1.29.06
One of the projects we've been working on at Studio Grey was a short film called "Behind the Roses" for a local musician/film maker Matt Gibney. Matt had been working on the film for over 5 years. I had seen the screenplay evolve as he created tireless revisions, perfecting his vision, crafting his master work.

We are about 2-3 weeks away from completing our first animation test for the project. Matt had just seen the first drafts of his models and his excitement at seeing his vision finally coming to life was off the scale.

Matt passed away unexpectedly a few days ago. Details are still scarce, but it appears to be an accidental drug related overdose. I'm sorry we couldn't get you there Matt. I'm so sorry...

Matt Gibney was a very talented guy. I saw him mature as an artist and a person. I knew him for around 10 years. He was a hell of a friend and a stand up guy. Matt will be missed sorely.

1.27.06
Studio Grey can finally announce the title of the game we've been working on for the past few years...Black Powder, Red Earth. More to come soon.

12.26.05
Another year comes to an end, so here's where we're at with everything ^_^

Gridlink started work on our LP, tenatively titled "Amber Grey". It will feature Matsubara on Guitar, Okada on Bass, Ikeda on drums and Chang on vocals. There are 10 songs:

• Ice Breaker
• Amber Grey
• 3 Miles Below Sea Level
• Down Elliptic Wide
• Pattern Recognition
• Unfamiliar Lines
• The Jenova
• Black
• Traffic Span
• Normal Parameters

As always, song titles subject to change without notice ^_- I've never actually been through the recording of a record where things didn't change...be it lyrics, songs or whatever.

KETM is now at alpha 3. We have music now but we're working through sound effects and weapon designs. Then I have to go draw sprite animations for said weapons. We had hoped to recruit another artist to handle this but we found no one, so it falls back to me. *weeps*

Scratch Trigger Era has been on hold for a little while. Some creative differences needed to be sorted and some technical limitations needed to be overcome. We're still trying to overcome the technical limitations. There has been a lot of talk about releasing some STE merch but we're not quite there yet. We have such a huge catalog of art that figures and shirts would not be very challenging to produce.

The undisclosed PC game we're working on remains undisclosed. We'll continue working on it in secret until we have something we think is worth showing though. It's changed so many times over the past 2 years of experimenting with different game designs that I'm glad we haven't spoken of it publically in any detail to date. I'm taking a course at Blackwater in January so I can refine the shooting system even further than we have to date. Presently the team includes a writer/designer, a 2d artist, a 3D artist, and 2 seasoned programmers. We are looking for a level designer familiar with the UnrealEdit tool set. Please contact me if you're interested in potentially coming aboard.

2005 was a year full of promise, disappointment but relentless effort. As they say, you can't learn to get up until you fall down. Luckily not everything went south for us this year, but the games industry where we spend a large amount of time working these days is definitely slumping...There is exciting stuff on the horizon but there are still miles to go ^_^

To be filed under things I never dreamed I could see in my life time, Virgin Galactic will begin offering commercial space flight inside the next 5 years for the whopping price of 200k a pop. I want to see the Earth from orbit one day. Hell I'd love to live on Mars or go to the moon. It's a time to be very excited. If I don't make it there, I have faith my daughter will.

Scratch Trigger Era is currently on hold while we work on some of these other projects. TF34 is also pretty much dead. TF34 simply never found a home, networks were far more interested in formulaic crap like "Over There" than to make something genuinely realistic. We refused to compromise it, end of story.

Hydrahead has reissued the "I will live forever" Discordance Axis shirt and will be releasing GridLink shirts next month. GridLink is currently recording their first CD and will be playing at the GrindAid skate festival in Osaka scheduled for May 06. Details to follow.

I promise a proper update soon. P.S. Studio Grey now has a myspace page. The horror.

New KETM blog is up!

In other news the last Discordance Axis CD is shipping next week from Hydrahead. Hydrahead is producing some new shirts for DA and GridLink. HG Fact has also requested some new DA artworks for their "visual catalogue". That's all for now.

3.12.05
The lead developer on KETM is now offering a blog tracking his progress. Check it out!

We're plugging away at our latest entry in the crazy heavy metal war Scratch Trigger Era. A 5 minute piece that will be debuting on the web in April 2005. Tenatively titled "Rock, Paper, Scissor, Gun", this short takes place within the STE universe, approximately half way through the story arc. The piece will feature an original soundtrack written by Takafumi Matsubara with supporting music by Anthony Suanders.

We are currently looking to recast the lead character of HIRO, so interested parties should contact us at info @ studio-grey.com with the subject line "HIRO auditions". Please note you should live in or be able to provide your own transportation to NYC for the audition.

Studio Grey is also scheduled to begin work on a short animated piece for The Rectrix Films in April 2004.

