The moving frenzy continues. From packing and sending to frantic house searching and familiarizing with everything strange.
But in order to lighten up the tone from last blogpost’s “moving sucks”-statement to something positive, we can give you a little peak of Berlin on our second Saturday afternoon here:
This is the street we live on. A slight shock after the pristine Frankfurt, but I prefer the liveliness here.
What is a post about Berlin, if it doesn’t contain graffiti of some kind?
This city has an endless amount of dogs, mostly running around without a leash, minding their business, while the owners are walking a hundred meters behind. The mutual trust between these dogs and the people is impressive.
Meet Peter. We’re lunching in a hipster cafe with him, while the conversation takes a plunge into goals, expectations and affirmations that the playlist playing on the background is indeed surprisingly awesome.
And lastly a sneak peak into our temporarily-teeny-tiny workspace and the pages that I’m working on..
And with that, I wish everybody a great week, and see you next Monday :)
Moving sucks. It sucks a big time, but there comes a time in everyone’s life that you just cannot avoid it any longer – and ‘hoy that time has happened to us! Silver and Kaija have now ended their four-year stay in Frankfurt, Germany and moved to Berlin to work on mobile and tablet games!
For five days and five nights we’ve packed, organized and packed some more until our entire life had been reduced to carton boxes and bubble wraps – until all that was left was the surreal feeling of owning so many things that I’ve totally forgotten about.
I hate moving, not because I’m not excited to see a new part of the world, but because I hate the hassle of packing away all my precious artifacts, for I am a creature of habit and comfort, and my house is my safe place, and it will take a while to get it all re-organized.
When it comes to packing away our precious’, I will especially miss our books. We have a lot of books from novels, to comics, to art books. We have so many books we could fill a small library and they are all delightful and special in their own ways. My only regret is that I can’t give them as much attention as I want to, and many of those books I’ve only read once.
And so, we are now in a state of anxiety and excitement as we’re starting new adventures and a search for a new apartment that will fill that hole that our previous apartment has left behind. Thank you Frankfurt for having us, you were extremely convenient, clean, and well maintained and I hope you never change.
For those of you concerned if this will affect the publication of Run Freak Run at all, let me assure you that we’ve prepared well and RFR will continue coming out page-by-page every Monday! So please keep on reading, and have a wonderful Monday! :)
Fun fact: For the last six years Silver has acted as my personal hairdresser. The story that broke the camel’s back and led to this arrangement includes a really bad haircut and me walking out of the hairdressers fuming, with vengeance in my heart, and vigorously holding back tears. Since then I’ve had stress free hair cutting sessions resulting in bobs, pixie cuts, halfies and mohawks to name a few.
Silver’s done a fantastic job sculpting my hair (as he calls it) but for two of those six years his duties had been reduced to the monotony of shaving my head bald. Well, no more. I started growing my hair out, and Silver’s been tweaking it as it grows. He seems happy again.
Now, we both might have tendencies towards certain extremes, but I imagined growing long hair from a stubble would be a several year long trial of patience. Not that I minded that, but this plan did lack that touch of weirdness that I’ve been used to when it comes to my head.
However, dull plans sometimes get a sudden twist of inspiration. One day you might be sitting, minding your business while leisurely looking through a folder of reference pictures. You might see a photo you like, and say: “Let’s do this to my hair when it gets long enough.” and you might get an answer from the desk opposite of yours: “Let’s do it now”. And end up having half your head shaved within the next ten minutes. Again.
Be it games, music, or industrial design – you can find some pretty innovative and quirky experiences there. So quirky they couldn’t possibly succeed in the normal market.
You never know what to find there. It’s quite exciting.
You also never know when, and if you’ll even receive the project you funded. Because of the nature of Kickstarter, some projects get delayed, run out of money, and fail. So you can imagine our happy delight when the postman delivered the succesfully funded Kisa – Pyropet candle by its designers Thorunn Arnadottir and Dan Koval.
Originally Kisa was the kind of project me and Kaija go coco over; funny, cute and absolutely morbid. I mean, who’d want to burn a cat? I guess I do.
So check out this charming little piece of design geniosity, and if you want to get your own little flaming cat, then head over to Pyropet’s website!
