My cousin submitted a fairly overlooked cartoon for Halloween this past weekend called Pump and Kin. It's pretty funny so I think you should check it out!

Also Nogfish and I are still talking about a Baltimore meetup at the Inner Harbor in the Spring time, in which Newgrounds staff members/site members come and enjoy a delightful trot around the area. So stay on your toes!

I'll post more Closure news next time I post (may be a bit longer than a week) because I'm still catching up with school work.

Hope you had a nice Halloween, can't wait for Thanksgiving!

I am still alive. I have not disappeared yet. Though, I just finished a whole slew of Closure art up for the Independent Games Festival we submitted it to last night. I put in who-knows-how-many hours staying up till 7am on school nights to get stuff done and looking amazing. This is definitely the most ambitious project I have ever taken on and we're not even close to finishing. Glaiel-Gamer and I made ~20 demo levels to show off to the IGF Judges (Same thing we did for PAX but very updated and much closer to what we wanted originally), so I think sometime in January they announce the finalists. Wish us luck!

BTW - Become a fan of Closure on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/page s/Closure/153376509869?ref=ts

If you want to enter any of your games in, it's 100$ (shouldn't be TOO much if you get the game sponsored beforehand for a fair amount of cash). The least you can walk away with is a long list of judge feedback. And the most is a 20k grandprize and exposure either way. The deadline is Nov. 1.
Also, there's a student competition as well. They have like 10 $500 prizes plus a $2500 grand prize in that category - not sure what the entry fee is for this one but I don't believe it to be $100. Deadline for that one is Nov. 15 I think.

We are planning on releasing an IGF demo trailer sometime soon but we are both very far behind in school work so we need to catch up. More Closure related news to come soon (Maybe t-shirts!?).

Speaking of college, still pretty disappointed with the almost all digital art program they have going. I'm making the most of it though. Maybe I'll continue at art school after i graduate from this one. (Can never stop learning!)

So yeah, gotta get back to school work now.

angryyyyfaaaaaic

TLDR: Here is my usual photo dump of the IndieCade trip
--------------------------------
IndieCade was this past weekend in Culver City, CA and I'd say it was a very successful event. It was located in a few different art galleries, with indie game finalists (Closure, Aether, etc) displayed mostly on PC's. Some of them were a bit too artsy for me so I think I'll have to agree with Luis and say that you should definitely use any type of ad or sponsorship money you get from your game to put towards entering it into competitions/festivals. It will get you a lot more exposure.

The awards show was a lot more fancy than I expected, located in Sony Pictures' building. Glaiel-Gamer and I won the Gameplay Innovation award which is very promising for the future of the development of the game!

Basically we all hung out in LA the whole weekend, which is a good break from boring college.

Glaiel, Luis, Bomtoons, and Rog (I-Mockery) are all cool people. Can't wait to hang out with them again at some point.
---------------------------
Art Portal seems like it's developing really well and growing with awesome artists. There are some truly amazing artists on here that have motivated me to go back to the basics of art in general. My classes at school are pretty disappointing in what I've really learned thus far (it's not really an art school), so I'm trying to budget time around classes and digital game art to learn more on my own.

Conceptart.org forums are VERY useful in learning basic and advanced concepts, with both free and premium tutorials and 'online classes', etc. I can't believe I didn't come across them sooner, and I'm just getting used to where everything is, but it is a very good reference to see a large amount of professional sketchbooks and fine art in one place. Some of the threads date way back to 2000, still being posted in, but it's still cool to see all the steps and processes some of them take to get their ideas down in paintings.

A lot of the pieces are generic 'concept art landscapes, people, portraits, still lifes, sci-fi buildings, etc' but there is still a good amount of anatomy and color theory involved, which is what I'm trying to better myself in.

It'd be cool to see more of the amazing artists on here doing more 'step by step' or even more conceptualized tutorials of their processes and super secret techniques here in the Newgrounds Art Forums.

PS. thanks tom for the rigatoni and french toast

all the pax photos (160 something plus a video of a large man falling off the darksiders horse in like 10 seconds) i took here on photobucket

So yea I stayed at glaiel's apartment to go to pax with him and got sick too. the plane rides home sucked. But the weekend was pretty crazy. Had to walk 2 miles to his place after getting off the bus then stay up really really late every night doing random stuff like working on finishing the demo, fixing bugs, and playing games with he, derek yu (tigsource), and andy hull (storyfort). one night we went to a grill with all the pax10 and indie developers we saw there that day and played pool, too. glaiel and i crushed derek and andy.

the pax 10 booth went really well too, especially at Closure's kiosk. someone was always playing and someone else was always watching which is a huge difference from showing the flash game off at E3, where the big named developers couldn't care less about the indiecade booth (see Example 1: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_
index.php?story=25158). g4 people stopped by to play and hopefully there will be coverage on that in the next few days. we got awesome positive feedback. unfortunately some feedback was too positive and didn't offer anything constructive but it was awesome nonetheless! (thanks to everyone who wrote something!)

we were basically there and at the behemoth booth right next door the entire weekend. not really time to walk around, afraid of missing any sort of media or cameras coming around. glaiel, tom and i walked over to scribblenauts to try to see it and play it a few times but that's about it for me. the sumo sacs were indeed helpful resting tools but i could have used a regular chair at times.

