ROCKETpaperscissors

Dizzywood Concept Art

When we're showing off Dizzywood to investors and the press, we often get praise for the visual look and feel. That is of course made possible by the talented group of illustrators and engineers we have on the team. Through their efforts, we're able to render everything in our 3D world, and yet preserve a hand-drawn style that gives Dizzywood its unique look and feel.

All of that starts with the concept artwork produced by Jake Parker, an accomplished artist that we have been working with since the very early days of the company. Ken and I had followed Jake's work over the years, particularly the stories he did in Flight, a highly imaginative collection of comics from independent authors.

Jake and Ken work closely together to get the concepts for Dizzywood's characters, scenes and general look and feel. Jake sketches out everything the good old fashioned way, using paper and pencil, and then scans his work for us to view online. Our team of illustrators take over from there, using Jake's work as inspiration for the final line drawings that they produce for the web site.

Jake is an incredibly talented artist, and we love showcasing the work he's done for us. In fact, we took one of his original sketches and used it "as is" for the current look of the Dizzywood.com home page. I've included a few more examples of his work here for you to see.

In addition to the work he's done here at Dizzywood, Jake works full-time at BlueSky Studios making films like Dr Seuss's Horton Hears a Who and another Ice Age movie. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children. You can see more of his work on his website at agent44.com.

We're in public beta

We've officially opened the doors to the public beta of Dizzywood.com with our press release this morning. As I've mentioned before in this blog, the funny thing about creating a virtual world is that you're never done. There's always more features to develop, content to add, more bugs to fix. But we've reached a point at which we feel our beta is substantial enough to widen our circle beyond the small group of early play-testers that have been involved in the private testing to date. We're both excited and anxious to show it to everyone interested in taking a look.

If you've got kids of your own, or nieces and nephews in the 8-12 age range, please let them know about Dizzywood. We'd be thrilled to have them join us.

Of course, a big round of thanks needs to go out our play-testers--a great group of kids who gave us some great insight and feedback as we designed and built Dizzywood. Thank you, guys!

We'll be on GigaOm TV

Sean and I taped an appearance yesterday morning for the GigaOm web-based TV show. We were invited on to give a demo of Dizzywood. Om and Joyce were great hosts and we definitely appreciated the opportunity to show off Dizzywood to Om's audience.

We're still working out when the webcast will be published--it will either be this Thursday or sometime next week, depending on how it fits together with the rest of the segments that Om and Joyce were taping.

A side note, I got to meet Dan Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs. He taped an interview right ahead of us.

More superpowers revealed

We're still adding "superpowers" to Dizzywood. The basic idea is that you need to visit a certain place or acomplish some specific task to acquire the power. Then you'll be able to use it anywhere. Here's a very short video that demonstrates invisibility being acquired in the mysterious ruins of Tanglevine Jungle.

New Names

Our biggest news is that we now have not one, but TWO new names.

Our company name is now Rocket Paper Scissors, LLC. Previously, our company and prdouct name were one and the same (Zoodaloo). Although we're obviously only focused on one product right now (more on that later), we ultimately felt that having the company name be different would open up some options for growth in the future. Plus, we simply liked the name.

We're still working on thinking up a snazzy new tagline to go with that. Sean suggested, Rocket beats everything, which we all got a kick out of.

The product name, formerly Zoodaloo, is now Dizzywood (they both currently point to the same web page). We really liked Zoodaloo, but there were a few problems with it. We felt that Dizzywood would help us stand out a bit more and it provides a stronger sense of place, which is really what we're all about. Kudos go out to Eat My Words for helping us dream up the new name.

We're working furiously on updating the web site and application, and the new name should roll out soon--just in time for the full public launch of the web site.

I'm flying!

We've begun to roll out superpowers in play-testing. Here's a quick video of levitation in action.

Virtual Worlds Conference

A bunch of us attended the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose last week. It's really amazing to see how much progress has been made in the space in the past year. Attendance to the event was pretty significant, and there were a lot of press and investors in attendance.

Here's News.com's write-up of the event.

Playtesting Begins

zoodaloo20071009a, originally uploaded by scotta.

We started our invite-only playtesting today. Here's a screenshot of a few of us standing in Presto's Grove--the first area you see when you arrive in the world.

The funny thing about creating a virtual world is that you're never done. We're really excited about how far we've come along, and very proud to unveil the world to our first playtesters. But we're also looking ahead to all the very cool content we plan to add in the next few days, weeks, and months.

Presto and Chanjo

Presto and Chanjo, originally uploaded by scotta.

After I just posted that last bit of concept art, I thought it might be nice to provide a sneak peek at some of the final, colored line art that our incredibly talented team is producing. Big props for this one go to Bret, who has been working hard on bringing some of the characters of Zoodaloo to life on the screen.

Concept Art: Salty Sea Dog Tavern

Concept Art: Salty Sea Dog Tavern, originally uploaded by scotta.

I realized that I haven't posted any concept art in a while, so I thought I'd add this image. We're getting close to live play-testing next week, and I will post some actual screenshots of the world soon.