2D and 3D Environmental Artists

We are looking for Environmental artists who

• - Love the 2.5D style and can make things look vast, endless,  and magical.
• - Have the ability to model and texture low poly basic shapes from reference images, with a good eye for shape and design.

Community Manager

The ideal community manager:

• - Is an internet power-user and knows how to multitask x 1000.
• - Knows how to communicate effectively through all the social media channels.
• - Is the most active member of the graFighters community that knows how to schedule and plan events/contests/tournaments that rock.
• - Considers themselves a people person.

2D Animators

An awesome graFighters animator would:

• - Be comfortable with rigs in Maya and working in an environment limited to 2D.
• - Have no problem playing Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat, and watching old kung fu movies or WWF replays for inspiration.
• - Pay very close attention to detail and enjoy the responsibility of bringing life to all graFighters.

Interface Designers

The ideal candidate would go something like this:

• -Has a great sense of overall App and Web Design, including current trends and understand the user experience and flow.
• - Has no fear of a bajilliion+ layers in Photoshop.
• - Is always looking to improve a design.
• - Feels that they can visually achieve and expand on the graFighters brand.
• - Is familiar with working collaboratively on a  design with a team.

Drawers

If you like drawing, no matter the skill level, we would love to have you. GraFighters is all about self expression through art and sometimes drawing cool things makes everything all better. Bring your ideas and your creativity to our office at the Syracuse Tech Garden. Come try it.

We will be offering both paid and non-paid internships and part time positions. We are also really flexible with people who want to work remotely. Email work samples to dave@grafighters.com and include the title of the job your are applying for! Also be real, tell us how you think you can help make grafighters more awesome. You’re better than generic cover letters, don’t do that.

So you see, we used to have this plan. We were going to take some time using what we had learned to, ya know, revamp our core game mechanics, tweak our animation engine, finish our apps, and add layers upon layers of polish. In short, we were going to make graFighters ready to launch. The plan was to have this happen within 3 months.

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan.

On Tuesday morning CNN posted a video about graFighters they had filmed at SXSW. We remembered filming the video and had been in contact with them, but we were not sure when/if the video would air and to what extent. We really didn’t know what to expect from it.

That same Tuesday, I awoke and noticed our user number had risen significantly from the previous day. It wasn’t until about an hour later we found the video on CNN. The video was followed by an article which included a link and eventually ended up on the homepage of CNN.com.

Our server quickly hit a bottleneck due to the traffic, yet as we scrambled to fix the problem (hooray NewRelic!) the story got picked up by Kotaku. Over the next few days we watched as we signed up well over 100 users an hour as graFighters spread throughout the interwebs.

CNN
http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/11/grafighters-a-game-that-brings-your-drawings-to-life/

Kotaku
http://kotaku.com/grafighters/

PocketNext
http://www.pocketnext.com/news/grafighters-plucked-from-the-kickstarter-graveyard/

We even got a “review” of grafighters from the Portuguese blog Baixaki!
http://baixaki.com.br/download/grafighters.htm

At the time of writing this blog post, graFighters has over

The response has been awesome, and we are truly amazed at the positivity of our user embrace from using a half done product. Even in its current beta state, you guys have managed to create some amazing things on graFighters over the past few days.

What’s to come?

A New Game
A whole new set of game mechanics. Each move your character will perform is up to you. Each move has a value and type associated with it along with a chance of an epic bonus.

The Marketplace

Finally a place to spend all your hard earned Ink. Upgrade your moves, add weapons, powers, and even buy/sell new characters.

Mobile App
Full featured iPhone app (with Android to follow) that lets you do everything you can currently do on the site, plus more.

An embedabble module for your character that can be posted anywhere, kinda like this, but it will allow them to do cool moves. (If it’s not loading for you click here and it should load, clearly it’s a work in progress )

That’s just the begining.

How you can help!

We have heard from a bunch of you that you want to help shape this game. How would you like to create your own moves and level backgrounds?

Download the Level Template PSD

PSD version here

JPEG version here

Download the Moves Template FLA (Maya file coming soon)

Move Maker Template File (Requires Flash CS5 or later)

Send all game contributions to dave(at)grafighters(dot)com.

