CronkTV

Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes

2005-05-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when people who dress up as Star Wars characters make fun of other people who dress up as Star Wars characters.

Stump the Vader

2005-05-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.sithsense.com/flash.htm
A pretty cool flash diversion for Burger King. Pay attention to the ending. As Darth gets closer to the answer, weird things start to happen. This one is made by the same people who brought you:

http://www.subservientchicken.com/
which is equally funny if you haven’t seen it yet.

Copycat Advertising

2005-05-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Coloribus AdMirror
Here is a site that is similiar to a favorite site of mine called Pirate Sites which catalogs whole websites that spring up on the net that directly copy and steal the intellectual property of another (more popular) website.

This other AdMirror site does the same thing except for the fact that it is about print advertising that rips off the idea in general and sometimes completely mimics the same photography. Most of the time, it is not the exact same like Pirated Sites quite often finds but it goes to show how little imagination and creativity some ad execs and website designers really have.

"I feel GREAT!"

2005-05-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Nutri Grain- I Feel Great Ad
I haven't seen this one on the air yet and I assume that I won't. It is far too weird and funny to make it onto the air.

Guess The Google

2005-04-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is an addictive flash-based game. I played it for about an hour. It is pretty hard but basically it shows several photos that it gathers from google on a particular search term and then based upon the pictures you see, you have to guess what word it searched for.

Bid on Life-Size X-Wing

2005-04-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

Hurry. This full-size replica of an X-Wing from Star Wars offer won't last long. 9 of them were originally made for Lucasfilm as promotion pieces. Actually, I have seen this thing first-hand. In the description it mentions that it was hanging in a FAO Schwartz in Orlando, FL. I went to that store about 4 years ago. It is pretty impressive. It comes with Luke and R2-D2 as well.

MX vs. ATV is out for Xbox

2005-04-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

Now both the Xbox and PS2 versions of my first game that I worked on is out on the shelves of stores. The TV commercials are now airing quite a bit. So, I am beginning to put together an order for my friends and family. I can get copies of the game at cost, so let me know if you are interested.

My name is in the credits under the title of "Additional Artists" or something like that since I only helped out during the last few months of development. The names of the racers that you race against in the game are random and are picked from a list of professional riders and employees of Rainbow Studios who worked on the game. So, likely, the only indication that you will have that I worked on it will be something like this:

Gamespot Screenshot of the Xbox version

I mostly built out pages and made them work. So, about 90% of what I did is behind the scenes and you actually can't see it. I was more of a production guy on this one. Not much creativity involved. The only things, I did that you can see are that I edited, airbrushed, and prepared all of the professional rider photos and the logos of all of the sponsors of the game.

My New Room w/ a View

2005-04-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

We switched up the offices here at Rainbow a bit. The new expansion got done, so my game team moved and then that made everyone else in the studio move as well. So, the UI Artists all moved to a new bigger room. Luckily, we moved into what many have agreed is the nicest office on the entire floor.

Before, we had a corner office with tile flooring and many windows. However, those windows overlooked the parking lot of the hotel that is next door. It wasn't a very exciting view and the sun came directly in the windows, so we had to shut the blinds most of the time.

The new office is also a corner office, twice as large, has carpet, and has a stunning view of 3 of the mountains here in Downtown Phoenix. We have the same view as the fanciest and most expensive hotels in Phoenix. We can keep the blinds up all of the time, and it is really nice to look over my monitor and see everything. It seems like a small thing but it really makes work seem a lot cheerier.

Devon's (Evil or Good) Twin?

2005-04-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

I was attending a poker tournament that some of the people from Rainbow hold every two weeks. So, most of the other players were fellow employees. Although, some people brought their wives, friends, freind's wives, etc. It was a fun and fairly typical tournament. The interesting part of the evening was that I swear I met Devon Moore's brunette twin.

She is the wife of one of my coworkers and she looks like she could easily be Devon's sister. On top of that, she acted exactly like Devon. The more I talked to her, the more striking the resemblance in personality, voice, etc. So, once I came to grips with the fact that this was Devon's doppelganger, I wasn't sure which one might be the evil one. The brunette version seemed fairly nice but the one with the darker hair is usually the evil one, right?

(For those of you who don't know Devon Moore, she is old friend and former co-worker of mine at Red Five)

Car Window Tinting

2005-04-01T08:11:00.000-08:00

I recently had the windows in my car tinted because I have a black interior in my Eclipse and the windows are pretty big. So, it was either sell the car, or get the windows tinted as dark as they can go. So, I opted for the most expensive and darkest option that I could. I had the local Mitsu dealer down here do it. They did a great job.

