Jock Studio Development Update #9

Fellow Olympians, we’re back with another monthly Jock Studio Development Update, featuring exciting new previews, teasers and development progress! Please read the full text of the update, as it contains information for all fans of BLits Games and Jock Studio!

Pledgemanager – One Weekend Left!

Starting up, we wanted to send out one last reminder to everyone that there are three days left before PledgeManager is closed for all physical pre-orders! You have until July 1^st, 2024 at Midnight EDT to make your final selections, upgrade your pledge, or purchase add-ons, so don’t miss out and fill out your survey at the link below:

If you want to browse our roster of items available for purchase, be sure and check them out at the link below:

https://www.blitsgames.com/js-merch/

We need a finalized count of items to have manufactured. If you don’t make your selections in time, we may not be able to fulfill your physical rewards, so it’s very important to do so ASAP!

If you’ve already done so, thank you! While your selections will be locked in soon, if you need to update your address you’ll be able to do so up until a couple weeks before we ship and fulfill your orders.

P.S. If you used an Apple Private Relay email on Kickstarter, this means we aren’t able to send you emails about your rewards as Apple will reject any third party emails. If you’ve done so, please send an email to us at [email protected] with your backer ID or apple relay email, and a new email we can use to communicate with you!

Development Diary 9 – Background Art, Graphic Design, and Puppets!

Next up, we’re back with our ninth development diary, featuring previews of what the team has been up to the past month! Check it out below!

Part 1 – Background Art

First up, we’re very excited to announce that the background art department has been progressing extremely well! Our concept and 3D artists have been working hard at detailing out all the beautiful buildings of Olympus University – a couple updates ago, we previewed some of these 3D Concepts, but now we’re excited to show off even more: 

Impressive, aren’t they? Olympus University is no joke when it comes to their campus, and we wanted to make sure we captured the esteemed vibe of the school in all of these buildings! You can look forward to more building previews in later development updates, as well as the fully laid out Campus Map in the future!

Next up, after checking out the aerial view of the campus, we’re ready to go to ground level and check out a couple more paintings: The Dorm Lobby and Central Park!

These two beautiful locations are explorable throughout the gameplay of Jock Studio – Ace will come back and forth through the Dorm Lobby every day on his way to and from his room, and you never know who he might encounter there! Meanwhile, the Central Park is a great area to hangout, enjoy being outside and even meetup with friends! You can look forward to seeing what Ace and the Jocks get up to in these locations during the full game!

Part 2 – Graphic Design

Our next segment is a new feature with this development diary, graphic design! There’s a ton of graphical work that goes into Jock Studio, from elements of the backgrounds, to sprite costumes, to interface elements! For all of this work, we’ve hired an additional Graphic Designer, TheMagicMan, to join and assist the team!

Appropriately after our background art preview, you can check out some of his first work on our team, icons for each of the locations you can travel to and from in Olympus University!

That’s a lot of place to travel – and with so many places to explore, there’s bound to be plenty to do around campus for Ace and the Jocks! We also have one more graphic design preview, all of the house icons for Olympus University:

These icons represent the various clubs and houses that each student of Olympus U eventually becomes a part of, and you can look forward to meeting characters that fall under the new houses beyond just the six houses of the Jocks in the future! That’s all for Graphic Design for this update, but please welcome TheMagicMan to the team, and you can look forward to more previews like this in the future!

Part 3 – Completed Puppet Art & Animations Update!

Finally, to close out this development update, we have an exciting preview for everyone – last update, we showcased raw animations using sketch art of our new puppet models. Our art team, Zael, Mikkoukun and Magia have all worked hard and finalized the art for Ace and the Jocks, including three costumes: Nude, Undies and Gym attire! Check them out below:

These charming models will be used for animations in the workout minigame, as well as more to-be-announced features! Another new member of our team, EightP, has been hired as an assistant artist, and is splitting these puppets into their various individual pieces for animation, which are being worked on by our animators!

We’re excited to show everyone animation previews using these new adorable models, however, at this time, our team is still working on the setup and animation using the new software we mentioned last update, Spine, and we are making sure that we have all the details we need to have everything looking as good as possible in the future, so please stay tuned for more news about that in the future, but in the meantime…

Artist Applications – Open Now!

…We’re hiring! BLits is seeking an assistant artist to work with us on our new puppet models, drawing additional body parts, costumes, faces and more! If you or someone you know is interested in joining our team and working with our artist and animation team members to make these puppet model animations a reality, please submit an application at the link below:

https://www.blitsgames.com/artist-applications/

Closing Word

That’s all for this development update, Olympians, but we do have some exciting news – we’re approaching a very special time: the one-year anniversary of our Jock Studio Kickstarter launch! We wanted to let everyone know that, on July 11th, 2024, we’ll be launching a special Development Update, including some very exciting teasers as well as news about our overall development progress on Jock Studio, so please stay tuned for then!

In the meantime, please make sure you’ve filled out your PledgeManager survey and made any additional purchases or upgrades before the weekend is over!

We’d also like to let everyone know that the Steam Summer Sale is currently ongoing, and you can get your own copy of Camp Buddy: Scoutmaster Season at a discount – check out the link below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1968430/Camp_Buddy_Scoutmaster_Season/

Not only that, but we’re also running a cross-promotion with Lovense, and from now until July 15th, you can get your very own Lovense device, compatible with Camp Buddy: Scoutmaster Season, at the link below for 55% off!

https://www.lovense.com/a/BLitsGames

Thank you again for all of your support, Olympians, and we’ll see you again on July 11th!

Lots of love,

~BLits Games