Jerk Chickin - my first Windows 8.1 game

As my daughter will be learning Scratch at school I decided to come up with a simple game idea to use a touch screen which we could try and re-create in scratch.

 A discussion on Ga_Ma_Yo (Game Makers Yorkshire) mentioned Jerk Chicken (whatever that is) and an idea formed in my head.

Jerk Chickin - the game was born.

Basically a single player game where you drag the 'chickin' around the screen using your finger!

I won't give too much away yet but it features Jerk Chickin, Piggies and Mad Choppa the butcher!

Follow my blog and stay tuned for more progress! You'll find all my updates on Twitter too - http://www.twitter.com/cartoonsbyRic

Enjoy!

High Spirits - a comic strip by Ric

I entered the Jameson Whiskey Bursery challenge with my Oo? cartoon strip, unfortunately it was rejected due to the target market being too young to comply with advertising rules. So over the weekend I racked my brains and literally turned to booze for a more mature cartoon strip idea. Here I present HIGH SPIRITS about a group of bottles containing real spirits. If it gets greenlit I envisage a longer story made up of multiple 3-6 panel strips taking Whiskers and Ginny and their friends on a worldwide Booze Crooze, where they will encounter dangerous dangers and Rum bottle pirates! Ahoy me mateys! Wish us luck!

A sample strip with a very lame pun!

Tidy notes and elaborate sketches!

If you like this sort of thing you might like to follow me on twitter too: @cartoonsbyRic

Thought Bubble Competition Entry

Here's my competition entry for this years Thought Bubble comic.

Share Some Secrets - Book Cover Art Mockup

Here's the mockup to the new book by Christina Gabbitas - Share Some Secrets. A story about good and bad secrets which helps parents and teachers to discuss child safety issues from a child's point of view in a family setting. The book is written in a subtle way so that children can read it and share it with their friends.

You can still help to get the book launched through kickstarter and gain various rewards including signed copies and a credited acknowledgement in the back of the finished book. Please follow Christina @poemspictures and myself @cartoonsbyRic on twitter for more updates.

View the Kickstarter here and please donate or share with friends, families and followers.

Book Signing - Leeds WHSmith - Saturday 4th October

The poetry book written by UK school children I illustrated for Christina Gabbitas is hitting the shelves at selected stores of WHSmith and Waterstones.

This Saturday Christina has invited me along to her signing in Leeds WHSmith where she will be signing copies of her brilliant Felicity Fly books and I will be signing copies of the poetry book!

The book was written by UK school children as part of an incentive and competition run by Christina and £1 from ever copy sold goes to charity. So please pop along and show your support!

Share Some Secrets - a children's story book about child safety by Christina Gabbitas

I've recently worked with Christina Gabbitas a brilliant and enthusiastic children's author, poet and voice artist.   You may have seen her Felicity Fly stories in WHSmiths and Waterstones or at one of her many signings or school events.   Her latest book is written for children but tackles the subject of children at risk in a way that young children, their parents and teachers can comfortably read the story together and discuss the difference between good and bad secrets.

Share Some Secrets

Christina is very passionate about the subject and wanted to raise awareness from an early age, hopefully this book will help! I agreed to help her by doing the illustrations and helping to spread the word about her book and kickstarter.

I hope you will join me in supporting Christina and her work by donating a small amount to the kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/171962989/share-some-secrets-childrens-picture-rhyming-book

In return for your generosity there are some great rewards, sneaky peeks at the work in progress artwork and story, and most importantly if the book helps any children to share their bad secrets it could change their lives for the better! Please share the kickstarter and webpage with all of your friends and families.

http://www.sharesomesecrets.com/

Monty Python Live (mostly)

Who's a lucky boy then? I only managed to blummin well win two tickets to see the final Monty Python Live (mostly) show which also went out live around the world!

I won the tickets through twitter thanks to the brilliant people at Yorkshire's famous Black Sheep Brewery! Luckily my brother who is also a lifelong fan of the Pythons offered to drive me in return for one of the tickets! (how could I refuse!) So with no time tolouse we jumped in his car and headed off to London.