At first, the plastic was full of bubbles and I thought about complaining. But they did say that it needs 3-5 days to adhere completely. So, I waited and the bubbles magically went away. It looks really professional and looks like the car came that way. It actually looks like they removed the windows in order to do it.

So, my car looks really mean now with all of the windows dark. You absolutely cannot see in the back. You can hold a bright pink card to the window and you can't see it all from the outside. The trouble is seeing out at night. It is so dark that my rear window is now useless at night.

PSPWare to Sync PSP with Mac - Windows Coming Soon

2005-03-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

PSPWare by Null River
This software looks really cool. It auto converts movies, photos, syncs iTunes playlists over to the PSP, and backs up your game saves. There is only the Macintosh version out now but the Windows version is coming soon.

2 Most Amazing Optical Illusions I Have Ever Seen

2005-03-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

Motion Blindness
This little Flash based demo shows the properties of an illusion called Motion Blindness. What is amazing is how quickly it works. It only takes a second of looking at the green dots for the yellow dots to start disappearing.

Self-Induced Hallucination
I was amazed that this one even worked. You have all probably stared at a spinning hypnotic wheel before, right. Well this one actually does something. The difference is that you have to hold your breath which helps deprive you of oxygen. (Probably not a good idea but won't cause permanent damage) I tried the .exe file. It appears to be virus free. I wish it was just a Flash file like the one above though.

Changed my cell phone #

2005-03-27T14:42:00.000-08:00

Let me know if you need my new cell phone number. I ended up having to change it to a local Phoenix phone number. I was just having too much trouble whenever I would call local business and give them my phone number, then they would always double-check and would quite often not call me back. I also couldn't get any pizzas delivered. They need to have a phone number to call and verify and they refuse to call long-distance.

New Chair

2005-02-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

It is funny how little things at the office can really brighten up your whole day. We got these new office chairs in at work. Me and another designer were commenting that they look like ripoffs of the famous "Aeron Chair" that was designed by Herman Miller that won all sorts of design awards and is widely considered the best office chair in the world.

It never crossed our minds that these chairs were the actual thing. We never thought that our employer would spring for such a thing. There were about 100 of these things being loaded off of a truck. So, then, in about the middle of the day, I pulled the tag off of the bottom of the chair and it clearly read "Aeron by Herman Miller." I wondered why it was so damn comfortable. I mean, it really is the most comfortable chair I have ever sat in. So, in short, if you have the means, then I highly recommend that you pick one up.

Interesting Take on History

2005-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

I watched a really good History Channel show last night. It was called "High Hitler." It contained segments from Hitler's personal physician and it's basic point was that drugs may have played a part in Hitler's odd behaivor and irrational decisions. It was all about how Hitler was administered an experimental drug called "Vitamultin" which likely contained anphetamines.

It was really, really interesting and really explained a lot about that era of history. It raised a lot of interesting points and had lots of factual evidence to back up it's claims. If you get a chance to see it, then I highly recommend it.

Superfriends Do Office Space

2005-02-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.idiotwork.com/pages/tps.html
Some great video editing goodness. Similiar to those GI-Joe cartoons.

Great Piece of Industrial Design

2005-02-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.viceversa.com/Dynamic/Products,intCategoryID,34,intItemID,1447.html
How would you like to go over to someone's house for the first time for dinner and then you see this on their counter-top. I just may have to get me one of these.

Rusty the Narcoleptic Dog

2005-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Evidently, there were some people here who had never heard of Rusty. So I posted the link to everyone here. I figured that some of you may have not heard of him either so here are a few links. This video is great. The dog just collapses in the middle of running:

http://www.gla55pak.com/lameduckie/02december/rnd/rusty.wmv
http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/8653/

Happy Valentine's Day

2005-02-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

OK. So I am a day late. Chances are you wouldn't have been reading this until afterwards anyways. I know that this site can get a little boring. So here is a little Valentine's day game for you to play with the ones you love:
http://www.wedonicethings.com/

Learning the history of my cellmates

2005-01-08T01:17:00.000-08:00

I have recently been inquiring as to the history and past experiences of the other artists that work in my little corner of Rainbow. It is actually quite fascinating and pretty exciting to work with people that have such a checkered and interesting background.

As far as representing the world, we have one guy from South Africe, one guy from Columbia, one guy from Canada, one guy from Texas, and one guy from Texas. Not only are we all from different regions but we all come from different professional backgrounds.

This morning, I learned that the 2 conceptual artists in our room not only created concept art for one of my favorite short-lived and under-appreciated TV shows, "Starship Troopers" but I also learned that Rainbow Studios once had an animation division that was bigger than the gaming division and Rainbow even made and was significantly responsible for over 5 of it's episodes.

