11.11.2008 - SPiN reviews.
Latest SPiN reviews for each iTunes store. - Quite positive stuff so far!
10.11.2008 - SGS never dies!.
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06.11.2008 - More SPiN & Penny-arcade!.
As mentioned below, SPiN! is on the roll! It was mentioned by Tycho in Penny-arcade. I think this was the first time a game I was involved with was mentioned by P-A and that has been one of the greatest merit I can personally think of. (Of course getting mentioned positively in the comic strip would be still 10 * that but that's still lightyears away =)
Also Secret Exit added a official gameplay video of SPiN! - "featuring a man with extremely orange thumbs!": Youtube - SPiN Gameplay Video
29.10.2008 - SPiN (!).
Don't drop your iPhone. Give it a SPiN! (Review here!) Man I'm happy that it got its way to some decent platform. Of course it's quite similiar to SiL but it's total rework of it gameplay-wise.
I did have opportunity to tweak some of the content a bit and test it in the progress. Now I just hope they'll go for a sequel based on SiL+ (that probably was never released anywhere even though was quite finalized. =/)
Also added it to my project backlog.
27.10.2008 - Fall.
Instead of updating I actually registered a new place for stuff. (random.kuvat.fi) Although I plan to have only photos in there and in a bit more freeform manner.
Having had some sleeping problems/depression/burn-out/etc./whatever haven't had too much time doing new things apart from familylife. Would really benefit from having a 4-day working week now that my personal schedules are well over-booked for more than a month.
Now I'm having some plans to turn this site in to a some kind of bloggish-style thing as it already seems to be so OR then I try to do something completely different. Galleries are of course way outdated so I would probably need to rework the whole thing a bit. (like removing those for a start ;)
Planning also to print several pictures of Canon 5D Mark II and hang them on the walls and promise myself that I lose weight for a certain amount before I'm allowed to buy it =) So enough of things to do and no time to update here.
02.09.2008 - blabla.
Uh. Seems that I need to update the whole thing when I have the motivation. Or go for some blog-format or something as it seems that I can't really get it done. Portfolios have not been updated for a year or something and no writing here either for a while.
Painted something for Assembly competitions, shutdown Blinksheep (we're still looking if we can cover the losses and shutting down the website is part of minimizing losses) and started some experimenting with my photomaterial that has gathered up in my hard-drive for years. Hope I could utilize some of it.
Also have been quite down for a while for no reason and millions of ideas for projects and things that I would like to test and learn and so on. So I enrolled in to a aquarell painting classes and plan to drop to 4-day workweek. Hope it helps to clear out the fuzz in my head because it has been hard to concentrate on things lately. Having some interesting or challenging to do in my primary job would also be helpful.
Founded very nice todo-list web-application that I'm currently using: todoist.com.
Also check this experiment done by Keith Cooper: pinhole experiment.
19.06.2008 - C.V.
Updated my current workplace in to CV. Only ~half years late. =)
16.06.2008 - Blinksheep experiment Part 3. and stuph
Seems that with the current testprice we may cover ~3rd of the costs. So the price being triple would probably get us back to zero-budget. It has been quite of a charity now, but for a reason. I did a fast calculation that price per photo CD should be around 45€ to cover the costs. So probably with the current rate of selling the price per CD should be around 100€ to be in any way reasonable.
So it might be that the real price per CD is around 50-75€ and the amount of orders should be a bit higher. And probably the pricing should be handled so that there's a fixed price per CD and a limit of how many pictures per CD is allowed. That would still be very cheap for a photography. Might be that it wont sell that way. We need to think different models for doing the stuff.
Meanwhile I've been trying to train my photography a bit. Mostly on the edit side. People often forget (or actually, they just don't know it even in the first place) that most of the work happen on the developing/retouch side of the photography. (yes. Digital photographing does not eliminate the developing-part. One of the reasons why photo-quality is going down is the publishing of non-developed pictures.) I've been lately doing lots of stuff in a manner that would be considered "wrong" in photography just because I need some specific effects and cover the rest in retouch-side. That has been quite interesting and I think I'm going to rebuild my portfolio soon. Noticed that the last update is almost a year a go already :Þ
23.05.2008 - Blinksheep experiment Part 2.
First of all I need to mention that most of the people seems to be liking and appreciating our pictures a lot. Many people has sent their big thanks and everything. Some people even bought pictures. (not many though) So don't get carried away by the negative sides below. Those are more the issues of learning than anything else and pointed out for a reason even that it might seem trivial.
