The Blog of Teemu Jäppinen

Quick Face with ZBrush

2012-02-15T00:30:00.002+02:00

I Hate the Moon When It Snores Through the Night

2011-08-25T20:20:00.004+03:00

Teaser for Paranoid

2011-05-26T00:53:00.006+03:00

The guys and I worked on Paranoid filmed a teaser trailer for our game. I (or if you want to be more secretive; my company, Shiing) did the post-production. I think I might later on make a split-screen video where you can see the original material vs. the end result. Might.

Paranoid / Where do good ideas come from?

2011-05-17T13:44:00.002+03:00

So, for the last 4 months I've been working on my original idea with a couple of cool friends, who had some awesome connections.

Now, after several lines of code, learning technologies that were new to me and designing and thinking up the overall concept; I have 1.0 ready. Talking with these selected friends about sound world, music, games – doing what I love: designing a game ... a new kind of game. All this, although the idea is very simple and like all apps, it has a story behind it.

One night I was in bed, having a hard time falling asleep. My first born Rufus was sleeping next to my wife. I was thinking how could I possibly make an application that would interest other people. Then I started to think about what was missing in my life. My thoughts travelled somehow to last summer and I remembered how much I ran while developing my first application (NoMole Problems!) and how much it helped the actual developing part to do some sports. Running, that's it. I like to run. What would make me run?

Suddenly a myriad of potential stories and visuals, like an epileptic attack come to my mind: somebody's running from something scary; a ghost, a monster ... basically whatever you could think of! The scene in the new Star Trek-movie where Kirk is being chased by that weird alien monster on an icy planet went through my head, it continues with all the scenes from Cloverfield. Then it hit me. This needs to be done. Paranoid was on it's way in becoming reality.

I clumsily talked with a couple of friends about it, who immediately understood the potential. Jyrki Poutanen said we should do it with zombies. Brilliant. That's exactly what we should do it with. And we did it. Notice: WE. What I did there was smart. I could've done this application alone, right? Wrong, dead wrong. Technically, yes, but to get it actually interesting and cool – that's when you need a bunch of other people. Jason Ramsey (Jyrki's friend) became our voice talent. The also talented Panu Aaltio provided the original score, a 5-step tensing cinematic music. Although parts of this Dead Escape-theme for Paranoid were done autonomously, Jyrki deserves to be called the director of Dead Escape.

I developed a platform, put it all together, gave it a name and did the graphics and illustrations.

We're going to make more themes. Not just zombies. Not that that isn't a really brilliant idea, but we're not done yet. Reality based gaming, hmh, maybe this'll go somewhere. It's not like this is the first idea, but it's so simple that I believe it might go somewhere. As long as we keep on developing it.

http://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/paranoid/id435366570

Something's Afoot

2011-05-11T23:16:00.000+03:00

Future without Skynet

2011-04-21T11:18:00.003+03:00

Tony the Toothfairy / Character Design / iPad Drawing

2010-12-30T08:08:00.003+02:00

Tony the Toothfairy uses pliers to pull out teeth from his victims after drugging them. Go ahead, make a comment about his weight or ask about the scar. Done completely with my finger and iPad + Autodesk Sketchbook App.

iPad Finger-Painting

2010-12-20T02:07:00.001+02:00

I made this with my finger and my somewhat new iPad + Autodesk Sketchbook for the iPad. I have to say, it is fun. More fun than I had thought it would be.

99 cont. Character Study

2010-11-15T23:52:00.000+02:00

99

2010-11-14T20:31:00.002+02:00

Astroman

2010-11-11T11:26:00.001+02:00

Decided to do some 3D-animation.

Happy Birthday Nicholas

2010-10-23T03:29:00.000+03:00

Shiing

2010-10-16T21:24:00.004+03:00

So after leaving Taivas, I started a company. My goal is to make and sell games, while I sell my skills to other companies. Right now I'm concentrating on iOS. If you're wondering why SHIING, then check out the embedded video. Or check out my company's site, or like the Facebook-page.

http://www.shiing.net/

NoMole Problems! Gameplay

2010-09-30T16:59:00.007+03:00

NoMole Problems!