Plain and simple, we want to make the game that gets you excited about playing. We want to be able to bring the crazy things in your imagination to life and collaboratively build them a vast and amazing world to live in.

We know graFighters is still very much in beta and not ready for mass adoption. There are tons of things you are probably wondering about the current game. If you have any ideas or bugs to report be sure to post them to our User Voice page here.

http://grafighters.uservoice.com/forums/108191-ideas

And now what we have is some friendly Q&A.

Why does my character get the stats he gets?
Our Cornelius Algorithm mainly looks at the shape of each part of your character. It is judged on Shape, Spikeyness, Curvature, Mass, Taper etc. Right now the Algorithm is low on strength and high on speed. Don’t worry too much about your score because this will all change. We will be doing a full blog post about it soon.

Why does my character lose? How can I make him better?
It’s not your character’s fault, we swear. Think of this as their training days. It will be over soon, and you will be one step closer to world domination.

What is ink for and why do I want it?
Ink is good. You will be able to spend it soon on things in the game to make everything better. Better start saving!

When can I control my fighter?
Soon, let us know what type of games you want to play with your fighter as well as where you prefer to play them on our user voice page. Side Scroller, FPS, RPG, RTS? Xbox? iOS? Android? OMG!!! All the above!?!?

Why does the Android app crash alot?
There are so many devices! We will be putting out an update shortly that fixes the crashes.

Thank you to everybody for your ridiculous amounts of support.

First and foremost we want to say thank you, to all the people who came by our booth at both GDC and SXSW. It was a super exciting experience for us to hear so much genuine excitement around graFighters.

Hearing things like “you guys have the best game on the floor” and “But Mom! I wanna do it again!” made our day. It felt great when people would spend a majority of their day at our booth asking us questions and perfecting their character, even when alienware had an amazing million dollar booth right next to us. You guys rock.

Over the course of the conferences we recieved hundreds of characters, from 5 year olds to 50 year olds at all different ability levels. We will be sure to do a post that highlights some of our favorites with some honors and awards in a few days once we have time to digest them all.

We are aware that the current version of graFighters has its flaws and we have been listening to your feedback, so by March 31st (give or take a week), we will be launching a brand new version of graFighters. This means new game mechanics, and a game thats easier to get into and more just plain more fun. This also means a new fully functional iPhone app with Android following closely after. We will be doing more blog posts in the future with much more detail on our overall development, our migration to unity3D, game mechanics, and the mobile apps. But in the meantime we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who continues to inspire us everyday to make grafighters more and more awesome.

The app is very simple right now. In fact, it only does one thing, but it does it well! Imagine you had a super special, really really cool personal graFighters camera that was hidden inside your phone. Then, click iPhone or Android and make your dreams come true! The graFighters app is simply a camera utility that allows you to take pictures of your characters and send them directly to your online account, sidestepping the use of any ancient technologies like clunky digital cameras or scanners. Its the fastest possible way to bring your drawings to life!

Next on our to do list was good ole’ Facebook Connect. It just makes sense, plus who doesn’t want do sign up for games and services as easily as possible!? To go along with Facebook Connect we built an invite system so all of you special beta testers can send out invites to your friends. graFighters is “open” for a couple days to let some new people play with the app and see the new updates, but once it shuts back down into private mode the invites will be the only way to gain access until the next round of updates are ready.

Last but not least is the Cornelius makeover. We went all in for this one, messing with both beauty and brains. Instead of doing all his calculations behind the curtain, you can now see him go to work as he analyzes your characters silhouette, overall characteristics, and specific body parts as defined by you. Needless to say, he will always be a work in progress, but this update is definitely a step in the right direction. If you have already uploaded some cool characters but want to run them through the new version of Cornelius all you have to do is click the Edit button on that character’s page in your sketchbook. (Just a heads up, your stat bars will definitely change due to his new found wisdom.)

We would love to get your feedback on everything so feel free to leave a comment on this blog post or give us a rating and/or comment in the App Store or Android Marketplace. Thanks!