From package design to the shape of the candle and it’s interior skeleton – the product is full of awesome.
Lighting it, is like lighting any other candle. No prior training in handling candles is required.
And so, the proud kitten starts to melt away.
It takes quite a bit of burning until the skeleton starts to fully reveal itself, but the sight is worth it.
Take heed, the candle does spill a lot. A LOT.
Kisa Pyropet – Your alternative to burning real cats.
So – I promised myself I’d put this project aside AND NOT TOUCH IT,for I have other projects that ought to come first – but who am I to fight inspiration when it hits me. So here we are with a new update to The Legend of the Super Turtle King and the Prince of Pandorea.
For this update, I made a new animated illustration that takes the journey onward another step. This time, our heroes, the Prince and his guide come face to face with the Super Turtle King. I also updated the graphic design and color grading of the first image, to bring cohesion between the two images. I also changed the project name from King of Pandorea to a Prince of Pandorea. There was too many kings in the name.
Next step for me is to figure out the outcome of this meeting with a super kick-ass story reversal that’ll start something wonderful and magical. I’m not going to promise you guys that this project will gain any footing, but for what ever it is, or becomes, I’ll keep you updated and share the progress as I go forward.
“Long time ago, in a far away Kingdom there was a Prince in exile.”
“… The legend said, the Prince could only reclaim his throne from his evil uncle, with the teachings of the Super Turtle King – guardian of the long lost secret.”
Love,
Silver
Tweet, tweet me your genius ideas for the next step, so I can steal them, and not do any work myself @runfreakrun !
I’ve been wanting to share these games for a while.
Like books, I’m a big fan of games, and I’ve been a gamer since I was something like five years old. I used to lock myself inside to play Mario, while my parents tried to get me to go outside. No luck there, and I’m not much different today. I liked games so much that I even ended up working in the games industry. But, I’ve liked games so much that it’s become harder and harder for them to impress me, just because I’ve played them so much.
So, imagine my delight when I got my hands on these two new games: Child of Light and Broforce. Both very unique games, both very different, both extremely interesting. Lately I’ve been super impressed and enticed by Indie games, and while Child of Light is not technically an indie, it still has that spirit of experimentation and bravery in it.
Child of Light
Child of Light was something I really looked forward to. Mystical world? Check. Magic? Check? RPG gameplay? Triple check. It’s a game full of wonderful magic in a grim fairytale meets Final Fantasy kind of a way. I’m constantly surprised by the beauty of the art; it’s got this watercolor paintingesque vibe to it with a very handcrafted feel. The world has a naive marvel to it that’s sometimes a tad silly – only to show that this game doesn’t take itself too seriously, a perk not seen in modern games often enough.
The gameplay was solid and deep enough to keep me interested while I leveled through it, but I would already recommend it to anyone because of the stellar art. Definitely a keeper for JRPG fans and people who like magic.
Speaking of not taking itself serious, Broforce is the master of it. Broforce is about fun, fun and more fun. It’s about shooting through everything in the skins of famous pop-culture action heroes such Brombo, Brobocop, and even Bronan, all the while spreading freedom and defeating terrorists. Really, the game has no point storywise, but its one of those games that doesn’t even need a one. I’m a big fan of retro games, pixel art, irony and sarcasm and it’s all here in Broforce. It’s not a particularly long game, as it’s still under development, but you can get the early access from Steam and play a solid few hours.
If you like fun gameplay, then Broforce is for you.
If you don’t like Broforce, then you hate freedom.
Silver always says that coffee is the best thing in the world. Right after me, that is.
Coffee marks one of the highlights of his afternoons, and allegedly when that perfect cup of coffee is made by me, it makes it taste that much better. And so, me brewing the coffee has formed into a kind of daily tradition. By default, that also makes me the coffee master at our house, and I don’t take the title lightly.
I like the thought of perfecting that cup of coffee and experimenting with different tastes and brewing methods instead of doing it the easy way – straight from a box. I simply like the ritual of buying your own beans, grinding them and brewing. There’s a kind of magic in that process.
