#simon milfred

Watching Avengers: Infinity War last week did put a smile on my face, and now, with the Infinity Gauntlet, I can finish my Master's thesis with a snap!

*snap*

Hi!

My name is Simon Milfred, welcome to my site. I am young man from Denmark (hence the .dk domain) who enjoy doing an abundance of things: Game development (design, programming and art), graphics design, pixel art, 2D animation, video editing, tutoring others in these things, and a lot more!

As you may notice, all of these things (save tutoring) is very much visual things. At least it is especially the visual aspects of the things that speak to me. The visual focus is something, I grew up with. My father has always been good with a pencil, and has always been a great source of inspiration (he has written comics, painted signs, drawn portraits, and much more), likewise I have always felt my mother had a greatly creative mind (which I based almost solely on her doodles from when speaking on the telephone - in recent years she has begun embracing being creative in a multitude of ways), and I multiple creative aunts (especially one of them has been a huge part of my childhood - I spend many a Tuesday oil painting with her, watching her Bob Ross VHS tapes).

I used to draw a lot. Like, pencil drawings. It is not something, I do a lot any more. I still sketch and things like that, but it has been quite a while since I have spend hours on a drawing. You can, however, see some of my works by scrolling down my art portfolio. Today I am mostly working digitally, though I am still using the things, I learned from the more analogue arts.

Digital art allows me to do a lot of things, I cannot do with paper (at least not with the same speed). More importantly I can better use the digital graphics when working on video games. I began making my own games for the computer when I were ~11 years old. I searched Google for "make games" (or something like that), found Game Maker, and have used it ever since (newest iteration of the software at the time of writing is called GameMaker:Studio 2). Because I did not know others, who wanted to make their on games, I had to draw everything myself, program everything myself, and make the audio myself - so I slowly learned how to do all these things (however, I rarely ended up putting music in my small games, so I never learned to make music. I rely on others for that).

When I were about 14 years old (from memory, not too sure of the exact age) I began playing around with Photoshop as well. I ended up being quite good, and earned some money making graphics (logos, posters, etc.). I still to this day use Photoshop regularly. I make graphics (both for myself and others), but I also make photo-manipulations. To keep in "shape", I make a new profile picture or cover art for Facebook, whenever I have been at the cinema.

In December 2012 I began work on the YouTube channel Bless Hay Gaming. Back then it was meant to be a project shared by my brother and me - a simple gaming-channel (I know, how unique..). However, after running it for a while, I began also uploading GameMaker-tutorials, and slowly it became the main thing I uploaded! I began using "Bless Hay Gaming" as my general game developer name, and while I still make tutorials both for the channel and in blog form, Bless Hay Gaming is no longer limited to YouTube, gaming and tutorials. It is still a hobby project, but it is slowly growing.

The whole helping-others-to-learn is, however, not confined to the internet. In recent years I have taught courses in Photoshop, and for the last couple of years I have been an active member of Coding Pirates, an organization focused on teaching children about technology through working/playing with it. Here I helped making the GameDev department a thing, and as a part of my work in Coding Pirates I have even held workshops in London with my fellow pirates, and collaborated with D.A.R.E.. The GameDev department is where I currently volunteer, and here we, funny enough, make video games with the children.

This leads me to my current, main, big project: Tale of Omni. Tale of Omni started as a small, game-jam entry in the GM48 jam (it was just called Omni). The game won the innovation category, and I thought, it was a concept with potential. I quickly dragged a friend into the project, Joe (he is in the Coding Pirates picture, the left-most person), and later a dragged in another friend, Ric. The three of us has worked on the game for some years now, even came out with a short demo a year ago.

The game is a huge project, and I do believe it will take some more years before it is done, but we work on it with passion. Some weeks ago we invited a fourth member to the project, Magnus (he also is in the picture above, the guy to the right of me, looking in my direction). While the game is still very much a child of my imagination, it has been a huge help to have a team, which can contribute with, and refute, ideas, and help with some of the work load. Joe has been a huge help with his graphical works, Ric has contributed lots when it comes to story, and he will also be in charge of the music of the game, and Magnus will soon contribute greatly, I am sure, in his role of QA-manager.

SO now you know a little about me, now it is time to explain, what this blog is all about. This blog is meant to be a place for me, to write about anything I want - this could be what is going on in my life, small tips and tricks (maybe some pixel art tutorials?), or just my humble opinion on something. In short: This blog is not limited to any one subject. Some things I will not cover, are things I cover on other blogs - no reason for me to repeat myself. I will still make portfolio-posts on my portfolio, art in my art-portfolio, and so on.