Now that we have had all the pictures online for a while it's funny to see that people are really fine with copying watermarked pictures without permission and publishing them in places where they have to specifically state that they have either taken the picture by themselves or have rights to publish it. That's probably as long as they think it doesn't have any consequences. In case of Facebook I hope they understand what they are doing as the company is not as liberal with the copyrights than some other places.
Also we've already found couple of people that are totally unaware of the price and work needed for (good) photographs. We're still keeping the average price for a photo somewhere around 1-10% of the price it should be. Concerning that we're also sending the hi-res photos on a CD to home it's kind of surprising to find that some people thinks it is expensive.
Why we're doing that? As it says above - it's an experiment. We want to see if there is any real interest or money in it. Currently the indication for that is very low. Let's wait for a while still.
10.05.2008 - Blinksheep experiment Part 1.
I had a long post here, but thought of getting it off. Hope that someone picks up the idea that BlinkSheep is trying to cover the expenses by selling the pictures on CD. And that the pictures are ab. 25x cheaper than they should be. (And even that we have the watermarks on the pictures, it's illegal to use them without permission.)
I still might wanna state that: No. I don't give you my car. EVEN if you're angry about not getting it for free - in internet... anonymously...
And concerning BlinkSheep - Getting the expenses covered is not quite enough - as we've used several working manmonths to get that system, process and photos to this point.
05.05.2008 - Street dance, Blinksheep, etc.
Been doing several projects lately. Of course there's a lot of more important stuff than this computer graphics/photographing things that I'm mostly writing in here but still had some small chunks of freetime to concenrate on those too.
Last weekend I lost 2kg while photographing Street dance contest (Finland championships) and hope we'll end up with a nice set of photographs in the Blinksheep site even that it seems that most of the first days photographs were lost due to some technical issues. I've been thinking of writing down a documentation about in how many ways we've ended up in catastrophies with massive amounts of photo-data combined with massive amounts of moving them back and forth from cards to harddrives to other harddrives.
So for the reason of all data handling to be simplified I would be very, very, keen of getting the memory-card sizes way up. Now that we know many of the problems possible in practice I would prefer to just go for couple of big cards and keep them there as long as I'm sure I already have them in my "editing table" and still working.
Summer came early. So one of my next projects is to plan a terrace to be built. \o/ I've been continuing with some maxscript stuff and doing 3d a bit but UI design is again on the table. Learn or burn.
26.03.2008 - Time goes by. Facebook etc.
Just writing something to prove that I'm alive. Been too busy with everything for a while.
I've been photographing a bit more lately. Still trying to concentrate a bit more on people as a subject as it has been my weakness and even planning to buy some lighting equipment. Also found out that I've forgot some of my photo-editing skills and have been paying more attention to Photoshop too.
And as much I would like to say that I'm too old for this stuff - I did register myself in to Facebook and has recreated a connection (better than nothing!) with a big bunch of old friends, relatives and schoolmates etc. And I must say that it is the whole point (and surely a positive one) of Facebook for me. =)
Been also busy doing Maxscripting, basic 3d-modelling, character rigging, vector-graphics (in which I need a lot of practice) and lately even character animation.
Considering vectors I've been testing Inkscape which is a open-source Vector-graphics program and it has been from the better half of open-source programs. Although I must mention that when simple selection and moving things don't work too well - it's a whole a lot of pain for creating vector-graphics. ;)
20.02.2008 - Outhousing & and
Umm.. Launched an event photography-system-thingie-whatever with a friend. Hope to have some free time soon to polish it a bit. Still quite much a prototype really. =)
Real work has included demo designing, sketching, outsourcing budgeting and stuff and whatnot. x_X
26.12.2007 - Some new pinholes.
My new work got me in to a new challenge of designing UI's. Which is actually much more interesting than it might sound in the first place.
Also I got the last batch of pinhole-pictures scanned and added them to the pinholemio-project site. Go and check them out.
04.12.2007 - A ear cod.
(Yes, it should be 'An'.) Had 1,5 months off from work and I didn't even hear the whistle from it zapping by. Learned some php, sql and javascript in the meanwhile (tried to avoid doing graphics to get a fresh view to work-things =) so I suppose I have to re-do this site next spring or something.
09.09.2007 - Fathammer shutdown, new job, TMDCX etc.
Photos | Telcogames shuts down studios | TMDC X 
Two months from the last update! So nothing new on that field. My work - however - will change a bit. We closed down Fathammer after 7 years of mobile "business" and currently I'm taking a paternity leave for a month. Telcogames even have a press release about that and they state that they outsourced us to Korea. Good luck! (Have a nice cake Telco!) My next stop with the work thingie is a company called Acrodea. Japanese company but they have an "R&D-office" in Finland. Hope I'll have another fancy 6 years in there.