Big List of Updates

Health Bars

Finally, the update you have all been asking for! And it was a great suggestion. Now you will know exactly who is winning and how much damage each move does. The cool part is seeing comebacks happen from characters who are barely able to stand.

Big Hit Popups

When a character does a move that is especially powerful, you will see a cool popup with and old school Batman style sound written out. We did an earlier post that showcased all of the different ones. A good friend of ours @boochtunes08 is working on some sweet sound effects to go with these popups, so as soon as we get them done we can add them into the game.

New Fight Web

This is the piece that brings everything together. The new fight web is much more balanced and allows every type of character (damage, strength, toughness, intelligence, or speed) to reach their maximum potential. In the previous version, damage characters were able to perform more powerful moves than other types of characters, which is why you may have noticed that characters with high damage stats (the black bar) seemed to be dominating.

The way the fight web connects with your Cornelius stats is that the higher you character was scored in a particular area, the more powerful moves your character will be able to perform within that category. We are currently working on adding another level of complexity and awesomeness to the fights by allowing characters to go into different states within a fight. These states include offensive strategies like rage mode and combo time, as well as defensive strategies like blocking and counter attacks.

Because the fight web is now more balanced, you may see a shift in your character’s winning and losing habits. So if your character was completely worthless before, it’s probably time to give them a second chance!

It’s important to note though, that Cornelius has the most direct effect on how your character performs. He recently enrolled in some 800 level Image Recognition courses, so it won’t be long before he is ready to put this new knowledge to the test. His update should be happening pretty soon, so we will keep you all posted on that.

Personalized Challenges

Now when you send a challenge to another character you have the option of making it personal, and by that we me do some trash talking! When your opponent receives the challenge they will see whatever tastefully chosen fighting words you decided to send them. Lets keep it clean though! Well… cleanish.

General Bug Fixes and Speediness 

As usual, there are always bugs to clean up so we have been getting after them as much as possible. Please keep posting them in the user voice section when you come across one! You may have noticed how slow the loading of the characters had gotten in the “graFighters” section where you can browse and search for them, and we are happy to announce that it is now fast again! It might not sound like a big change, but it really does make a big difference.

Shareable Fights and Character Pages

We think this update is a pretty cool one that will play a big role when we make the leap from private to public beta. The reason we are excited about this is because making all of the cool experiences that users are having on the site shareable to other like-minded people with help graFighters extend its reach to thousands of new doodlers who can bring their talents to our battlefields.

And Some Cool Stuff Because It’s Friday

Funky Feet
“He’s gonna punch yo…or kick…hue…well he’s gonna hurt ya…badly… mad emotion.”
Crafted by: el-luco

It’s really hard to describe how funny this character is to fight against, so you are just going to have to challenge him yourself. It reminds me a lot of Eddie Gordo from Tekken, and the breakdance fighting scene from Zoolander.

Girrafenator
“Fear the almighty Girrafenator and his secret weapon… the Dirty Hobo!”
Crafted by: PimpIA

I’ve been laughing about this character for 2 days now. No, it’s not a drawing per se, but it’s still hilarious. The Girrafenator is also 31 and 6 right now so I’d say Cornelius likes him too.

This might be a bold statement, but the lineup of students and ideas from the NYTM last night could rival, if not demolish, the demos from any incubator or conference as of late. A huge round of applause goes out to everyone that was involved, including special shout outs to Jessica Lawrence who helped us prepare, and LoCreep, Ad Runner, and Imaginary Marching Band for having such cool demos. Best of luck to you all (and pretty much everyone else who wasn’t mentioned, because it was really, really impressive).

The entire event was filmed so if you weren’t able to make it, you won’t be missing out. If you want to jump straight to the graFighters demo you can go to the 28:15ish mark.

NYTech Meetup November 2, 2011 from NY Tech Meetup on Vimeo.

If you were at the meetup and want to take us up on our special invite to the private beta, you can sign up for an account and mention #NYTM in the reason why you want to play graFighters. The invites should be going out within the next day or two, we just have to make a few minor tweeks to some of the cool new updates first! (More on those in the next post!)