2010-09-28T23:31:00.003+03:00

So I finished and got my first iPhone game approved. It's pretty amazing to me. Especially now that for at least one day, I've been 7th / 8th on the Top Paid iPhone Games-chart in the Finnish iTunes and 4th on the Top Paid iPhone Arcade Apps-chart. Now it's pretty much a childhood dream in a way to be on the same list as Capcom's Mega Man II and so close to it.

I'm happy and humbly satisfied by the fact that I could pull this off. Pull what off? Well, learning Objective-C and making a game that people actually like to play.

I'll open up the design process and other stuff on this iPhone game, but for now I'm just going to post the screenshots and a link to it. It's cheap. Costs only 79¢ (in euros) and 99¢ (in dollars). So if you have an iOS device (specifically an iPhone or iPod Touch), consider buying it.

Was it worth quitting my day job, form a one-man company and start making games on the side of everything else? Yes. Yes, it was.

Here's the link to the US iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nomole-problems/id393741037

and to the Finnish: http://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/nomole-problems/id393741037

First iPhone Application / Kekkonen

2010-09-03T09:16:00.000+03:00

For the birthday of Urho Kekkonen (would have turned 110 this year, if he would've not passed away in 1986) me and Köln Media designed a coin toss-app for the iPhone. Our client (more so Köln's client) was none other than Mint of Finland. The idea is to let the great leader of Finland to decide for you, by tossing his 25th presidential anniversary coin (yes, he was the president of Finland for 25 years) ...

For a first app, this was pretty cool. Also exciting in the sense that I sent it to Apple a week and a half before the deadline (today). It took them little bit less than a week to approve it.

Get it for yourself.

Monkeys

2010-08-30T15:53:00.000+03:00

A Fawking Life Saver

2010-08-16T01:06:00.000+03:00

iPhone Distribution Build Cheat Sheet by John Muchov.

Baba-animation

2010-08-04T21:20:00.008+03:00

For More Professional Reference / Portfolio

2010-08-04T17:52:00.000+03:00

I made a Behance-portfolio of my so far and recent (and selected) 2010 works, because people had been requesting a portfolio to show as a reference of my more professional stuff, instead of Star Wars-paintings or other off-topic creations.

Here's the link to the selected array of works I've done recently.

Nice To Know / 99 Notes

2010-07-25T14:44:00.001+03:00

It's comforting to know that some people actually like my paintings (besides my encouraging wife and snooty comment-dry friends). The Chewbacca + Han Solo -painting was apparently liked in some part of the tumblr-community, or ninety-nine notes (= likes / reblogs) says so anyways. Thanks (mainly) to Sundog , Fuck Yeah Han Solo & Justin Rampage. All of them have inspiring stuff on their blogs.

So all this is good, because I intend to sell the paintings at some point. I don't have room for them in this apartment. Too bad though that the possible clientele seems to be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Lightbulb Robot

2010-06-28T10:35:00.001+03:00

Quick concept sketch for a 3D-model.

Freaklancer

2010-06-25T12:39:00.000+03:00

So after 2 years and 9 months in Taivas. I decided to quit. It came to me during my father leave, that I want to leave. To where? Nowhere and everywhere: to be a freelancer.

(Couple of weeks later of my decision I was contacted. Our team had won the PR Gold Lion in Cannes. For a summit project, in which BSAG collected commitments from corporations to save the Baltic Sea ... check out the case study here.

Pretty cool ending for a short career in an advertising agency and an awesome start for my freelancing.)

Improved Baba Yaga

2010-06-22T01:55:00.002+03:00

So I wasn't very pleased the way my first rendition of Baba Yaga turned out. After rechecking it, I made corrections to the legs, but mainly to the face – which was too small to begin with. I also added feathers to the top which she's wearing.

Golden Lion from Cannes

2010-06-22T00:38:00.004+03:00

So just when I thought this year couldn't get any better, me and my team got the Golden Lion from Cannes in the PR-category. The one I did the BSAS-animations for. Holy crap. So I drew a lion. After a bottle of champagne, which I drank almost by myself, since Eliza is still nursing. Holy crap.