besides all the indie developers i met, i also met a couple people i have known online for awhile: monkokio and thejermz. monkokio actually gave us a ride home the last day and woke up extremely early to give me a ride to the airport this morning which was nice of him.

and I met other newgrounders as well: mexifry, faux, fluffkomix, and morichax (and dan paladin, didn't talk to him that much though as he looked very busy drawing for people). nathan was there filming for his NG documentary and he was nice enough to get some footage of Closure. he's also a really cool guy i talked to for quite a bit.

everyone i met that day was really really cool so no newgrounds drama ensued

it was all just so awesome, i'd say it was better than E3 from the amount that was going on; and the fact that at PAX, people come to play new games, not just watch new trailers and do executive and corporate business.

thanks tom for all the merchandise i bought from the behemoth booth too!

ps. i think writing this thing was way more than i had to do in the first place so i didn't link to anyone's names

pss. fan art to me of my first game ever from derek:

So recently I have been going down the path of game art. Here are some updates of things.

After a couple months of the game just sitting around on PiGPEN's computer, he finally submitted Lastman, a very challenging platformer. It's meant to be hard with all those fun glitches that old NES titles had. You can download the boxart wallpaper I made for it here.

I've also recently started concept art for Closure. You can find a wallpaper of a variety of things I tried, jumbled onto one drawing here. It's wallpaper-sized as well. The first levels, as you can see are going to be factory levels. That art isn't in-game graphics. Those will come later. Glaiel and I also did an interview for Gametopius.com that you can read here if you're interested.

Hmm what else? I guess you can check out my new portfolio site, jonschubbe.com. It's not completely finished but it's getting there.

Oh and E3 was fun. I got pics with jmtb02, Dan of Armor Games, and Olivia and Morgan from G4.

Alright everyone so Glaiel submitted our game, Closure (the flash version) to IndieCade awhile back, and it was accepted! Hooray! IndieCade is a company that cares for Indie Game developers and showcases select games at different events and expos. This week, I will be at E3 for IndieCade, demo-ing Closure to whoever walks by the IndieCade 'booth' (more like big huge open area with huge computer monitors). I'll be showing off the Flash version as well as trying to advertise the new one. Unfortunately my dear friend Tyler can't make it, but since I've been in LA for about a week interning with my uncle for some animation stuff, it's the perfect oppurtunity! I'm learning Maya and After Effects at my uncle's company, so I'm switching gears back to video games for the time being. I already went to set up a bit at the convention center where E3 is located and it looks awesome so far. There was construction going on so no pictures were able to be taken, but I will be sure to snap a few later on.

I have a website that is in the works that you can all gawk at. (Very simple, somewhat artsy, gets the point across as a portfolio). http://www.whitneystudios.com/jon It will eventually be www.jonschubbe.com (how original huh). This is just part of the design. Hopefully it will be done in a timely manner because I have this website on my business cards :X . I also have a blog and twitter you guys should follow: Blog+ Twitter. Yes, I know twitter sucks, I can't get graphics to load on it correctly, but I only made it for networking so I can hopefully make it through college and the economy with business.

Also, make sure to keep checking up on the Closure Blog. There are a lot of thought processes that go into the making of a game, and we are putting what comes out of our brain straight onto there (except for the extraneous juices).

And don't forget, don't tune into G4 or my identity might possibly be revealed to Newgrounds.

PS. jmtb02 is gonna stop by to give me a high five. i haven't told him yet though
PSS. i forgot to get the high five but a handshake sufficed

So blogs are becoming far more popular recently than I realized, especially amongst game developers. It seems as though more and more professionals want to see your developmental processes and how you worked through a few projects, rather than seeing your top 5 finished products straight up, in all their glory.

Soooooo...

Closure Blog

There is also a link to our 'Log' where Glaiel will post coding updates and screenshots with the engine and I will post concept art. It will really take off when we get further down the road this summer. It also has a link to the old one. School is swamping me right now.

In other news...I made a blog too! http://jonschubbe.blogspot.com. I will eventually buy out another domain and redirect my old 'starogre.com' site to it and start becoming more professional to start making a living.

Well this is for those of you who care:

STEPMANIA

dragonforce will give me carpel tunnel soon
edit: turn up volume, low quality sound

hardest
revolution deathsquad grade C

hard (WAY harder than the whimpy easy guitar hero version)
through the fire and flames grade B

easy
fury of the storm grade B

PS. this is why i never submit anything

I swear, I think i'm going to change the spelling of my name one day to at least get people to say it right, *edit* because it doesn't look like it would sound to most people. (I blame the spelling, not the people)

"Jon Schubbe"

Does 'Schubbe' look like it would sound like 'Shoo-bee', 'Shoob', or 'Shub'? In fact, it doesn't matter. If there is more than one pronunciation brought up, that is at least one too many.

I bring it up because Glaiel showed me this video at ByteJacker:

http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/020 22009

It features Closure and a few other games. I think Closure starts around 1:40 if you want to skip to it. Make sure to check it out! *edit* And make sure you vote 'Closure' for Indie Game of the week to the right of the page! (I don't know what that does but it sounds like a good idea)

It's awesome and all, but my last name is of German origin, I believe, and hard to read/say correctly. Oh well.

PS. It's pronounced Shoo-bee not Shoob.

PSS. Shoob is a pretty badass name, too though...