At the same time Text Mode Demo Competition is held for tenth time already! Check out TMDC X for more info and a invitation intro.
Added some photos to portfolio. Will probably rework it a lot more in the near future as I've gone through major load of non-processed pictures.
06.09.2007 - Technical Art portfolio
Spawned a technical art portfolio. There's not much of material yet but I'll update it soon. I will not include a link to it from the frontpage for now.
Also included some new stuff to graphics portfolio.
05.09.2007 - Updated portfolio & CV
Updated my galleries and CV.
Also managed through a family-trip by car through all the Baltic countries and back. Which was actually a very nice trip. I'll link an album of pics when I get them ready and uploaded
There is still to come some more material to both galleries in next few days.
07.08.2007 - Assembly'07 graphics entries
Added Assembly drawn themed graphics and oldskool graphics entries to the gallery.
Everyone asks this so: C64 Multicolor mode has a resolution of 160x200 pixels where the physical pixels are in proportion of 2x1 - two times wide as tall. The colors are from 16 color default C64 palette and in multicolor mode you are restricted to 3 colors and a global background color inside single 4x8 pixel cell.
The C64 picture is not a conversion of a photo. It's full hand rasterized using a mouse and a pc-software called Timanthes. Why to do this kind of stuff? - I like to have clear restrictions to work with. Why multicolor and not FLI? - I just need some attention and want to boast.
descriptions of c64 graphics modes05.08.2007 - Assembly'07
You can get our Assembly 2007 shortfilm competition entry from here: Toy2one (Toyzone 2).
I'll add some other stuff later on. I'm quite sleepy now.
My results: 1st in fast graphics competition, 2nd in oldskool graphics competition, 4th in drawn graphics competition and 2nd in shortfilm competition
04.07.2007 - Vacation time - Doodling
Finally had some time for scribbling some 2d in Photoshop. Been mostly doing fast stuff just to get grip of the technique.
Also dropped a placeholder to www.pixelcrust.fi. I suppose I'm not going to build any finalized website for Pixelcrust for months as it's not so critical.
I hope I'll have some time to plan and execute some stuff for Assembly 2007 graphics competitions. They're already looming and for the first time I have no bigger projects going on...yet.
10.06.2007 - Pixelcrust founded - summer coming
Uh. Long time without posting.. getting hectic before vacation times etc.
Hectic also because I just founded my one-man private company! (Just a sidetrack - not leaving my day-job..=) It's called Pixelcrust and the .fi and .com website will be up somewhere around the end of the summer I suppose. I'll offer all of my expertise + anything I want to learn through that company so just drop mail/call or something if interested. I'm already doing some photography shootings/developments under that name.
I suppose I should post some photos etc. but we'll see later on...I've plenty of them in the buffer. =)
07.05.2007 - 3D
Ouch.. nice greetings appeared on my table today.. In a form of chocolate bars named quite trendy.
Whoever comes out with names like that.. oh actually it says "Terry's" in the corner... so shame on you Terry!
06.05.2007 - Yet another set of pinholes
Dropped an another set of pinholes in the pinhole page again.. might get the things scanned if this pace continues.. =) I have a lot stuff going on atm. will probably announce something about it here later on...
01.05.2007 - Some new pinholes
Howdy. Just dropped couple of photos to the Pinhole page again. Have more of them queueing and grunting in front of the scanner. Been maxscripting a bit again and hopefully coming out with a couple of simple and not so simple tools soonish. Depends on some other things that might overcome and explode my schedules soon.
26.04.2007 - 21 years after Chernobyl
Chernobyl Exlusion zone trip | FH-mugshots
Got an assignment at work to take neutral face-pictures of my work-mates for some article etc. Added most of them as a separate set to the Photo-gallery.
Haven't had too much time to fondle with photos etc. Even have a big bunch of pinholes waiting for scanning but started to do some maxscripting again after a while of adventuring in the PHP land.
Oh. And it's already 21 years from the Chernobyl accident today. Every year at this time I promise to myself to visit Pripyat again when I have the chance.
10.04.2007 - Gfx gallery!
Now the gfx gallery is adapted in to using the new system. I even updated the gallery a bit on the 3d side - not much new content though. Would have some work-related 3d stuff but keeping them still non-public just in case.
Not much happened on the scribbling (2d) side either as I just try to pull down everything that gets strongly negative comments.