Thanks again everyone from the NYTM crew. Job well done!

Conveniently, taking real life twitter feuds and expressing them through 2D characters is one of our specialties.

So here it is, Fred Wilson Vs Dennis Crowley. http://www.grafighters.com/raisecache.php

You can read more about the event on  Fred Wilson’s Blog and Techcrunch. All proceeds go to HackNY.

Thanks to Rebecca, Brian, Alexis, and Kane. This event is going to seriously rock.

http://www.raisecache.com

First thing I did was buy 8 different batman comics, ranging from old to slightly new. I wanted power to be a slightly stereotypical and out of a comic. Mostly thinking if someone got punched in the face super hard.

Toughness was probably my favorite to work on. Say any of these sounds out loud and I start to laugh. Inspired by Gertrude, an old big tough character, and pillow fights.

Speed was inspired by bullets and lightning. I feel speed is about that fast lead into you getting a beat down and not even knowing it til you wake up in the hospital.

Damage was interesting because it wasn’t about contact or the playing laying down the moves, it’s about the one who’s getting stabbed. It’s the noises one makes when he or she gets a bunch of puncture wounds.

Intelligence was the hardest one. I was distracted by the other sounds, that I originally came up with a zzzrt kind of sound, based of lazers and ‘technology.’ But these are much better and not surround by weird stars.

All colors are drawn from the badges. Sound effects are always a fun thing to work on, granted you seem crazy to everyone else when you’re whispering strange noises over and over again….

Beast Mode

ROBO DESTROYER
“KIIIIIIIILLLL!!!”
Crafted by: BingoBango

Yup, that just happened… 54 times. ROBO DESTROYER, with 54 Wins and 0 Losses, may be a lot of things, but one thing he isn’t is a liar. By the looks of it, ROBO DESTROYER must have fought Cyclops from X-Men, destroyed him (obviously), then visited his local optometrist to have the one slightly cool thing about Cyclops surgically attached to his face. Boom roasted! Who’s next!?

Not So Beast Mode

Shaolin Cucumber
“Open your fridge and he’s all like HIYYAAAAA!”
Crafted by: PaperGagnsta

Missing from the description is the part about how after he yells “HIYYAAAAA!” he yells “BYEYAAAAA!” and scurries out of the kitchen and into the living room where he attempts to hide, but ususally gets stuck going under the couch, or picked up by the dog. 3 Wins and 23 Losses, c’mon man!

Fan Favorite

HipstarusMaximus
“So chill he didn’t even feel the ice age.”
Crafted by: Ink_machine

Always going against the crowd “doin his thang”, HipstarusMaximus decided he wasn’t too cool for school when he was just a youngster. In fact, HipstarusMaximus has learned just about everything there is to know about fashion and fighting as his both his fedora and solid record of 22 Wins and 11 Losses suggest. Having a reasonably successful street-fighting career never looked so good!

Artists Of The Week

mish
“Napoleon 2.0″
With an army of shorties ready to roll, you’re doing big things with some little dudes. Seriously the collective height of all your characters is probably waist high on an average graFighter. P.S. It’s awesome!

Waterwood
“The Iron Chef”
Between the character made completely of saw blades and the deliciously constructed, yet not exactly great at fighting Salamisamari, “The Iron Chef” seems like an extremely fitting nickname. Also, tell the Musclesam family we said hello.

 Staff Pics

Whale Lord
“Using the best of whale technology, Whale Lord has made a battlesuit to wage war on the surface land. He can’t move his face, but he knows your fear. He knows.”
Crafted by: aid001

Bond
“he means business”
Crafted by: mish

Salamisamurai
“Watashi wa sarami no ryshu ni watashi no chsei o chikau.”
Crafted by: Waterwood

Cool Things That Happened Multiple Times

Characters with really long yelling sounds for names:
Buuulllaahahahaa and HUSAWWWWWWWWWW

Sea Creatures

Week 3 Stats

Characters Uploaded: 537
Challenges Sent: 5125

Stuff In The Works

Some of you may have noticed the seemingly unstoppable forces propelling characters to crazy records (AOH Man, cough cough) along with a couple others. We have been asked a lot of questions like “How do I get better?” or “How can I learn more about the system?”. We are excited to start unveiling some of those other dimensions to the game, but before we do, there are some updates we are currently working on to several pieces of this puzzle.

