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Thursday, January 29, 2009 Robot Battle Force GO! - Quick "Beta" Listening to: Michael Jackson - Rock My World  Click to add to Facebook Hey everyone! I'm going to try a server load test right now to see how many people can sit and play the game before the thing explodes on me. Just click the image above to install the application. Please send out to your friends and whatnot. There will be broken images until the official release on Sunday/Monday. I will also be resetting all stats then. Thanks! Link: Install Robot Battle Force GO! to Facebook posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 8:48 AM Permalink | | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Teaser: Robot Battle Force GO! Listening to: Michael Jackson - Remember the Time 
You are looking at the Garage portion of my new Facebook game: Robot Battle Force GO! I'm pretty excited about it. When I was programming it, I was just going to have a lot of features be "part of the next installment when I learn more PHP and MySQL"... but something within just drove me to complete it as needed. Some cool features from the game: That really ugly half wooden/half crap robot is my robot. When you hire new robot pilots, those new pieces are accurately depicted in the Garage. So when you level up to the cooler robot pieces like those from the Spiked Armor series or Death series, you will see it on your robot. There are individual pilot portraits for every piece. Those question marks are just ones I have yet to illustrate. You can win prizes. The first month will net the 1st place person on the leaderboards with a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. 2nd place will get a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate. I plan on releasing the game this coming Monday, so if you're on my Facebook friends list, you're going to be getting an invite.
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 12:47 PM Permalink | | Tuesday, January 27, 2009 A humerous non-alcoholic story. Listening to: Michael Jackson - Leave Me Alone I recently read a funny story about police busting up a teenage drinking party, forcing dozens of those teenagers to take breathalyzer tests. It's funny because they had red plastic cups. Wait, no, that's not the funny part. Link: MSNBC News posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 3:04 PM Permalink | | A few Saber Duel mentions... Listening to: Nothing at the moment. Just checked out some of my stat tracking for the blog and noticed a few blogs linking to the Saber Duel game I made for the visually impaired gamers out there. I'd just like to tip my hat to those bloggers and I do hope to continue to create some more games that take advantage of that game mechanic. Thanks everyone! Blogs of Note
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:21 AM Permalink| | Monday, January 26, 2009 Bubbilicious by Rex the Dog Listening to:Nothing. Bubblicious from Rex The Dog on Vimeo. I didn't make this. I wish I did. Thanks to the Drawn! Blogfor the post! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 11:30 AM Permalink| | Jolly Green Giant = Terrifying Listening to:Nothing. No wonder children hate eating vegetables. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:46 AM Permalink| | Friday, January 23, 2009 I saw this ad on Facebook... Listening to:WALL·E Original Soundtrack 
So, I saw this ad on Facebook today. I laughed. Before anyone goes and points their finger and says, "Hey, I thought you didn't spend time on social networks you hypocrite," it's because I haveto be on Facebook. During my free time I'm developing a new game... a new FACEBOOK GAME. To be completely honest, if you have a rudimentary hold of PHP and look at the examples provided throughout the Facebook Application demos, you can put up somethingin a relatively short amount of time. Here's to the birth of Robot Battle Force GO!! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 12:17 PM Permalink| | Gundam Epyon with Bean Sword Listening to:Nothing. 
I was surfing eBay to find listings on things that I could sell when I came across this listing for a Gundam Wing Epyon. It was in mint condition and included both the Heat Rod and the Bean Sword. I was pretty sure they meant BeamSword, but realized that Bean Sword actually makes a lot more sense. What the aitch is a BeamSword? Seriously. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:23 AM Permalink| | Thursday, January 22, 2009 Saber Duel - Flash Version Listneing to:Straight No Chaser - Live Your Life and Flo With Whatever You Like 
So the Flash version of Saber Duel has been released. I give many thanks to a fellow game developer, Kaolin Fire, for bringing the game I designed to the Flash world. It's now playable by those without PCs. I'm not sure if his real surname is actually Fire, but it would sure be cool if it were. Play:Saber Duel(Flash Version) Original Version:Saber Duel(PC Download) posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 1:30 PM Permalink| | Wednesday, January 21, 2009 One Process - Vectors Listening to:Fall Out Boy - I Don't Care I spent some time working on a piece for an upcoming issue of Yo! Youth Outlookmagazine. I applied one of my techniques I use to do vector images based off of human reference. I'll admit that it's just an over glorified version of tracing. It does, however, require a smidgen of talent with a tablet. Anyway, the process is below in beautiful colored glory. I was having trouble deciding which final colored versions to go with. Hopefully this provides just another way to approach illustration for your projects!     
