On the road to Canberra, as we enter the magnificent rolling hills and plains around the Lake George area, I am momentarily stunned by the majesty of the vista before us.

"Wow! That's incredible! It looks like something straight off a, uh. Hrm."

"You were going to say desktop, weren't you?"

"Yes. Goddammit."

Hello everyone. My name is Tim Colwill, and I have a problem.

Hello, Tim!

Actually, I have a number of problems. For example, my facial muscles tend to operate on a ten-minute time delay, which causes me to sometimes be unable to properly communicate emotions to people important to me. In the same manner one can look up at the sky and see the stars as they were hundreds of years ago, my face is a delightful mirror of the emotions I was feeling ten minutes prior.

Working in combination with my expressionless voice I often, to my great chagrin, give people the impression of being either utterly disinterested, monstrously sarcastic, or having actually passed away several minutes ago and now operating entirely on volatile corpse gas and twitching nerve reflexes. My thanks to all those who have frantically, and mistakenly, dialled for an ambulance. I appreciate it.

But we're not here to talk about that, are we? Today I would like to talk about my unnerving tendency to not so much blur as demolish the line between the internet and real life. I have, at various times in the past done, and probably will do again in the future, the following things.

1. Picked up envelopes addressed to me, fresh out of the mailbox, and gleefully exclaimed "Oooh! Email!"


2. Mused aloud on the possibility of "bookmarking" delightful staff at restaurants so that we could come back to the in the future.


3. While sketching from a reference book, reached out to flip the pages of the reference book so that it would not go into screensaver.

Ever since I joined Twitter, it always bothered me that there was no way to display my tweets in a controlled web environment, one that didn't allow scripts or embedded Flash content. Twitter offers plenty of badges in Flash and Javascript, but if I wanted to display my latest tweet in, say, my forum signature, I was basically screwed. Most forum software such as phpBB is very restrictive on what users can and cannot put into their signatures, but the one thing they all allow are images. And so Twimage was born.

( In which I discuss Twitter, and web development. IT IS RIVETING. )

Hey, have you guys heard of Teh Learning Curve yet? It's a pretty cool gig; the premise of which being that a couple of guys sit on a couch, play a video game together for 30 minutes, then give their impressions of it - all of which is condensed into a five-minute YouTube video for the ridiculously short attention span of the discerning modern internet viewer. I did some logo work for them a little while back, but before that I actually took time out from my busy schedule as an international man of dysentry to appear, in real life, and show them the correct and most efficient way to play Braid.

Did a little bit of logo design for Teh Learning Curve today. TLC is a game-review video-blog run by, and starring, some of my friends from Interzone Games. The first episode is up now - it's a bit rough around the edges, but I think the format will work as they batter the kinks out. Look out for the upcoming Braid episode, starring yours truly!



Also if you didn't catch it, I've been giving out cooking advice.

I did this ages ago and forgot to post it. IT'S SO TRUE

Doing some sketches for the Dark Heresy campaign we're running over on The Golden Throne! It's reaching a pretty mad climax. I love it.

I sketched this ages ago as you know, and my friend saw it and demanded he got it as an avatar. It seemed only fair that I awkwardly complete his request some 6 months later. And in vector form, basically just to see if I could.

Don't know if I'd do vectors again, pretty fucking fiddly! I'm sure I'd get used to it over time. I know people like pyawakit do fucking incredible vector work. I guess we'll see!

Anyway! Here you go.

( Huge-ass image )

As the history - or more accurately, this slightly faded receipt in my hand - tells it, on the second of December 2005, at 4:47 PM precisely, I walked into EB Games Carousel and purchased the City of Villains Collector's DVD Edition for the princely sum of $74.85, beginning an on-and-off love affair that would last over three years.

City of Villains was pretty much my first MMO, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. And while I can look back and suspect that my shine for it might still be slightly rose-tinted for that naivete, I've since tried other MMO's - Warhammer Online (for several months), World of Warcraft (for two weeks), Tabula Rasa (for six hours), Ultima Online (for... well, thirty minutes) - and I've even spent the last year balls-deep in development of another MMO. None of these games, no matter who I played them with, no matter how good the anecdotes about them, no matter how much I enjoyed working on them, none of these games have ever kept me interested, kept me excited and kept me coming back again and again like City of Villains.

As you may or may not know, the people behind City of Villains, Cryptic Studios, are currently working on another superhero-themed MMO called Champions Online. Naturally this sort of news is exciting to me, and while discussing it with my friends, all the good memories from the City of Villains days came flooding back. Our incessant talking about those halcyon days was enough to convince Jess that it was time to try it for herself, and so a few weeks ago we fired it up, and we haven't looked back since.

There have been probably three distinct City of Villains eras for me before this one, and though I've always been pleased with the game's ongoing development each time I've restarted, logging in again for the first time in nearly two years really floored me with the amount of improvements that they've been quietly crowbarring in. Though I've always loved the game to pieces, it has always had some distinctly glaring issues, or what I would consider to be incredibly obvious design decisions that needed to be made but which just weren't. This time around, I could not help but be amazed at just how far they had come along in addressing those concerns. In fact, I've been enjoying playing it so much that I decided it was about time to write it all down and tell the world exactly why.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since I know he doesn't read this (yet!), I think it's safe to post this picture here.

Our Creative Director at Interzone, Joseph B. Hewitt IV is leaving us, and I thought I should make him something to.. well, show that I cared, I guess. You're the best Joseph, it's been an absolute pleasure serving under you.

( Cut, because I can't be bothered making it smaller! Aren't you LUCKY )

Having told, and retold, this story more times than I can actually remember, I figure it's about time that I immortalised it in print. This has two benefits: first of all, the next time somebody asks me about it I can write down this site's address, slip it into their shirt pocket and slap them on the shoulder in an overly familiar and slightly condescending manner, saving myself time and energy while simultaneously reinforcing my image as a huge wanker. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, Jess - who has heard the story approximately seventeen-and-a-half bajillion times - will no longer have to restrain herself from choking me to death every time the story needs retelling.

But what is the story, Tim. What's it all about. Well, I'm glad you asked...

Read the rest of this entry »

Just spent the last couple of days creating a new portfolio and updating it with some of the stuff I've been doing lately. If you want to see some of the shiny vector art I've been doing, or some of the websites I've been working on, or just want to tell me whether I did a good job turning it into a website, click through and let me know!

http://www.timcolwill.com/

Thanks guys!

Here's some stuff I did yesterday, and also stuff that I've drawn at work while in SECRET MEETINGS.

First up some more Space Dwarves.



( Now, the next installment of It Came From My Notepad! )

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy LJ friends!

I don't know how many of you keep up to date with my journal, but for those who don't, here's some exciting news: I'm moving. Moving in specifically, and moving in with my girlfriend, to be even more specific.

That's right, it's a couple-blog. So turn away now if that disgusts you, and retch violently, and know that I'm not sorry. Feel free to turn back again though, because I'll still be dumping all of my sketches here. But if you'd like to read what I'm up to, before I copy and paste my entries in to this here LiveJournal, point your internet harvesters here:

http://www.notsounwashed.com/

and enjoy.

-Tim

Can you guess what it is!?!?



I'm going to grab my work sketchbook and scan a whole pile of (non NDA-breaking) shit in soon, so stay tuned for that, I guess?

I try to write from a fairly detached perspective, but sometimes it's just too hard.

http://www.r18games.com.au/2008/11/michael-atkinson-on-stateline/

The monstrous arrogance of this man just infuriates me.

There's still a few sections I need to update, but with Michael Atkinson being more of a dick than ever it's time to get this thing out there.

http://www.r18games.com.au/

Tell your friends.

http://www.timtekindustries.com/2008/07/15/more-hard-hitting-current-affairs/

So, Interzone had a formal day the other day. Many photos were taken, not least of them this one, of the Interzone GUI Team:



As this image was passed around the office, it was remarked that it looked remarkably like a cast-shot from a hardcore Australian legal drama. "GUI Legal!" Ellen shrieked, demanding that character roles be written immediately. "Legal drama! Hah!" I snorted, raising my fingers to the keyboard. "More like a low-budget inner-city cop show. More like..."

