out until the end of 2013! So jump on board! Get involved! And Share the link like it's a flu virus and you feel a sneeze coming on!

Also don't forget to check us out on all of the social networks below. See you again soon with more cool stuff!