Also updated the projects and RMT pages to match the current look and tweaked them a bit etc. Chernobyl trip and Pinholemio will keep as they are at the moment.
09.04.2007 - Spring!
UU yeah! It's starting to take some shape. I've been whacking the gallery system up and launched it with the photo-gallery. I'm trying to take the photo-thing a bit sidestepped from a "portfolio" and push in different categories and non-serious stuff etc.
Also automated the thumbnail generating so I can continue to adapt also some other thingies to that system. I even updated my "about me" text. It's getting out of hand! - I'm updating! Q_Q
07.04.2007 - The Spring strikes the site!
Tadah! Finally had time to continue my PHP-practicing and got the tests in to a state where I should start renovating the whole site a bit.
This of course means that everything is going to be a bit messy for a while.
One of the first things on the list was change the colors and layout a bit. I also dumped the whole archive-thingie and included everything in here - just scroll down. It'll be like that as long as it doesn't get too heavy. (for me ;)
But the biggest thing behind it all is the reason behind practicing some basic PHP thingies -> to "re-invent the wheel" and create my own web-gallery system instead of using ready-made so the gallery will be soon much more simplified and clean.
02.04.2007 - First day of ma' paternity leave
On the first day of the official paternity leave I woke up by an hour of continous shouting straight in to my ear.
I updated the photo-portfolio with a bunch of new pics. Also I have been fooling around a bit with PHP mostly in learning-manner and to later on replace the current image gallery system I'm using.
Looking forward to grab my new pinhole-pics this week...
23.03.2007 - Pinholemio
Howdelydoodle. I have lately been photographing mostly with a pinhole camera. Spawned own page for them and it seems to be an on-going project.
Started to use wiki for my daily freetime tasks and project designing and it seems to work very well for it. I've been game designing in both home and at work and will drop some photos soon again.
06.03.2007 - SiL won 1.5 / 2 awards =).
Photos | GDC mobile innovation hunt | SiL
Added one photo again. Fathammer's SiL splitted GDC mobile game innovation hunt award with Sumea's Tornado Mania and on top of that SiL also won the audience award. Sitating Eero Pöyry: "That's 1.5 out of 2 awards!" More info about the event at Gamasutra
27.02.2007 - Bugs.
Added one photo and tweaked a bit of the portfolio side. Transferred back to using only PS CS2 for photo-workflow as the raw-stuff seems to work just fine with the Canon 400D now. Also found out that browsing these can be addictive. Dynastes granti <3.
24.02.2007 - Newborn and stuff.
Frans Werner Mäki was born 25.1. - some pics in Photo-portfolio.
Didn't have too much time for PS-scripting but completed the pipeline. Bought and played through Psychonauts and Dreamfall. Both were good but I prefer Psychonauts and recommend it to everyone.
Have thought a bit of BBD2 again as BBD is getting constant downloads but I'm quite deep in the woods of game design at work already. Also started to go to gym again and dropped caffein-drinks for a while. Should write more often. ;)
20.01.2007 - Updated the photo-portfolio.
Photo-portfolio updated. Haven't had too much time for photographing and mostly just been snapshotting but went through some pics taken last couple of months and stuffed some of them in the portfolio. Also built some photo-editing pipelines with extendscript on top of PS in my free-time.
17.12.2006 - SiL - Forum Nokia PRO Best Mobile game 2006 award.
SiL won its first award. Of course in some cases Fathammer didn't get even mentioned but that seems to be the deal nowadays =/ I also managed to get metal piece in to my eye lately and went through small operation but before that I learned some Photoshop scripting. Also waiting to get Photoshop CS3 beta tomorrow to test. Please.. please! let me create non-modal dialogs!
14.11.2006 - v. 1.1 of RMT and rumours.
random.gfxile.net/RMT/ | Recoil Games | Photos
RMT version 1.1 is now available. Bugfixing+testfiles. Currently there's some rumours circling in Finnish game industry about a new company in Helsinki that's probably going to be quite big thing. Finally got my photo-portfolio shaped more nicely.
01.11.2006 - Boom! Boom! Driller! and stuff.
www.asshatdesigns.com | www.fathammer.com
Beside releasing the RMT fileformat and game designing last month also provided me a pleasant surprise when our freeware game Boom! Boom! Driller! got downloaded over 15000 times. The range of downloaders were mostly from US, Mexico, Slovak, Argentina and Spain. Which tells me it seems to have quite wide variety of audience. If you're not familiar with it - go Ass Hat Designs
Also win32 version of Sil and ToyGolf has been popping up in several portals. And now those can also be grabbed from Fathammer's own site.