The good news is: it’s not a hard skill to learn. You just need some basic equipment and a place to get coffee beans and you’re good to go. As a fairly cheap first investment I’d recommend a burr grinder and a french press. And lets not forget the beans. We buy them in the greatest smelling coffee shop here in Frankfurt. The fragrance in there is so amazing, that it causes me to fantasize of diving into a pool of coffee beans and swim in them à la Skrooge McDuck.
Apart from loving the fragrance, I myself am not a coffee drinker. I love drinking tea the most, but through experimentation with Silver’s coffee even I have found certain types of coffee that taste delicious to me. Blue Mountain beans form India are to die for and Ethiopian Sidamo comes as a good second. Both of these are high on Silver’s list too, although he is more open minded and probably would list many more varieties that he loves.
Now, learning about different beans has been a long hit and miss process, and even now I’m not too much wiser that when we started. But I feel I am past the point where I randomly pick beans just to see how they differ from the last batch we bought. I wanted to do some information digging to get a better understanding of the dozens of choices that are out there. Eventually, I feel I pieced together a comprehensive enough picture of some basic information and I’d like to share it with you in a form of an infographic.
Maybe it’ll give a good starting point to other thirsty information seekers out there. See what I did there? ;)
And now a demonstration from the Coffee Brigand himself:
“The coffee brigand strikes again!”
“Press it!”
“Pour it!”
“Stirr in honey!”
“Drink it and love it!”
Smiles,
Kaija
Tell me all about your coffee dreams @kaijarudkiewicz or comment below!
Actually, I got too many ideas, for ideas are nothing but vague statements in out of context until they’re put to a working order and presented the right way. And that takes time that I just can’t always find.
Yet still, equipped with a fledgling idea of a world named Pandorea – a world that has a legend of a giant Super Turtle King and young hero, maybe a prince on his personal quest – I painted this concept image.
After that I animated the camera panning and cape movement, and added a logo for a trailer-like feeling. I’ve been curious to explore more storytelling techniques for concept art and this ended up as a great experience. I think it has a lot of potential for production use and I’m quite excited to see where I can take in the future.
Concept art and games are always pushing for a more “cinematic” quality, but this far it only seems to apply to lens flares and aspect ratios. What I think we should push more is the storytelling part of movies, but that’s a whole different battle, best fought another day.
Back to the Super Turtle King. I think I could easily imagine more scenes, characters and adventures for this world, but I’m too afraid of going deeper down the rabbit-hole, for I have other projects to finish and I don’t want to overcrowd my brain. It wouldn’t be good for what I’m working on already, and it wouldn’t be good for the Super Turtle King either.
And so, maybe one day I’ll return to Pandorea for a proper exploration, equipped with the amount of time it needs to flourish and grow, and make something out of it. But until then I’ll let it sleep with the hope that the Super Turtle King will still be there when I return.
And if not, then I guess I’ll just have to come up with a new idea.
A better idea.
Love,
Silver tweet tweet me your ideas so I can steal them!@runfreakrun
Last month we visited Amsterdam. I’m not big on travelling, which seems to set me apart from the general consensus about travelling being inherently good for you, but I can enjoy a weekend trip here and there and even I, the malcontent traveller, have a list of places I want to see. Amsterdam was certainly on that list and this was our second trip there.
Our first trip was about two and a half years ago, when Silver organized it along with Amanda Palmer concert tickets as my birthday gift. Same as this time, we kept it short, couple of days of walking around and trying to visit some of the “must see” sights of the city.
This time we tackled the city with no particular plan in mind, having done the mandatory museum rounds on our first visit. This meant a full day of wandering around with nothing but Silver’s sense of direction to guide us and a plan to make some gifs instead of photos driving us.This plan ended up having a happy ending, thankfully, as you can probably figure from the flurry of movement below.
It takes a lot longer to edit gifs, so they won’t replace our photos anytime soon, but it’s a fun stunt to pull every once in a while!
I feel like our trip got published in the Daily Prophet.
Today was one of those nice Saturday’s when we did nothing but draw, write, and take photographs of pages that are coming up in the near future. While these pages are not released yet, they are spoiler free and without dialogue. If you are interested of purchasing this, or any other RFR page then hit us up on the store or get in touch with us.
So, enjoy these photos of Kaija drawing, and click to enlarge for some detail linework. See you on Monday for the next page update!