The Gunner

2010-06-18T23:31:00.005+03:00

Click on the images to enlarge.

Goblin

2010-06-18T10:27:00.000+03:00

The Thing / Cell

2010-06-14T09:25:00.002+03:00

Super Mario is Missing!

2010-06-02T23:28:00.001+03:00

Identity for Silverskin

2010-05-30T01:17:00.001+03:00

Identity / logo + typelogo for Silverskin.

Weird Mucin

2010-05-27T23:10:00.001+03:00

This 3D-sculpture and model was done with Blender alone. I used modifiers to get the low-poly shape into a nice twirl and then applied them, and sculpted a little bit. Final color correction was done in Photoshop.

Electron microscope-action

2010-05-27T20:52:00.003+03:00

This was 3D-sculpted and rendered with the combination of ZBrush & Blender. The final composition, effects and color correction I did with Photoshop.

Newborn

2010-05-23T09:51:00.000+03:00

Here's an image I drew of the nurse handling my son. I drew it while staying at the hospital over night with my wife.

Boxer / ZBrush

2010-05-16T00:53:00.005+03:00

I had fun with ZBrush again. What makes this interesting is that I made no sketches, just modeled straight away.

Alchemy Sketching

2010-05-14T20:03:00.002+03:00

Good Blender 2.5 Smoke Tutorial

2010-05-14T14:20:00.002+03:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXcdP01qRk

Node a Problem

2010-05-13T00:17:00.000+03:00

ZBrushing Again

2010-05-10T21:59:00.001+03:00

Defocus in Blender

2010-05-10T13:58:00.003+03:00

Superman

2010-05-07T17:25:00.006+03:00

New Mecha

2010-05-06T17:00:00.002+03:00

Walker Mark 2

2010-05-05T16:00:00.000+03:00

Mecha Walker/Gunner /w Pilot

2010-05-05T15:10:00.004+03:00

Bird of Prey

2010-05-04T16:13:00.003+03:00

ZBrush

2010-05-04T10:32:00.004+03:00

So I bought Pixologic's ZBrush. After an hour of watching tutorials, I went home from work and pulled this off:

Just a quick 3D-sketch type of thing. I pulled this off with the MBP's mousepad.

The Escape

2010-05-02T14:33:00.002+03:00

Blegh. I need to start working harder on this drawing-skill.

Zombie / Quick Metro Sketch

2010-05-02T00:05:00.003+03:00

Did this with iPhone between Kulosaari and Kaisaniemi.

Lorraine Baines McFly

2010-05-01T19:58:00.002+03:00

The DeLorean / Back To The Future

2010-05-01T19:51:00.001+03:00

Making a mesh

2010-04-23T09:36:00.000+03:00

Some quickly meshed up thingy, after a breaking a hard day's GUI-sweat.

Sub-surfing in Blender. What.

Soundwave & Random Guy Finished

2010-04-18T21:08:00.001+03:00

Done.

"Look at That Idiot Dancing Infront of Soundwave"

2010-04-18T14:17:00.003+03:00

Soundwave slowly appearing.

Foreground Dancer for Soundwave, Dancing Badly

2010-04-17T22:28:00.000+03:00

Soundwave will soon appear into the background.

Pregnant Woman

2010-04-16T23:11:00.005+03:00

The color amounts on the iPhone are not enough for this. But I'll post a better one later. Sketches below, I first sketched then had a model and then sketched again ...

Lonely Robot

2010-04-16T19:47:00.004+03:00

Uimahalli

2010-04-16T12:58:00.000+03:00

There are moments in life one can remember for a lifetime. Mine is from childhood. In that moment I'm running away from an imaginary robot with my friend. I can smell the wet asphalt and all that matters is being friends. There is nothing else.

Bridge / Trying to Get Inspired

2010-04-13T15:22:00.003+03:00

This kind of stuff today.

