Zipper the Cat: My team's entry for Indie Speed Run 3.0

If you've only been following me through this site, you might not know that I've recently been teaming up with Benjamin Hanken to make our own video games under the banner of Team Tugboat. Ben writes the code, I do the art, and we put our heads together for the overall design and gameplay. It's a great partnership!

Our latest project came out of the Indie Speed Run even, where we were randomly assigned a theme (Arrogance) and an element (Zipper) and then challenged to make a game out of them in under 48 hours.

The 48-hour version of the game was missing a couple of key features, so put in a couple extra hours later on, and you can play the resulting "director's cut" in any desktop web browser (keyboard required) at http://teamtugboat.com.

Here's what it looks like...



...and here are the controls:

Left/Right: Move
Up: Jump/Grab Curtain
Down: Drop from Furniture
Spacebar: Kick Objects

Escape: Pause
Mouse Click: Start/Restart Game

Bug Wizard

Character portrait for a wizard I made up the other day for a role-playing game.

His name is Mike, and the colony of bees he carries on his back is possessed by his familiar daemon, T'odd. What are they building in there??

I understand the rules will be pretty loose for this game, so in advance of a proper character sheet I wrote this list of his possible abilities.

• Lift objects up to forty times his weight, put them in a pile, and live in it. 
• Build sophisticated tools and structures out of mud and his own saliva. 
• Produce hauntingly beautiful music from his armpits. 
• Eat, and live off, practically any organic substance—including poisons designed specifically to kill him. 
• Generally SUPER hard to kill. The trick is to maneuver him between two fingernails and then squeeze like the dickens. Or, put him in a trash bag for two weeks so he suffocates. 
• Enchanted fly-wing robe makes the most annoying sound imaginable, right in your goddamn ear. Also it lets him fly. 
• Walk on water, walk up walls, squeeze through cracks. Gets into your food somehow, even if it's in a sealed jar. 
• Emit a pheromone cloud that, when inhaled, perfectly communicates a specific message, thought, or feeling. 
• Mind control, but only if he can trick you into swallowing the pungent "royal jelly" that he horks up from a gland in his throat. 
• Other excretions include a nutritious honey, silk, slime, venom, and an overwhelmingly rank substance known to grasshopper enthusiasts as "tobacco juice". He also smokes real tobacco, so his breath is generally pretty bad. 
• Shrink down every night and sleep in a cozy matchbox full of fluff.

Mike was born human but he's metamorphosized many times since then, both for fun and for profit. The first time was the hardest; he didn't have any spinnerets back then, so he had to get his friends to help out with the cocoon. He's much better at it now, but his skeleton is always pretty floppy for a day or so afterwards.

Mike's favorite food is potato chips — and yes, he can make his butt glow.

Evil Apples promo images

I've been meaning to update this website now that I'm a full-time freelancer, but I've been kept busy by, among other things, my fantastic working relationship with Evil Studios, creators of the mobile game Evil Apples.

Every time they release a new deck for the game, I make an image card which they use to promote it. Here's all ten of the promo images that I've made so far, as they appeared in the Evil Apples mobile app. It's free, so make sure to grab it and invite me for a game!

Now available for contracts and commissions!

Hire me!

For the first time in about ten years, I'm now working full-time as an illustrator/designer!

Please contact me with all kinds of projects, including watercolor/ink and digital illustrations, comics, storyboards, animation, interactive design, and anything else you think I might be able to help with! 

Flat and hourly rates available by request.

pete@doesstuff.com

Downtown Blue

A watercolor sketch for my kid sister's birthday. Happy birthday, Molly!