My Imagination Is Power

Of course the details of the story are wrong, it's a theme for the Halo 3 360, not the Special Edition of the game.

But my Halo 3 360 theme got 550+ Diggs.

In similar news, my previous Halo 3 Trilogy theme overtook the Viva Pinata theme to become the 5th most popular theme on DashboardThemes.com

For Halo 2, most of the magazines were paintings proved by Bungie. This time around, I guess screenshots of in-game models look good enough.

I know I just posted this, but Kotaku got a hold of higher rez images, and had some nice things to say.

Looks like a shot I took has made the cover of next month's EGM magazine. The middle image (the yellow/mint spartan) was a cutout I captured from the game. Apparently there's something like 16 pages of Halo 3 screenshots and articles, using quite a few of the shots I did during my last crunch a few weeks ago.

Hey, look at that! Someone was inspired to do a custom Xbox 360 faceplate based on one of the top story icons I had created:

Ordering a Custom Painted Pavel Dolgov Faceplate

But it's cool to make the list anyway.

Apparently, when porting Bungie's in-house tools into a public map editor for the launch of Halo 2 Vista, they forgot to take out some of the in-house joke images that were associated with it.

It has come to our attention that an unfortunate, obscure content error which includes partial nudity was included in our initial production of "Halo 2" for Windows Vista. As such, we have updated the initial game packaging at retailers with a label, so customers are aware before purchasing the game. Additionally, we've developed an online update which can be downloaded from www.halo2.com to remove the content.

The error image can be seen here.

I just finished getting these shots together Wednesday, and they were released today for the launch of the Halo 3 beta. The turnaround time is amazing. What's even more amazing is the shots I worked on a few weeks ago won't come out for a bit longer. But they're even better.

I am, once again, headed back to Bungie as a Graphic Design contractor. I start tomorrow. It was quite an odd series of events that led up to my being asked back. First the new Bungie.net was launched, and I thought to myself how much more fun it would be to design graphics for, and I was a bit disappointed I wasn't going to be creating new backgrounds and pictures for it. The same day I was talking with Shishka about when the current graphic design contractors term would be up. We figured it was soon, so I dropped an email to my S&T rep. The very next day, Sketch IMed me, asking what I was up to, and if I would like to come back. As far as I know the S&T guy hadn't even read my email yet.

So while none of the events actually effected me being asked, but it was odd.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Check it out:

Falls ihr euch schon immer einmal gefragt habt, wo die vielen Bilder, Wallpaper und Designs rund um Bungie und verschiedene Halo-Produkte herkommen, dann haben wir hier die Antwort für euch.

Der Vertragsmitarbeiter von Bungie, Andrew G. Davis, hat einen Großteil der euch bekannten Grafiken erstellt, wie ihr beim Surfen auf seiner Homepage schnell neidvoll feststellen werdet. Um es kurz zu machen, listen wir hier einfach mal die Dinge auf, an denen er für Bungie bislang gearbeitet hat:

Translated:

If you always asked it, where the many pictures, barrier PAPERs and Designs around Bungie and different halo products to come approximately, then we have here the answer for you.

The contract coworker of Bungie, Andrew G. Davis, has a majority you admitted diagrams provided, how will fast enviously determine it with the Surfen on his homepage. In order to make it short, we list here simply times the things, on which he worked for Bungie so far.

I had done this sketch and drawing for the Don Wan (aka Kari) last year while I was working for Bungie. It's based on her Spartan colors and icon she used while playing Halo 2. I just spent a little while on it, I figured she'd like it as an online avatar or even just a desktop image.

I showed it to my manager and his basically said scrap the spinner, we're going with this. A few days later we had a sample. It was pretty cool going from my quick concept to having a solid keychain in my hand so fast.

And now it's on the company store at $6 a pop.

Update: Looks like the people over at Joystiq.com and Kotaku are enjoying it.

Alright, now, I can almost understand fanfic. It's just like someone tracing over their favorite drawing, or doing sketches based on their favorite comic. Practice and experience doing something they like to do. But what exactly is the point of doing fanfic based on the Bungie.net forums and employees? A sample:

The Underground is one of 10 largest forums at bungie, like the other 9 it has one big meeting room. The meeting room is designed circular to increase the amount of thread doors in one area.

Yoozel morphed in, right in front of the front door. The was a huge crowd surrounding something in the middle of the room. Thinking it was just another spamer, Yoozel made his way to the center and saw a horrific sight, there lay the dead body of Twinge...

At least it's not slash.

Looks like I'll be in a job until April 2006 this time. Oh, and I got a 21¢ raise! Haha! I'm rollin in it now! Heck, just knowing I'll have something after 3 months is 100% better than before.

Looks like some of my work has made it into a Microsoft Case Study on Bungie.net. MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Bungie.net Technical Case Study. Though it's pretty much just touting .Net, it's still cool to see some graphics I did stuck in there.

Or does he?

Most Innovative Design: Bungie.net

"If you want to see the future of online game integration with a Website, www.Bungie.net easily takes the cake."

It's pretty cool to be a part of that. Hopefully I can keep it going.

I've been asked to do some of the Bungie frontpage news pictures these last couple weeks. They turned out suprisingly well, and I got some good response about them. The first occurances are between 12/3/04 and 12/9/04.

First is a confused grunt for Frankie's Weekly What's Update.

Next I did an aged grunt for an article on Geezer Gamers.

And by far everyone's favorite. The Halo Humpday Challenge. (He's just bending over to pick up ammo. Promise.)