Pacifico

2010-04-13T12:26:00.001+03:00

Type Repeat Repeat

2010-04-13T10:43:00.000+03:00

After experimenting for a while I can state the obvious: the optimal amount of hand-drawn animation-cells for an "idle-loop" is three. Two is too little and four is a waste of time and might give too much direction for a stand-still animation. For a calm loop the frame rate should be 12 on the animation (even if it's exported as 25 fps). P stands for production time.

I used this rule on the above by-hand-traced type and then put them on a timeline in After Effects.

Girl + Robot, once again

2010-04-12T11:35:00.000+03:00

A Random Warmup / iPhone Drawing

2010-04-08T23:02:00.002+03:00

iTracer / iPhone 3D App

2010-04-08T13:04:00.006+03:00

So while eyeing through 3D World, they had a review on some apps you can use to make 3D-type stuff with your iPhone. I decided to try one of them, the iTracer. The mesh creating range is quite limited, but with a little bit of creativity (and I suppose old school 3D-thinking would take one far too) you can utilize the extrusion / revolution options. The mesh above I modeled really quickly on the iPhone.

The material was easy to make too. Here's a pic of the app running (the pen is for Wacom Cintiq, not for the iPhone):

Quite handy I must admit, it took me about 5 minutes (I could've been faster) – after few attempts – to do all that and learn how to use the UI.

Optimus Prime / Digital Enhancement

2010-04-07T16:03:00.001+03:00

So after painting it with the acrylics, I did some Sketchbooking and Photoshopping to it. Only some pen art, more so color definition and enhancement.

Optimus Prime

2010-04-07T00:01:00.000+03:00

Styled straight from the 80's. Acrylics on canvas again.

Han Solo & Chewbacca

2010-04-04T22:52:00.001+03:00

Pastel & Photoshop Girl

2010-04-04T16:56:00.001+03:00

This drawing is a couple of months old. I first used soft pastels and pen to create the drawing and then adjusted some colors afterwards and added those silly splatters in Photoshop.

Darth Invader

2010-04-02T23:28:00.001+03:00

I had the chance to fool around with acrylics again, after getting canvases for a bargain from my colleague. I'll post a better picture later.

Woman with Umbrella

2010-03-31T15:23:00.000+03:00

Thumbs / Quick Sketch

2010-03-31T10:20:00.002+03:00

A Guy With a Knife

2010-03-30T16:11:00.004+03:00

Sour Face / Brush testing

2010-03-30T11:48:00.005+03:00

Just a quick test while waiting the Canon to purge itself.

Super Mario Time!

2010-03-29T23:19:00.001+03:00

Something from the office brainstorming board.

Cosmos

2010-03-29T15:44:00.000+03:00

He disappeared somewhere between the light and the dark, taking only the necessary along.

Tiger and a Baboon for Some Project

2010-03-29T11:15:00.002+03:00

Here's a couple of images I used as reference while drawing this thing: Tomak (wikipedia), Olive (wikipedia) ...

A Pixelated Drawing

2010-03-26T20:17:00.002+02:00

Woman

2010-03-23T16:05:00.000+02:00

Metalman

2010-03-22T17:49:00.002+02:00

He is metalman. He was born in 35 minutes.

Crappy Mecha Sketch

2010-03-20T19:02:00.000+02:00

Did this piece of whatever with the Cintiq 12" portable.

Last Stand sketchup

2010-03-19T14:50:00.002+02:00

Tooth Stone / Stupid bi-lingual joke

2010-03-18T15:24:00.001+02:00

Explosions

2010-03-17T21:31:00.001+02:00

Did I hear you say explosions? For free? Why, yes:

http://www.detonationfilms.com

And for some you can even pay for. This'll be perfect for one of my projects in which I considered using 3D generated explosions ... maybe I'll just mash some of these together and create something new instead of tweaking parameters (as fun as that is).

This one was my favorite: http://www.detonationfilms.com/UnitK-7.html

Armored Suit

2010-03-17T11:19:00.003+02:00

Going 80's – strongly.

MOS-guy

2010-03-11T17:31:00.003+02:00

So this guy is my new found hero. And above is a semi-quickly drawn image of him.