Interzone City. It’s a tough place. Hell, it’s a shit-hole. And to police a tough place, you need the toughest. You need the roughest. You need GUI Metro.

Detective Darren “Motherfucker” Yeow: Trained from an early age in the ways of drinking, smoking, and drinking while smoking, Darren worked his quickly through the ranks. His unprecedented combination of bribery and violence became the first of many multitasking skills that would later turn him into one of Interzone City’s finest. When the chips are down, Darren shoots first, shoots some more and never stops to ask any motherfucking questions because if anybody in this stinkhole of a city knows where the bodies are kept it’s him, and that’s probably because he left them there. Darren’s noble heart hangs heavy with justice, and even heavier with cigarette tar.

Constable Tone “Rookie” Prior: Fresh-faced recruit from the Academy, Tone showed up on the doorstep with a bag full of optimism and a bullneck that resisted even the best efforts of a enraged “Choker” Hawkins. His sunny disposition has crowbarred open the corpse-piled windows of the GUI Metro offices, with his Fresh Fruit Fridays and Tuesday Book Clubs earning him drunken abuse, if not outright approval. On the job Tone is alert and inquisitive, always ready to hand out a pamphlet or offer advice on removing a stubborn bloodstain.

Senior-Sergeant Andy “Choker” Hawkins: Nobody knows how long the hard-bitten Hawkins has been slugging it out in the trenches of Interzone City, but everyone in GUI Metro knows that when the shit hits the fan, they can always rely on Andy to choke until he can’t choke no more. When he’s not on duty, Andy stalks the dirty city streets, chewing on handfuls of bullets and muttering quietly to himself until the dawn breaks through the smog, glinting off of his bristling stubble. Then it’s time to head back to the office, rip a half-empty whisky bottle out of Darren’s slumbering grasp and count the minutes until he can once more clamp his iron grip around the soft, pasty-white neck of crime.

Constable Richard “Grinner” Kong: Quick with a smile and even quicker with a switchblade, Grinner hides his mysterious past behind an unflappable set of perfectly polished teeth. Supposedly expelled from the Academy, he was saved at the last minute by Darren “Motherfucker” Yeow, who took him under his cigarette-stained wing and made him his constant, smiling shadow. Nobody knows what possessed Darren to put his neck out, and Richard isn’t talking – except with his knife.

Doctor Cameron “Cameron” Royal: The youngest graduate in history from the Bonesaw Institute of Medical Adequacy, “Cameron” is a reclusive genius who claims the morgue as his own. Able to dissect a frog at fifty paces, Cameron’s medical discoveries have saved the detectives at GUI Metro hours of painful criminal beatings, and saved a comatose Darren from alcohol poisoning on more than one occasion. Rumour has it he sleeps in a body bag, though the last person to try to check on a slumbering Cameron quickly found themselves on the receiving end of experimental neck-reduction surgery. If Cameron isn’t at work – he’s probably dead.

Lieutenant Benjamin “Kneecaps” Hammersley: With his no-nonsense haircut and quiet economy of movement, you’d often be forgiven for thinking “Kneecaps” Hammersley was more interested in sipping his bubble tea than ramming a screwdriver clean through the soft knee cartilage of crime. There are lines that even the hard-drinking men and women at GUI Metro can’t bring themselves to cross. But sometimes, crime needs to pay. Sometimes, crime needs to learn a lesson. Sometimes, crime needs to be crippled and paralysed, lying whimpering in an alleyway as it is brutally beaten with a tyre iron, and then fed alive to squealing bloodthirsty pigs. And when that time is now, Benjamin is the man you turn to.

GUI Metro. Tough cops for a tough town.

9:30 Thursdays.

Some stuff I drew at work.



I wish I could put up the stuff I'm making at work. I'm really happy with it. It's all vector art, but I love it all the same. Still, you'll see it all someday.



Whatup Australia