We will keep up to date with the progress being made, but in the mean time here are some things you can look forward to:

A more balanced fight web which will give all 5 types of characters an equal chance of going on crazy winning streaks and doing a full range of awesome moves.

Greatly improved shape recognition so that even the smallest details you have put into your drawings get analyzed by Cornelius.

Health bars, more deadly moves, different status effects for you characters during a fight like rage mode and combo attacks.

Basically all of these things are related to one another and are part of an intricate system, so when it’s ready it will be a massively epic update!

Rising Star

Pan Andy
“Cyborg Panda. All he wants is a hug.”
Crafted by: JHC

If the fights were based solely on intimidation factor Pan Andy could officially park himself at the top of the leaderboard. This terrifying combination of panda and titanium lures you uncomfortably close then shreds your face. It’s probably the subtle classiness that comes from the top hat and bow tie that makes you think he can be trusted. However, with a record of 35 wins and 6 losses he must have some kind of weakness. We just don’t know what it is yet. Can we please find this guy a worthy opponent!?

Current Leaderboard

Fallen Hero

Pixel bob
“The only eyeball that is made of blocks, Bob dreams of being a doll factory worker.”
Crafted by: abledbody

Pixel bob got off to a hot start racking up 28 wins and just 3 losses in only a few days time, but since that sprint of domination he has gone missing from the activity feed. Bob, if you’re still out there… give us a sign! It’s possible that you completely exhausted yourself and need a few days to recover, or maybe you saw a commercial for Clear Eyes starring the one and only Ben Stein and decided to walk down to the pharmacy to get that crazy looking retina taken care of.

Most Popular

Trogdor
“Burninating the countryside”
Crafted by: PaperGangsta

Clearly a lover not a fighter, this ancient internet relic of the early 2000′s has taken a break from burninating the countryside to put those consummate V’s to the test in the ring. With a record of 0 wins and 7 losses his fire might not pack as much heat as it used to, but his sleek frame made from an “s” shape with a slightly different “s” shape is just as enjoyable as ever.

Top Users

el-luco
“The Tree Slayer”
Already on your second page of the sketchbook!? Nicely done el-luco, we would love to see characters like ludicrous head being uploaded all day long.

Jigsaw
“The Collector”
Ok, we get it. You still have an awesome collection of action figures that make for really sweet grafighters… and you are good at drawing. Well done sir.

IceCreamSandwich
“IceCreamShakespeare”
Top 3 reasons you are the most poetic fighter in the graFighters kingdom. 1. “Schmogasborgathon of tastiness” 2. Visible Nipples “The invisible-Man’s nearly invisible cousin.” 3. “the California Pimp Slap”

Staff Picks

After much debate, these are the characters who ended the week at the top of our list:

Moustachio
“After the death of his brother, the guy from the Pringles can, Moustachio set out to avenge his death. Losing face in the process.”
Crafted by: doodlesofdestruction

ManBearPig
“Elusive like a pig.”
Crafted by: IceCreamSandwich

dr. Bubbles
“fun fact: great with mayo”
Crafted by: el-luco

Noticeable Trends

ManBearPigs, Mustaches, America (needless to say it was an awesome week)

Site Updates

Footer
Change Log
2 new levels:

Stats After Week 2

Characters Uploaded: 457
Challenges Sent: 4264

Summary

To be completely honest, the Noticeable Trends section pretty much summed up the week. A ton of facial hair, the map of the united states with flexing coastlines, and multiple man/bear/pig concoctions. We can’t wait to see what week 3 has in store for us!

Yesterday concluded the first week of graFighters beta testing. With it being the first time we have ever opened up our game for anyone outside of the graFighters inner circle, we were really excited to see what kind of response it would receive. The official welcome to graFighters email was sent just around midnight last Monday and within 20 minutes the characters started pouring in. It ended up being a late night for our team, not because we were cracking down on new bugs, but because it was even more fun than anticipated to upload our own drawings and try and take down the characters of our first beta testers.