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 11:01 PM Permalink| | Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Geek Squad VW Bug Listening to:Notorious B.I.G. - One More Chance 
This is a little art piece that I'm working on for a client that's due this week. They're running some ad campaign that compares their insurance services to that of Best Buy's Geek Squad. I don't come up with the ideas, I just draw and color them. In other news, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Facebookgames and applications. I think I'm going to start spending my time focusing on learning PHP. I'm slowly working on a prototype of my Gashapon / Capsule Toygame that involves collecting, trading and a lot of my artwork. We'll see how that pans out in the near future. If it works well, I may very well implement the Facebook API and try to turn it into the next, I dunno, Mob Wars or something. Oh, how sweet that would be. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 10:38 PM Permalink| | Piping Hot - USB Lunch Warmer Spilled In My Backpack:Ginger. 
This fancy USB lunchbag allows you to warm up your lunch from the comfort of your own desk! It's pretty awesome if you happen to always have a line to the microwave in your office. It's also particularly nice if you sit at home all day and your chair is a tiny freezer that is filled with mouth watering Hot Pockets. The picture itself is rather humorous as it looks like the man's food is now producing cumulus clouds or possibly on the brink of setting itself on fire. Check out the product pagefor more info. Thanks Tokyo Mango! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 1:12 PM Permalink| | Street Fighter - Interactive YouTube?! Want to be listening to:Animal Crossingmusic. What the aitch is going on here? This YouTube video is interactive! You're actually supposed to click on the different buttons as they appear. When you click on them, you'll be brought to a different page with a different corresponding video clip. It's supposed to happen. Anyway, that's pretty freakin' swanky and just in time for continued Street Fighter IVanticipation! Thanks Kotaku! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:37 AM Permalink| | Monday, January 19, 2009 RealFlight R/C - I crash. Listening to:"It'd be good for a subscription." This past weekend I went to a hobby store in town with Josie. They had this computer setup with this program called RealFlight. It's basically this software that simulates actual RC plane and helicopter flying. Since I don't have the money (or interest) to actually invest in this real life, physical hobby of epic scaled proportions, I was thrilled to be able to try my hand at it in a virtual setting. The most impressive portion of this whole thing was that it included this crazy RC controller that looked like the real thing. So this experience brought me one step closer to the RC Hobby experience. After crashing a RC helicopter three times and a biplane two times, an 11 year old child stepped in between me and the game and started to play. He proceeded to fly the plane perfectly, doing a barrel rolland landing like it was nothing. My manhood quickly shrank as if I were in the pool. I will admit, however, that it was fun. I'll see if I can fake my XBOX360 controller to do this... or, you know, boot up an old Windows 95 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. 
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 4:17 PM Permalink| | New Kagami Statue - Lucky Star Listening to:"Character class portability." 
So there's some photos of some new Lucky Starnon-scale statues making their way around the internets. I'm pretty excited for the Kagami one (as clearly pictured above). I'm not sure where I'd ever put it if I purchased it, but I'm sure I would find a place for it. If you haven't checked out the anime yet and have an affinity for fun references to otaku culture, pointless anime chatter and a fun rendition of "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" at the end of episode 5, Lucky Staris definitely something worth checking out. Thanks to TomoPopfor the news update! RSS is a beautiful thing. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 3:11 PM Permalink| | Sunday, January 18, 2009 Pomelo Faces! Watching:Naruto The Movie 2: Legend of the Stone of Gelel 
This weekend was basically filled with grocery shopping. Amongst the many purchases, a bag of pomelos were bought. I decided to give them faces because I had a few hours of free time to myself. While moving between working on comics and watching Naruto The Movie 2: Legend of the Stone of Gelel, I noticed that Master Haido (a character in the film) looks a lot like Robin Williams. Now, I understand that I have this "thing" where people look like other people to me all the time. This is often to the mass disagreement of everyone around me. However, I feel that this side by side comparison will prove me somewhat sane or at least have people confirm when I ask, "yaddidamean?" 
