I’m very very proud to finally announce the launch of the secret project I was being coy about for so long: the official launch of the social Facebook game Crazyboat that I was the art and narrative director of.

From the press release:

—

It is the near future and the Pacific Trash Vortex has reached critical mass.  A new age of sea entrepreneurship has arisen. Take your rusty rig and explore a changed Pacific Ocean…

ECHO TEAM is proud to present the official launch of the new social game, CRAZYBOAT. CRAZYBOAT aims to use the Facebook platform for its true strengths: the representation and hosting of existing social dynamics and groups in the rich game world. CRAZYBOAT uses Facebook profile data to give players in-game bonuses for their real-world skills and strengths. In addition, in a first for Facebook games, players share their adventures with groups of up to four – and what happens to one affects all four.

ECHO TEAM has also called upon some of the greatest mid-century American action serials to make a game that both harkens back to the adventures of yore and puts a new face on the idea of exploration, with an emphasis on the environmental impact of what reckless exploration means to the planet at large.

ECHO TEAM has drawn on years of game and narrative experience to make a story that feels more socially immersive than most Facebook games. By breaking down the barriers between the real world and users’ social gaming experience, CRAZYBOAT is in line with the ultimate direction of current game design – the integration of the real world and the virtual world. With real people and their data as playable avatars, CRAZYBOAT is a step in that heady new direction. ECHO TEAM views what they present to you today as a proposal of sort. A demo of what is possible.

Download a PDF of what CRAZYBOAT is all about here.

Then, take a quick tour and check the game out.

—

On a more personal level, I think I did some great artwork for the promo side of it. Check out the posters and videos we made!

Tell your friends!

I’m super jazzed to announce that I just got word that I’ll be co-hosting a panel at South by Southwest this year, with Tim Lillis, from Make Magazine. Indirect Collaboration: Collective Creativity on the Web will be a panel discussing the potential of creative people and their audience coming together to create work that is maybe stronger, or at least more interesting, than either creator-directed or audience-directed work alone. I owe everyone a lot of thanks for your votes and support! See you in Austin!

“This discussion will examine the role of crowd-sourced input on the creative process. We will examine art, comics, design, photography and commerce, and the role that the audience plays in directing their creation. We will make a distinction between passive decision-making (i.e. Threadless) and participatory conception (i.e. 700 Hobos Project.) ”

Plus, if we get to go, I’ll try and host a separate Robots and Monsters meetup, which will be rad. It should be fun! Thanks for your vote!

Or like white, kinda.

In any event, this new site looks pretty sharp, right? It’s all thanks to my partner at Squonk Studios, Matt Glaser, who’s abilities with WordPress are approaching scary wizardry, and who we should probably hunt down, tie up, and throw in a river to see if he floats. In any event, please poke around and contact me to let me know what you think, or if you see any errors, or if you would really like to pay me a huge amount of money to draw something. Especially the last one. 

Suffice to say, with 10 days until my wedding, I probably won’t have time to post much until after November first. But after that, back in the saddle, I promise.

Thanks again, Glaser. I owe you.

I found this site while on a completely random search. It’s not really about comics or animation, and just a little bit about design, but I’d feel deficit if I didn’t pass it on nonetheless. It’s like a handy primer for those of us that don’t read The Bible. Find out where you’ll end up! I’ll see you guys in Circle 6: The Heretics. They have a sweet wet bar.

Warning: The site is a bit hincky in the Flash dept. “Skip” the first page.

Above is another project I had boiling until about an hour ago: a site template for a new restaurant in Chicago called ‘Chaise’ that wanted a style similar to a French wine poster from the 1920s. Above is my first stab at it, which I like alright, but I thought could have been pushed to be really outstanding. Alas, the client has decided not to do a separate site at the last minute, and have the Chaise site be part of their corporate main site. A shame. I thought this one could have been a lot of fun to do.