With this post the graFighters team would like to honor the characters and artists who created the most buzz through Week 1.

Top Fighter aka: The Champ

AOH MAN
“AAAAAAAOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH, man.”
Crafted by: locomo

Without a doubt the most victorious character thus far in the graFighters world is AOH MAN. Touting an outstanding record of 134 wins and 1 loss AOH MAN is seemingly unstoppable. As his articulate character description may suggest, he hasn’t climbed the ranks quietly either. Seemingly unfamiliar with the word modesty, AOH MAN is almost as good at trash talking as he is at winning fights.  And while other characters on the site may look at him as a villain, we say what good game would be complete without one!?

Other Notables

Worst Fighter aka: The Chump

Frostbite
The barbarian penguin is back. He is 2000 years old.
Crafted by: PaperGangsta

Winning this weeks award for worst fighter (in almost as convincing a fashion as AOH MAN) is Frostbite who has tallied up an abysmal record of 5 wins and 73 losses. Even more unflattering than his record may be the 3 pats on the back he gave himself in the comments section. Maybe he has seen “Rudy” one too many times or just genuinely likes taking a beating, but either way his endless challenges to newly uploaded characters have become something of a welcome to graFighters gift basket, complete with a first victory and the probable false sense of confidence that comes from unknowingly beating the worst character in the game. Frostbite… we thank you for your generosity.

Most Popular

Ink Dink
“When Inkdink heard that graFighters was released, he grabbed the four nearest objects and rushed into the fight! Nothing says “I got this!” like icecream.”
Crafted by: UmbrellaExile

What’s not to love about this disheveled ball of scribbles? He’s kind of like that oddly sympathetic, evil mastermind who plans never work out. With 2 wins and 16 losses, this little guy is all bark and no bite, but the likes and comments don’t lie. Inkdink… get yourself cleaned up, you’ve just be named the most popular character of the week!

Top Users

ruggedboy12
“One Man Wolf Pack”
Maybe you could let us in on your secrets to mastering the uploading process. Seriously, how did you make those butt cheeks so good at grappling moves? And if there were any players with foot phobia you have surely scared them away.

ThornB123
“The Fearless Feminista”
Somehow you managed to pull off two of the sites most outrageous characters (Anne and Kawaii Uggs) in a tasteful manner. Oddly they even add to the elegance to your collection of alluring and undeniably cool drawings.

Leo_Crow
“The Michelangelo of MS Paint”
From smiling sea captains to “fruity” men in tights, your throwback, 16 bit style, is an inspiration for us all.

Staff Picks

When it comes to straight up impressing us here at the graFighters headquarters no characters did it better than these two:

rugged foot
“will take socks off for jelly doughnut!”
Crafted by: ruggedboy12

DudeOnHam
“This dude rides a mean ham. He doesn’t wear pants. He has a red hat and blue eyes. When he rides up on his ham, chicks drop like slinkys. What did you do today?”
Crafted by: blingblangblong

Noticeable Trends

Robots, Bananas, and Dubstep

Popular Requests

More levels and HP bars

Week 1 Stats

Characters Uploaded: 376
Challenges Sent: 3,447

Summary

Without a doubt this has been the best week we have ever had here at the graFighters headquarters. As many of you know the product has been in development (sometimes more slowly than others) for the past 2 years, so it has been so much fun to share it with all of the talented doodlers who have been eagerly waiting its arrival. There has been a lot of positive and constructive feedback provided so far and we want to keep it coming. Please continue to submit bugs, comments, and your own ideas to us using the User Voice icon on the bottom right corner of the site. Thanks and keep on drawing!

So we know all of you are wondering what we are up to in NYC and we wanted to keep everyone posted on the current status of all that is graFighters. First of all, the team is split up for the summer for geographical advantages in our plot to conquer the world (you gotta start somewhere). This means 2 members of the graFighters team are reporting from NYC, while the other 4 members of the team are holding it down in Syracuse.