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 6:54 PM Permalink| | Friday, January 16, 2009 Densha de CRAZY PERSON. Listening to:People eating lunch. 
Nothing brings people together on a train like a crazy person talking about white supremacy! Now that's a segway to a new story if I'veever heard one... The other day, on the train, there was some strange commotion happening from behind me. I was hearing some woman complaining. The thing is that the volume and intensity of her voice did not faithfully match the context of her words. She should have been angrier, more livid and flailing body parts. The best analogy would be opening your eyes as wide as you can when you're really tired. All you're really doing when that happens is just raising your eyebrows really high, but your eyes are still half closed. Anyway, the context of her words. The woman was talking about the strangest things. At first, she said, "You don't have to be white to be a white supremacist." She was Mexican. So, because of that, I automatically assumed she was talking about herself. Then she says, "You can't be like that. We're in the [swear words] bay area. There's colored people, black people, Asian people, islander people... I have an Asian tattoo on my back." She kept yelling real softly (or talking sort of loud, whatever) and got escorted off the train at the next stop. All of that is irrelevant. The part that stuck in my mind was the "Asian tattoo" part. Surely she meant she had a Chinese character on her back or maybe a Japanese phrase. However, since I didn't check, I ultimately gave her the benefit of the doubt and believed that she did indeed have "an Asian tattoo" on her back. Thus the comic was born. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 1:24 PM Permalink| | New Mashup - Because of the Grapevine Listening to:That Guy Alex - Because of the Grapevine  This is my latest mashup of Ne-Yo's "Because Of You" and Gladys Knight's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". Different from my last mashup, I didn't really incorporate any vocals from the base track. I think one of the best compliments I got was from Josie. She said that she didn't know it was a mashup because it sounded like a normal song. Good enough for me! Feel free to download, link and share with your friends! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 8:12 AM Permalink| | Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Hey... wait a Cup Noodle minute here... Sitting on:A bumpy train. 
So, apparently Nissin (the company behind the noodle cup) is giving you (Japan residents) a chance at winning at really neat Cup Noodle vending machine to celebrate their last 38 years in the business (that's circa 1971 for those without math chops). I decided to go to the Cup Noodle webpageto watch the video about the vending machine. I was enjoying the video until I reached the section where the onscreen model opened up the shrimp flavored Cup Noodle. Look at those shrimp! Those things are huge! They look like sperm whales compared to the tiny brine shrimp/Sea-Monkeyswe get here in the states. You could fry those things up and feed a family of seven. Thatis truly a galaxy of prawns. I'm also pretty sure that those yellow colored nuggets aren't corn, but golden ingots for you to haphazardly throw away. I became disgusted as I realized the lack of quality with the stateside Cup Noodle selection and its ingredients of "flavor". Thanks to Danny Choofor the news! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 7:17 PM Permalink| | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 You have to cook by the book! Listening to:Nothing. I think it's time for me to make a mash-up like this now. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 10:36 AM Permalink| | Monday, January 12, 2009 Robot In The City - Launched My Back:Stings. 
The Robot in the Citycomic has launched! I don't have a concrete update schedule as I'm trying to wind down Mr. Gohfirst, but the first strip is up there and ready for anyone to read. The comments I've been getting about it (artwork and humor) have been quite positive, so I'm glad no one is up in arms about the change. Also, it seems that people are glad to see and hear about the Gashapon Shopcrew back in the running. In other news, I've been working together with another developer on the MochiAdsforums on building the Flash version of the Saber Duelgame I whipped up. It's shaping up to be rather exciting not having to code/script anything for once and with an idea based on one of mine. Time to get some rest! 