Back in DSM, Brad Linberg and I would quite often talk about how ground breaking and awesome that show was. I was equally impressed with Spiderman the MTV series. I found out that they also bid for and created concept art for that show as well.

Sorry for the lack of update

2005-01-08T01:06:00.000-08:00

I was back in Des Moines between Christmas and New Year's Day. I got to see some people. I spent most of my time hanging out with my mother which was very nice. I caught up on my sleep and basically had a nice relaxing break right before I had to come back and work on this damn game again.

Now, I am not really all that bitter about working on this game till odd hours of the night. It is just that "damn game" sounds funnier. I had a good time back in DSM, getting to visit with everyone. While I was there, some people mentioned that they visit this website in hopes for an update. For those people, I am sorry to disappoint you. As soon as I got back to the balmy confines of Arizona, I had to go back to the grindstone and churn out some more bug fixes.

So, I am posting this brief update here at 1:00 am on a Friday night. I have hopes to post something of more magnitude in the next few weeks. My schedule should get better and I plan on making this website more of something where I "VENT" on a regular basis. In the meantime - Post a comment, or send me an email. This will give me and idea of who actually reads this stuff and then I will have a better idea of what to write.

I can't even think straight right now

2004-12-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I posted anything. That is because I got pulled into working on another game. As some of you may know, my game is about 2 years from being done. However, in this industry deadlines and such can move around due to things that are beyond your control and beyond the control of your superiors as well.

Well, what happened is that my game is still on track but 2 of the other games that Rainbow is working got their schedules switched around. One team got a reprieve and got their game pushed back by over 6 months and they weren't even behind. The other team got their deadline pushed ahead by about 2 months and they are behind. So, a lot of extra people are having to help out to get the whole thing done.

I am one of those people. I am working about 17 hours days but I am doing so with about 50 other people. I get up at 9:00am and go into work and then I get home at about 2:30am. I catch a few hours sleep and then we do the whole thing all over again.

The interesting thing though is that no matter what is due the following day, the group think at Rainbow is that you never pull an all nighter. Everybody will run around worried about what is due the following day and then around 2:00am, everyone will leave regardless of what got done. Which I do think is smart. They realize that they will be working 17 hour days for awhile and pulling an all-nighter will just ruin you for the next day and you won't get anything accomplished tomorrow.

Busy Week Last Week

2004-11-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

I had quite the week last week. I worked each night on getting everything out of the boxes and hooking it all up. That entertainment center of mine is quite the nightmare to hook up. It literally takes an entire Saturday up just to hook up all of the wires and test everything. After that, I still have to program everything.

Anyway, work is going allright. It has been a while since I have actually designed anything and I am starting to get a bit antsy. I have had to learn so much. I am learning about the game, the industry behind it, what it takes to make a game, and I have been looking at different games and how their menu screens affect the gameplay.

I am starting to come up with a gameplan for how this whole game is going to come together. I knew that when I started here at Rainbow that one of the things that I would have to do is to make up an entirely new process for making UI for a game since we are making this game for the next generation of game consoles. That is proving to be the hardest part of this job but also the most rewarding. I just can't wait to see some of these next-gen graphics in motion.

Pocket Bike Races

2004-11-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I forgot to write about what happened a few nights ago that was really fun and I highly recommend. On Tuesday night, Jared asked me if I wanted to go downstairs to the parking lot and race pocket bikes. On the lowest level of the underground parking garage in the building here and at night, it is largely deserted. Most people park on the upper floors, so you pretty much have your run of the entire place and the underground parking garage here is fairly large it is about the size of a small residential block of homes. So it makes for a pretty good go-cart track. The size of it is about double the size of most go-cart tracks.

Now, if you don't know what a pocket-bike is, it is a small gas or electric powered motorcycle that fits an adult but is only about a foot and half high. Several people around here have them because of the space that we have here in this new building. Anyways, they get up to about 25 miles per hour which gives you a pretty good sense of speed and I found that the chopper versions of these bikes are very comfortable. They cost between $150 and $400. So, all in all, it was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it if you have a large parking lot in which you can tool around in. (Hint-Hint to those Red Fivers out there.)

It's Just Research

2004-11-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

As I was sitting here yesterday doing "research" on my current project, the video that I was watching had a bikini contest in the middle of it. So, in the middle of a whole office of people, I was watching half-naked babes running around and I realized that I needed to watch and understand this aspect of the game as well. Just then my boss came in and asked how everything was going and I said "Great." He then looked at my screen and said "Keep up the good work." OK. That last part about my boss didn't happen but it might have. Anyways, I think I am really, really going to like this new job.