Hey there,
Last week was half term so my boy was home from school for the week, which is always fun. One of the best things we did was go to a comic drawing workshop where we listed to an author make an amusing presentation about how they got into writing and drawing, and then we all got to draw our own comics. I posted my son's comic on BlueSky.
So I spent the last couple of weeks finishing off the anti-capitalism game I have been working on. It took up a good chunk of the month but I was able to make all sorts of updates to beep8 in the process. These updates will make it much easier to reach my long term beep8 goal of making a game creation app! More on that in the future.
The finished game is called Prime Time and you can play it in it's entirety on beepmini. It's a darkly humorous game about creating a capitalist company that sells anything and everything, whilst abusing the employees and planet it's profiting from.
I've also published the textmode image editor I've been using to make these games. The editor uses a bitmap font full of symbols that you combine in a grid to make images. I really enjoy using it to build the different images and interfaces in the beepmini games. You can use the textmode editor on beep8.com. The next feature I plan to add is the ability to share the images you have created with a url so that you can easily share them with others. I will then make a gallery with the option to submit your own images!
Nomad Sculpt
Nomad Sculpt is a powerful 3D sculpting tool for mobile devices. It offers a range of features that make it easy to create detailed 3D models on the go. If you know about 3d art then it's likely you've heard of ZBrush, which is the industry standard for 3D sculpting. Nomad Sculpt is a mobile alternative to ZBrush, and it has many of the same features.
What I like about Nomad is how immediate it feels. You just open it and start sculpting. No loading times, no panels to rearrange, no 20-minute tutorials before you touch a shape. It's fast, smooth, and everything reacts in real-time, even on an older iPad.
The interface is clean but still packed with tools. There's dynamesh-style remeshing, masking, layers, alphas, symmetry, lighting; all the things you'd expect if you've used ZBrush or Blender. But it doesn't feel bloated. It feels focused. Like it's been built by someone who actually uses it.
I found that using my finger wasn't great, but once I added an Apple Pencil, the experience changed completely. You can push, pull, smooth, and carve as if you are working with clay. Zooming in and rotating around your model is smooth, which helps when you're fiddling with tiny details like nostrils or fingers.
There's even texture painting and a basic rendering setup, so you can make your models look nice without exporting to another app. I've not made anything great yet, but I can see how people get addicted.
If you've ever felt blocked by the complexity of desktop 3D tools, Nomad might be a nice reset. You can lie on the sofa, iPad in hand, and just noodle away on a dragon head or a weird mushroom creature.
Power Boy | Nomad Sculpt Toy Tutorial: Part 1
There's been a recent trend to use AI to make images of toys in blister packaging. This video is a tutorial on how to make your own toy using Nomad Sculpt which is also the featured app this week. Dave Reed shows how to model a toy, add textures, and create a blister pack for it. It's a great way to learn about 3D modeling and how to create your own toys.
There are a couple more videos in this series.
Dave also has a wide variety of 3d art videos on his Youtube channel, many of them tutorials for Nomad Sculpt, so if you're interested in trying it out then I recommend checking out his channel.
Sparked Discoveries
Here's a handful of links I found intriguing recently:
Thinky Direct
Videogames are a vast medium and as I'm getting older I find myself moving away from the big budget games preferring smaller more cerebral games. Thinky Direct is a showcase of upcoming games focused on puzzles and brainteasers. I really like the look of some of these games, and I'm looking forward to trying them out when they are released. If you like these smaller games you might also like the wholesome games niche - the next Wholesome Direct is coming up on June 7th, and you can find more information about it here.
Every 5x5 Nonogram
Nonograms are a type of logic puzzle where you fill in squares on a grid based on numerical clues. This site has calculated every single 5x5 nonogram, 24,976,511 of them to be exact. At the time of writing 2.3 million of them have been solved. I don't know what it will be when you read this but if you want to solve some you can! If you enjoy Nonograms then I have some bigger ones on NinjaPuzzles as well. This project very much reminds me of the inifinite chess and infinite checkbox projects I have mentioned previously.
Amazing Cookie Art!
To celebrate National Biscuit Day, Dr Ella Hawkins shared some of her amazing cookie art on BlueSky. She has a whole collection of cookies that look like historical things. From stained glass window fragments, through Delftware Tiles, to Shakespears books. There's loads of amazing, delicious, creations here. I'm in awe of the skill involved.
Koholint Redrawn
This is a project to redraw the entire Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening game in modern pixel art styles. Different artists have been given different areas of the game and the freedom to draw it however they like and it's created a patchwork quilt of things to look at. If you're not familiar with Links Awakening then perhaps it won't resonate in the same way it does for me, but I can still remember the game (25+ years on) and can imagine myself running around these varied worlds trying to awaken the wind fish!
Have you found anything interesting lately? I'd love to hear about it, just reply to this email!
Until next time,
Ben