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 10:02 PM Permalink| | Thursday, January 8, 2009 Saber Duel - A Game for the Visually Impaired Listening to:Fall Out Boy - 20 Dollar Nose Bleed 
I was walking to the train the other night and I was thinking about an article that I read some time ago (article here) about a boy that was incredibly good at Soul Calibur despite the fact that he was blind. He memorized the sounds that different characters and moves made, so he knew how to react. Ultimately, he didn't let his disability limit him from enjoying a fantastic video game and source of entertainment. I thought about this and decided that it was time for me to try my hand at creating games that were accessible to those with disabilities. The first game that I created is called Saber Duel. It's essentially a lightsaber blocking game where you block attacks coming from your left, center or right. I'd recommend using headphones as it'll immerse you into the game more. Download:ZIP File (~2.5mb)(PC Only) posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 12:53 PM Permalink| | Tuesday, January 6, 2009 Robot In The City - Teaser Listening to:Fall Out Boy - What A Catch, Donnie 
This is the logo/teaser for my upcoming comic project: Robot In The City. I was lucky enough to get the .com domain registered too. I'll have the site setup as soon as I get a handful of the comics in the bag. This also means, however, that Mr. Gohwill be ending. Don't worry as he will be moving to the city with his robot cat. Though the following of his daily life will be less frequent, he will still be making appearances. Most importantly, for those who have followed my work in the past, a group of characters from a previous comic strip will be making the city their home as well. I feel that it's time to let the gang live their life after the shop closed. Keep in mind that Ritz the Robot will be the main character as he learns about what it is to be alive and what his purpose is in life. The comic will be in the continuous story arcs format, opposite of my last few projects. I'm ready to jump into it again. Oh, and Death will be coming back as well. Brad, I'm looking in your general direction. I guess you too, Shannon. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 10:24 PM Permalink| | Saturday, January 3, 2009 Not My Lover Listening to:Alexander Shen - Not My Lover (Billie Jean Cover) 
I never new a Billie, but I knew a Jean. She wasn't my lover either. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:16 PM Permalink| | Friday, January 2, 2009 Sweet... tamarind...? Listening to:Nothing. 
I recently went to 99 Ranch Marketand found myself in the produce aisle looking at yams. In the process of walking around, I noticed a box that caught my eyes immediately. Tamarindsare a type of tree. They produce fruit. Apparently this is a box of sweet tamarinds. They don't look like tamarinds... or, if anything, tamarinds look like something else. At least it's been "steam sterilized". posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 3:55 PM Permalink| | Denpa Shonen Listening to:My office chair squeaking. This has become my new favorite show. It's called Denpa Shonen. It's essentially a reality show about one naked man who is locked in a room with nothing but magazines, a radio, telephone and postcards. He must try to survive one year in this room, living off of things he can win in contests. For those not familiar, Japanese magazines often have contests that require you to send in postcards in order to win them. So if a magazine is giving away free body wash, you'd send in as many postcards as possible in hopes of being drawn as a winner of said body wash. It's pretty entertaining. I think the premise and the fact that he's a mangy looking Japanese fellow makes it that much funnier. Remember to watch with subtitles. Nasubi-san, ganbatte ne! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 12:02 PM Permalink| | Thursday, January 1, 2009 Happy New Year! Proud Winner:Kotaku's Arcade Mania Contest 
Hello everyone! I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year! I'd also like to smugly announce that I was chosen as one of the winners in Kotaku's Arcade Mania Contest! I'm flattered and very excited about the whole thing. Not only for the 7.8 seconds of internet fame, but also the fact that I've won a free copy of Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers! Chalk that one up as starting the new year off right! I'm also working on a small game called Princess!. You basically control a knight to avoid and dodge enemies, kicking dynamite as a source of attack and trying to save the princess at the end of the level. Short, sweet, and all pixely. Below is the running animation.  
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