So dress in black, sneak around, and do back-flips everywhere or something.

Also, as of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I am making a ninja-related game. In this game, you are a ninja. You work at Monorail Sandwiches. You got a phone order, so you must deliver a sandwich. You must deliver this sandwich in only 60 seconds.
More details can be found here. I hope to have this game done in two or three weeks.

A few things have improved since the last video. Unfortunately, my skill with video codecs hasn't.

Most of the progress updates and screen shots will be put up on the development blog, but if I ever figure out how to make a video with CamStudio, Adobe's video programs, and get it on YouTube without the quality sucking, I'll drop a link here. I'll also upload any more concept art I do, like I did with this one here.

I fail at pressing the right buttons at the right time.

It hasn't breached the mainstream news yet, but anyone who is developing games should be aware of what is going on:

Be aware that the use of the common word "edge" in your game as a name anything for or within the game will put you at risk of legal retaliation by Tim Langdell, of EDGE Games, a trademark troll who hasn't produced anything within the video game world for the past fifteen years. He has trademarked the word "Edge" and waits for anyone who uses the word in the title and files a lawsuit against them when their project is near completion.

He is the reason the hit iPhone game "Edge" has been pulled from their stores world-wide.

As of July 1st, he trademarked "Edge of Twilight" as a preemptive move to go after an upcoming game of that same name, which had been using that name for two years now.

He is why most of you know "Soul Edge" as "Soul Caliber"

He had been working on taking on "Mirror's Edge" by trademarking "Mirrors" and making press releases for a fake game called "MIRRORS a new game from EDGE"

He has gotten away with all this for so long due to nobody knowing about him, which is why this information should be spread. More information about his incredibly shady practices in better detail is avaliable at the following:
http://www.tigsource.com/pages/edge-ga mes
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCa rless/20090610/1233/A_Brief_Statement_
On_The_MobigameEdge_Games_Article.php
http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/05/
29/tim-langdell-the-edge-of-insanity
http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/07/
15/tim-langdell-and-edge-games-still-a t-it

A record of his lawsuits, which included companies like Marvel, Sony and Yamaha:
http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qt=
adv&procstatus=All&pno=&propno=&qs=&pr opnameop=&propname=&pop=&pn=&pop2=&pn2 =&cop=&cn=LANGDELL

Know your rights. Don't take crap from this guy.

As of this video, it has crappy programmer art, a menu, and a level editor. YouTube hates me, so video quality is dumb.

Only the best day of the year.
http://www.dayoftheninja.com/

Today, December 5th, is the 5th annual Day of the Ninja! I really wanted to have a Sandwich Shop Ninja-themed desktop wallpaper done for today, but Flash crashed and I lost half of my work. So, it will probably be done tomorrow. However, that doesn't stop any of you from celebrating this day of total awesome! Go sneak around, dress in black, do back flips and share this wondrous day with random people who have no idea what the heck is going on!

I haven't had a chance to work on the next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja since mid-October, but I hope to get working on it again soon. I'm currently stuck on one fight-scene that has a huge pseudo-3D effect done entirely in Flash, a 2D-based program.

And here's a screen shot of some un-finalized animation I had on my website, but hadn't shown here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
408239

I guess I was able to "finish" it. If you can call that finished. Not entirely pleased with how it came out, but didn't want two-and-a-half weeks-worth of insufficient sleep to go to waste. So, it is here for your amusement. Someone's amusement. Somebody's got to find it amusing.

Fortunately I've already got a solid plan for the Christmas competition and I have enough time to actually put effort into it. :) But first, I'll finish up a bytesized I've had sitting around and then probably do some strange animation that is the result of my mind trying to recover from the last two weeks of whatever it is I just went through.

The next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja is still in the works, though I don't know when it will be done. If the Halloween toon actually helped me get into the habit of making good use of the little free time I have, then it may actually get done in two or three months.

I also need to finish this if I want people to actually consider hiring me for freelancing work:

Will I finish it in time? Only time will tell. I still have yet to find out if I can animate an entire fight scene frame-by-frame in just three days.

The next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja has had some setbacks due to life getting in the way, but progress is being made. I'm currently working on a very complicated scene involving a pseudo-3D camera effect done entirely in Flash. This may see a November release if things go well. I'll upload an Alpha by the end of October if I'm not done with the core animation by then.

For now, I have a t-shirt survey going on at my website to help me find out what kind of interest there is for TSSN-themed merchandising. Don't worry, I do not plan to make significant portions of my animations into advertising. If anything, it will be a still pic at the end of the animation. If I do sell shirts. That survey is here:
The "Ninja Skills" T-Shirt Survey

In other news, I got accepted to BYU where this January 2008 I will be starting the pre-major courses for my degree in computer animation!

And here is a background showing the quality of work I am putting into this next animation: