Developer Diary: Conceptually Speaking
03 December 2002

Hello fellow readers,

Well work continues to strive along slowly but surely, most recently, I've been working on character concepts with Zilla Bailey, which has been a bit of fun.

This last week we have been trying to finalise the 'look' for the two main characters Max and Alexis,. Looking back to the initial designs I had drawn up and comparing them to more recent work, shows the art has improved drastically. I cannot wait to do more, there are some really exciting characters in Flummaxed, not to mention hilarious. Creating these character concepts is going to really strengthen the story and conversations also. When I am designing one of the characters I really want to know what he/she/it is about, so a lot of really stupid and wacky ideas come flowing through the brain, you start to think of funny conversations Max could have with the character and 'what their story is'.

Here is sample art of Max, of course this is subject to change, but the general feel of the character is all there. The art itself was done in Adobe Illustrator, mainly because its quick and very easy to change the colours.

Backgrounds are coming along slowly, but I am hopeful things will speed up. It's pretty difficult to manage study and work and Flummaxed all at the same time, and unfortunately we don't have a very big crew of artists so naturally things are going to be slow. It is getting exciting though, we are close to finishing a fair portion of the backgrounds and the art is improving each time. Communication has also strengthened between our artists and the whole team in general through our Forum, its really taken off and has provided instant feedback to art and other Flummaxed related comments we have for one another, and of course everyone can put there 2 cents in.. In fact my servers' traffic tripled because of the forum use.

Anyway, that's it from me for now..
I look forward to sharing some more eye candy with you all soon. :)

-Martin Abel
Lead Angry Pants

..I mean artist.. Apparently