You know it's getting late on a Friday afternoon when your colleagues are discussing the colours of a dress, and you know it's time for blog post when it's getting late on a Friday afternoon. So sit back, relax and prepare for a short bit of writing about the goings-on at Ninja Kiwi.
SAS Zombie Assault 4 - Mobile Update
Private Matches are now available in SAS4 mobile! If you haven't got SAS4 on your portable device, go get it from here for free and start joining in! This latest update has Private Matches and some bug fixes and all your favourite web content will make it's way there too.
30% More Bang for your Buck - NK Coin Offer
For a very limited time every NK Coin purchase will come with 30% additional NK Coins! You've only got a few days from now to get your purchase in so make sure to think about it now, least you forget and regret it forever/a few minutes.
Once upon a time I brought you an interview with your friendly neighbourhood spool and today I get to bring you another. These blog posts are pretty much Aaron interviews every week but if you have questions for other people make sure to leave it in the comments below.
Eliket a.k.a Paula is one of the artists here at Ninja Kiwi and despite several grave warnings* she has agreed to answer a few questions about herself and her work at Ninja Kiwi.
What does Eliket mean?
It doesn't actually mean anything! I just wanted to create a unique name a few years back that no one else was using, and felt that this combination of letters worked quite well together.
What do you do here?
I'm a Games Artist. Drawing, 3D modelling, texturing and animation are all part of the job!
Do you prefer to draw on paper or on computer?
Favourite lunch-time meal?
You cannot go wrong with a chicken and cranberry filo. Mmmm...
Favourite NK game?
Personally, I'm still a big fan of BTD5. Even after spending countless hours playing on my phone, I still have a good ol' play even now and again. Bloonchipper FTW!
Favourite film?
If it's based off the number of times that I've watched it, then I think it's got to be 'Shaun of the Dead'. Awesome combination of British humour mixed with some killer Zombie gore.
*But not really. Y'all are lovely.
Thanks for reading. Leave any questions you have in the comments below and have a good weekend.
Aaron
Woah! Late to the party with my reply, but better late than never! @jkl best "How many drawings have you done? May I see some?" Quite a few! I started drawing when I was old enough to hold a pencil, so more than I have kept count of. :) And this is the most recent thing I've done (personal art-wise): http://paulascrawler.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/long-time-coming.html "How did you become an Employee at Ninja Kiwi? How hard was it?" I heard that there was a job going for a 3D Art position, and I applied for it (with a showreel/portfolio), was asked to do an art test and then afterwards, an interview! Fortunately, everything fell in to place and I've been enjoying working here ever since (: "On average, how long does it take to make a second of 30 fps animation, full colored on paper? How many pieces need to be scrapped?" I am a little unsure of this one, as I only studied 3D animation - more on programmes like Blender and Maya, rather than 2D hand drawn animations. But from what I observed, it was a very long and challenging process. It also depends on what is needing to be animated, how long each 'scene' is and the action that takes place in that animation. So, it can vary pretty wildly (: "On average, how long does it take to make a 30 fps animation for 1 second on the computer? " Once again, this can vary wildly depending on the rig (the thing you control to animate the character/object), the action and a few other variants. It can take an hour to an afternoon or more possibly! @EpicBloonsBro: "Would this happen to be Paula / Eliket? " Hah, you've got some good detective skills there! (:
I know in america, we are going through a "Zombie phase" at the moment. It got popular from movies and TV depicting these zombies. I was thinking that maybe the phase is starting to die out. If you think about it, Marvel is coming out will super hero movies, that will have aliens and such. Then, this december, Star Wars 7 is coming out as well. Guess what, it will have aliens in it too. A new "Aliens" movie (like alien vs predator type alien) is also coming out. Do you think this could be the next phase we go through? Maybe you guys could get ahead of the game and start making si-fi alien games kinda like your sas zombie games? Just a thought! =)
Scottobozo: In his case, it probably stands for "Very Idiotic Person." So we can just go with that.
any new games you doing that are coming out soon?
"VIP" stand for Very Important Person, so what makes the VIP in the VIP mission so "important"?
Bloonchipper FTW? Same in Bloons Monkey City! Especially the Super Wide Funnel!
That is a stellar interview
NK! Y U NO ADD NEW YEAR UPDATE FOR BMC MOBILE ON ANDROID??!!
hey ninja kiwi can you please tell us the third secret on meltdown ?
@RefreshingHJ - The epic pack wasn't taken out of SAS4, it was just a limited time offer. A limited time offer that will be available for a limited time in the future as well! But next time it will come with more promotion so people know about it, e.g. front page banners etc. @jkl best - "Now a few questions for anyone at Ninja kiwi" "How many hours do you work at Ninja Kiwi? " We all work a 40 hour week, although sometimes we might do a few more hours here and there. But thats optional and in no way forced overtime, we just enjoy getting the job done sometimes. "Do you play games on Ninja Kiwi like SAS4 at work? " Personally, I play SAS4 at work a lot! (But mostly through internal testing, quality assurance etc) "How good is the food at Ninja Kiwi? " Great! Fresh fruit baskets daily! Muesli bars, nut bars etc, an arrange of lots of different free drinks! noodle packs, free work provided lunches on Fridays (We had mexican last Friday!) And then whenever Belle goes on a baking spree we get cakes and such as well =] "Do any of you take work home with you? " Personally, no! Not sure about others but home time is home time. No need to stress ourselves out with taking work like home. "How often do you have outings like the paintball? It sounds like a lot of fun. " Usually once every 3-4 months or so, often enough to feel like something special wtihout it feeling too far apart either. Last time we went Drift Go-Karting, which was a lot of fun! "About how many tweaks do you secretly do to the website per day on average? " Wouldn't have any idea about how the website is run, in terms of SAS4 I don't do any secret tweaks. Although sometimes other tweaks are made that I am not made aware of and thus I don't mention them in the patch notes because I wasn't told about them. E.g. (Gun Mod Expert) "If you find a MAJOR bug in a game, do you shut the game down to fix it? Or do you shut down the update? Or something else? " If its a really bad bug that we cannot throw out a quick hotfix for, or, its close to the weekend E.g. Friday afternoon and we are unsure the hotfix will work 100% without problems we will roll back the game to the last version prior to the patch. Otherwise if the problem was very specific to a certain feature of the game like Events, we can take the events down instantly to stop the problems going on and then work on doing a fix. This happened last weekend when an Apocalypse event went up but there was issues with the waves number 20 and onwards, it was a Friday afternoon (Literally 5:05pm, home time) when I was made aware of it so we just took down the Apoc event for the weekend, and then I fixed it the following week.