While we did open up graFighters this past spring for a brief moment, we quickly realized that it was in no shape for public use. After getting some feedback from users we decided to close things down again and get back to work. What happened in the spring was hardly a beta or even an alpha; we will call it the “yay it worked” phase, and we are happy to be much further ahead now.

We now spend our days scouring stackoverflow, coding, designing, and drawing, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We have about 1300 users all signed up and ready and waiting to play. It ‘s a big motivation having that many people waiting for our game and we are getting more and more excited to show you all what we have been working on.

To hold you over, here’s a screenshot of the current graFighters homepage. Much more to come in the following months.

Here’s some cool background animations for the level in development! ENJOY.

HORSES.

A FANCY BAND.

The evolution of a few of the Christmas Characters

And now for the not-so-much Christmas part, but still pretty cool.

How we go about illustrating a level:

Step 1: As tacky as it is, everything started with a blank page. I measured a half to two inch borders. They made it look nice c:

Step 2: I got my acrylic paints, and busted out my raw sienna. Dropped a wash- BAM. Once that dried, I added a wash of blues, greens, and browns.

Step 3: I outlined each building with a .01 pen. Then I take some indian ink and outline the whole city. I repeated this process with tiny neon signs to be scattered. They’re left blank so they’ll be easier to mess around and combined to make even more!

Step 4: Matt’s in charge of making the bridge look spiffy. The painting process was similar, except for more red was involved. And exacto knives. Which were safely handled by Matt. He cut only a few (paper) faces up and playing mr. potato with his drawing.

Step 5: We then popped everything into this nice little program, Photoshop, and played with it until it gave off a good vibe.

Also aren’t vertical videos on Vimeo awesome? Yeah they are.
Props to @SamSkelton for the tinkering and the excellent filming.

You can get the T-shirt here http://bit.ly/gXfO8g.

If you like this, (which you probably do) be sure to hit us up on Kickstarter http://kck.st/cnTzcP.

http://kck.st/cnTzcP

We also rearranged the desks into what we call “ultra productive formation” that prevents people wandering by and catching a glimpse of the awesomeness that is graFighters, only to have to spend the next hour calming them down because they are so excited.

Also, by popular demand, we decided to share here the inspiration Cornelius had for his Petunia character we showcased a few posts before. Yes that once a sandwhich. Yes that was his lunch; and yes he liked it.

Be sure to check us out around 3:45 (guesstimate) for a live presentation by Eric for Syracuse Student Sandbox Demo Day.

http://bit.ly/c7QUPi

Now, as much as we would love to show you documentation of this historic occasion we are going to hold off on releasing this top secret information until Demo Day. (Demo Day is the grand finale of the tech incubator that we are a part of) and it’s happening this Wednesday. But in the mean time, we will do our best to describe the scene…

Meet Petunia, part dinosaur, part the sandwich you found under your couch cushion last week. She’s one tough piece of paper. In fact, she is the epitome of toughness in the graFighters universe. She was born from the hand of Cornelius, with the sole purpose of busting skulls. In fact, Petunia’s so tough that she challenged herself to a fight. (We promise it had nothing to do with the fact that she was the only character programmed into the game). After punching the sky, the ground, and just about everything else that wasn’t Petunia, she landed one mean punch that rocked the entire graFighters world. The next 30 seconds was a mix of punches, blocks, and donkey kicks that looked something like a pair of 3 year-olds throwing temper tantrums side by side and eventually knocking one another out. In other words… it was absolutely beautiful.

We laughed, we cried, we took a siesta, and then it hit us… graFighters is really happening and not just for our close friends and family, but for everyone. Whether the game is a day, a month, or a year from launching it doesn’t really matter. (actually we know that it really does matter) But the point is that graFighters spirit is in the air!! People want this game to happen, and it’s not just us. We can’t tell you how encouraging it is to get an email from someone we’ve never met that says (in many different ways) “I’m so ready for this game, here’s a taste of what’s to come.” And then they drop one or several awesome drawings right in our laps.