Why? Well, probably because my dad was into to the same stuff he was: MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor). Yeah, sure the "my dad"-excuse. The fact remains that he pushed me into the computer world and I wouldn't be nearly as savvy with this tech-shit without him.

Chuck Peddle was the main designer of the MOS Technology (a company logically named after the method of making these chips) 6502 microprocessor; the KIM-1 SBC; and its successor the Commodore PET personal computer, both based on the 6502.

I've been reading this book about it.

Wikipedia further on explains:

"The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1976, which was priced at 15% as much as an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple I, Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Atari 8-bit computers, and BBC Micro from Acorn Computers."

Surprised?

I feel like I owe a lot to this person. And the only way to show it is respect.

Some Duke

2010-03-09T22:45:00.001+02:00

Tried out the portable Cintiq with my laptop.

Sketching Away

2010-03-09T18:08:00.002+02:00

Met the President and Prime Minister Shortly Yesterday ...

2010-03-05T14:54:00.002+02:00

... with my buddies from Taivas.

We were invited to this special get together with people from BSAG and the Foreign Ministry. These people thanked especially the identity, which Gregoiré had made and I got some good feedback from the Foreign Ministry people of my animations, which were shown in-between speeches at the Summit.

The president mentioned Taivas and said "Nice fishes." ...

That's hard to top, even for a French guy who drew some "nice fishes".

Some random graphics

2010-02-18T13:14:00.002+02:00

More pencil

2010-02-12T17:42:00.000+02:00

Other weirdos

2010-02-11T17:35:00.001+02:00

Happy Mushroom

2010-02-11T17:31:00.003+02:00

Some Sketching

2010-02-11T16:24:00.001+02:00

I drew this casually while watching The Thing.

Live Drawing Class

2010-02-11T16:21:00.001+02:00

Had some fun drawing these at the hall of art.

My animations ended up in the YLE-news

2010-02-11T10:32:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I was visiting the Baltic Sea Action Summit and saw prime minister Putin, the King of Sweden, president Halonen and some other important heads of states from the Baltic. And they got to see (read were forced to watch) animated infomercials about the state and future of the Baltic Sea. I heard that some of them laughed.

The animations were also mentioned in at least two of the major TV-channels (YLE and MTV3) as follows in YLE-news "the commitments were illustrated with fun, yet informative animations" ...

Here's a link to the their areena-pages, where you can watch the news-broadcast during the next 30 days.

Fun stuff, huh?

Illustrations in the Stores

2010-02-08T14:09:00.004+02:00

So I had the chance to illustrate a couple of packages and make some type design to them ... and give the suggestions for the product names, though the alien character didn't end up having the name I suggested, but it did end up having the story I wrote for it. Luckily I had fun with the illustrations and character designs.

For the Herkkumonsteri's (= Delicacy Monster) I used Illustrator mainly, but for the Keksinautti (= Cookienaut) I used Blender and Photoshop.

But anyways, they hit the stores (and there's more coming), and this is what they look like in their final packaging:

Even more fun is the fact that now their in the stores all around Finland. Good exposure.

Don't Brawl in the West

2010-01-29T11:05:00.000+02:00

Brushes / Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile

2010-01-25T23:16:00.001+02:00

I found the brushes panel. Well, I guess better sooner than later.

Greg's Dream

2010-01-23T20:53:00.000+02:00

Flashy Time: Dirty.fi

2010-01-22T18:46:00.001+02:00

Simple stuff, but somewhat fun challenge. I got the original poster image and layout, after which I dumped them together after pushing some waves through Blender (not completely happy with this yet, I'm going to make some splashes and bubbles into this one) and hashing it all together in After Effects and then putting it in Flash.

Simple stuff ... decided finally to switch to Actionscript 3 completely. Had enough of the old stuff. And I can say that I feel happier, sort of.

http://www.dirty.fi

Waves

2010-01-21T17:14:00.002+02:00

No Bogus Criteria / Yafaray + Blender

2010-01-20T23:08:00.000+02:00

It's wonderful and irritating at the same time to figure something out that makes things nicer. Why didn't I use Yafaray before?