The show was an amazing experience with live performances of some of the funniest and most famous sketches interlinked with video and animations. Anyway you don't want to hear me going on about it, here are a few pics...

We love Monty Python and we also love Black Sheep Beer!

Games Britannia Live - A great success!

I won't bore you with the details of how we got to Games Britannia Live in Sheffield and all that, but we got there, and it was amazing!

Rich and I attended together on the Saturday and Mark Hardisty (the brilliant organiser of the show) kindly lent us his Nexus 10 for us to show off our game as we only had access to 7" tablets and our smartphones. I also attended the Sunday to give out more demos and also to take my daughter to the Moshi Monsters game level design workshop by Sumo Digital Ltd. It was a great experience for her and I also met a lot of my developer friends over the weekend including the brilliant Byron Atkinson Jones who was running a unity class for developers at the show and Ste Pickford one of my personal heroes of game development.

We set up our table in the indie section along with our friends from 4 Door Lemon, Utopian Sandwich, Retroburn studios and Boneloaf. The venue was excellent and we had a steady stream of people coming past the table and stopping to chat and try out the game.

The game seems to appeal to just about everybody, surprisingly lots of ladies and kids wanted to play Zombie Piranha. Luckily we decided a while ago that any gore in the game would be very cartoony and swapped out a lot of the red blood for green zombie blood.

We got lots of praise for the gameplay and graphics, and people were able to grab a copy of the game by scanning the QR codes we plastered all over everything or by searching just the word 'Piranha' on google play (searching Zombie Piranha brings up thousands of zombie games before finding ours!)

The version we released consists of 5 starter levels and the full easy version of Fin-Durance! This allows people to have a proper limitless experience of the gameplay and try out many of the power-ups before we launch the full version. (Hopefully later this year!)

GRAB IT NOW FOR FREE! -

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appytimes.zp

Zombie Piranha at Games Britannia Live weekend festival 28th-29th June

If you're in Sheffield this weekend you'll be able to view the latest Zombie Piranha demo in the flesh!

You'll find us in the indie section of Games Britannia Live at the Millennium gallery.

See the official website for details... http://live.gamesbritannia.com

for updates on twitter look for the hashtag #zombiepiranha

15000 download challenge for CLONE ZOO HD, we currently need only around 80 downloads in order to reach 15,000, help us get there in time for Games Britannia Live on Saturday. FREE download available for Android smartphones and tablets on Google Play - Clone Zoo HD - FREE download

Zombie Piranha - Chumming soon! (again!)

It's been rather a long while but Zombie Piranha is certainly not Dead in the water or Sleeping with the Fishes!

After taking time updating our most successful match 3 games Clone Zoo HD (14,000 downloads) and Clone Zoo HD  Easter Eggs (26,000 downloads) to add in storylines and update the gfx and gameplay, we now want to focus on getting Zombie Piranha updated and move it towards a proper release, we were planning on running a kickstarter to get the game finished but we are now more hopeful to get a a publisher on board to make sure it doesn't just get lost in the deep dark pool of mobile releases and will go head to head or at least swim alongside the more successful games.

After a fantastic night out at GaMaYo (the social gathering for GAme MAkers in YOrkshire) we now have more encouraging and enthusiastic feedback and are determined to get this finished with more polish than ever before!

Prepare for more fishy puns and screenshots in the coming months!

Special Easter Treats for all! FREE comics and games! :D

All my comics are FREE on Amazon for two days only this Easter. Today and tomorrow you can pick up ALL the Dinki comics and the Inky & Fred collection,completely FREE OF CHARGE! The comics are available on Kindle, but if you don't have a Kindle device you can download the FREE offical Kindle reader APP for Android, Ios, PC or Mac. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ric-Lumb/e/B00IWLNT52/

Clone Zoo Easter Eggs HD The clone Zoo Easter Eggs game has been given a makeover to HD along with other enhancements such as a story. If you already have the game you can update it or if you're new to the game grab your FREE copy now! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appytimes.gpczee

Have a happy Easter and enjoy these Freebies while you eat your chocolate! :D