Right now, there’s this very exciting feeling that comes from these emails. It’s kinda like lighting the fuse of a firework, and watching the flame slowly creep towards the explosives.  Basically, what we really want to say is thanks to all of you who have sent us drawings over the past few months. It’s way cooler to us to get your drawings in our inbox than you can probably understand. It definitely keeps us going.

Shoutouts to the dudes from Coburn Design, Chris and Alden. Also, Jack and the manager of the Luchadores, Andrés.

And so, without futher adieu, the Late Night Luchadores and other awesome creatures!

After hiding out in a mysterious underground lair plotting social gaming domination for the past nine months, graFighters has finally emerged fresh and juiced to re-join the world of social media. What was in that underground lair you ask? Well lots of things actually. The lair consisted mainly of things such as life, college, game development, friends, more development, whiteboards, actionscript 3, failing, drawing, pitching, failing, designing, business planning, failing, and trying harder. It was quite the place actually and I would recommend it to anyone!

But seriously, the past 9 months have been a wild and amazing ride for graFighters. Instead of cramming 9 months’ worth of posts into one epic post (it would be way too epic for anyone to handle), We will be sure to catch up on all the activities this week post by post as if they were happening in real time (just pretend). Some of the highlighst to look forward to include our epic report card from the 2009 IGF panel, our consideration of turning graFighters into a T-shirt company, the birth of “The C0rne1ius”, the founders graduating college, and receiving funding, precisely in that order.

graFighters is coming along nicely and we can’t wait to share what we’ve been hard at work on with everyone who has supported us along the way. We are going to stay away from guaranteeing any specific timeframes but we can say we are much closer and plan to keep everyone updated every step of the way.

Student Start Ups from Matt Rivers on Vimeo.

http://www.citrustv.net/

http://accelerate.syr.edu/

Brand-Yourself.com- a one stop online presence makeover for job applicants.

Congruser- a universal service for celebrities to have one account name across social media sites, including sub-user-names for interns.

OpenQuad- a five pronged attack at creating a site for college students to get the most out of their college experience.

Grafight- an online game that allows users to upload hand drawn characters and watch them battle it out.

Grafight was up against some stiff competition but took home a $1,000 check for the best presentation voted by the audience. It was a great feeling and overall a great experience for everyone involved in the program.

Although this was the end of the official program, now is when the real work begins. After speaking interest at Demo Day, Grafight is currently ramping up development for our February 2010 release. We plan to stay hard at work in the TechGarden while hopefully making it to some classes this semester. We would also like to thank the TechGarden, their entire staff, all of our advisers and especially our coach John Liddy for making all of this happen. Thank you to our readers and followers for showing interest at such and early stage. If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up for the Alpha testing on the homepage. We cant wait to show you more of what we have been working on.

Today, the IGF  has officially started accepting submissions for the 2010 festival. Personally I know I enjoy seeing the IGF finalists every year because it showcases some of the most innovative games around. The games highlighted at the IGF usually offer a much higher replay value than many of the blockbuster games put out throughout the year. If you are in the indie game scene you don’t want to miss this. The deadline is November 1st.

Keep a look out for Grafight this winter.

http://www.igf.com/

We have been at it for about two months now, and would like to say welcome to our official blog.  We have just begun development on what looks like a few month (at least) journey. This blog will have all the updates, ideas, videos, demos, problems, and ramblings that come from working on a off the wall start-up game. Bookmark us, tell your friends, and get ready for something different.  We are just getting started with this blog so don’t worry if things look shaky at first, they will be smoothed out in no time.

We are currently in an amazing office that we don’t quite deserve located at the Syracuse Technology Garden. We are happily the test subjects for a new incubator program between Syracuse University and the Tech Garden, and we are glad to report so far so good. Below is an early concept video we made  in the spring for our application process mainly to get our idea across in a form that wasn’t words. (we have come a long way since then) If you have any questions, suggestions, or want to know  more about what we are doing please email us. We are also always looking for opinions and help so don’t be shy.

Grafighters video explanation from Grafighters on Vimeo.

Early stage Grafight promotional video we made for an application process into a start-up-incubator.