Last but not least, updated the top 10 list ^_^

2.24.05
New Scratch Trigger Era website launched! Check it out :)

1.23.05
This is going to be another busy year for Studio Grey.

Scratch Trigger Era has been repackaged into a 40 minute OVA that we are currently seeking funding on. This is the tightest version of STE to date and we are extremely stoked on it. We'll be relaunching the STE website with a ton of new stuff in the next two weeks.

In August 2004, Studio Grey inked a deal with Eagle World Media as our exclusive representation on TF34. TF34 is a episodic short story series written by Jon Chang and John Rovik(pseudonym) which tracks a unit staffed with former spec ops contractors in Iraq. The stories are fictionalized tales based closely on real events that took place in Baghdad between January and March of 2004. Contact Paul Siegel for further information.

With the release of Half Life 2, we've finally been able to start working on the often eluded to but never seen FPS game we've been writing and designing for the past 2 years. To recap, we began working with former US Spec Ops soldiers (Army Special Forces and SEALs) in 2002 to consult on a very different game than we are working on today. There was a lot of education on both sides trying to figure out how to capture a true special operations experience from top to bottom. We've been polishing ideas and doing pre-production for months and there's a lot more to do before we can show our work. We're hoping that this is the year we can go public ^_^

Our other game, KETM is on it's 6th beta. We've experimented with many systems for designing the behavior of enemies, speed of the shots, etc. The first beta release of the "Attack Pattern Editor"(APE) just arrived today. When we release the game we will most likely release all our tools so you can design your own patterns and trade them with your amigos.

The last Discordance Axis CD was sent, with finished artwork, to Hydrahead this week. This CD features covers of DA songs by Merzbow, Melt Banana, Cide Project, Gate, Mortalized and Noiseear as well as the Discordance Axis cover of the "Sega Bass Fishing" song, a 2005 remix of Ikaruga and features the first track by GridLink. GridLink is the new band with Jon Chang (ex-DA vocals), Takafumi Matsubara (ex-Mortalized guitar), Terada (Melt Banana drums) and Okada(Disconformity bass). We'll be providing Hydrahead with a new t-shirt designs for both DA and GridLink to accompany this release.

Mortalized CD and t-shirts with art by Jon Chang are now available through Bloodbath Records for $40 for the pair. We just started work on some new stuff for Trigger Skateboards of Osaka, Japan.

There's more in the works, but we'd have to kill you if we told you. Next update hopefully soon ^_^

3.13.04
The Scratch Trigger Era teaser is available online! Click here to play or Click here to download.

Studio Grey personnel will be attending both E3 and GDC, searching out a 3d engine for our upcoming game(still in pre-production). Contact us if you are interested in meeting up ^_^

Jon Chang just completed some new tshirts for Abacus Recordings and Mortalized (Bloodbath records). Presently we are not accepting any more work due to STE and our game project, which consume 100% of our time. Thanks for understanding ^_^

Work carries on at it's usual, unrelenting breakneck pace. ›o‹

And back by popular demand, Top 5 Lists.

1.25.04
Greetings folks, it's been a while. A lot has been going on. Let's start with Scratch Trigger Era. ^_^

A 30 second trailer spot has been completed in conjunction with the fine people at face2face animation, at which 2 members of the Studio Grey team are currently employed. The teaser is presently not available for download but hopefully will be soon. We'll be revamping the STE website in the near future to show our progress. We are all very excited about the piece. We wrapped writing on episode 13 about a year ago now so after 2.5 years, we have a finished piece in our grasp...

KETM is coming very close to a release. With a new programming team out of Austria (the original programmer for the ill-fated The Last Enemy mod) in place, KETM is being based in Linux and ported to Windows and Mac OSX. We have our fingers crossed for a spring 2004 shareware release ^_^

Our third, and secret, covert military operations-science fiction project presses on with game design ideas, illustrations and screenplay well under way. We still can't say more about it at this time, but here's a hint. We're amped about the second Mars rover touching down and we've been greedily snatching up images it sends back for the basis of our texture maps ^_^ We're hoping to be able to release more about it this year...to be honest the main thing restraining us at this time is the failure of every single next gen PC game engine to arrive!!! Doom 3, Half Life 2....man does anyone ship on time anymore :o

A bunch of new shirts, CD covers, etc have been produced over the past months by Jon Chang. Some samples are in the gallery but you can find his work on the new Glass Casket, Mortalized and Asterisk* cds.

Beautfiul Decay has a cover story/interview with Jon Chang with images from Sawtooth, Progressive Skateboards and Scratch Trigger Era prominently highlighted ^_^

Hydrahead has re-released the 2 original Discordance Axis CDs "Original Sound Version 1992-1995" and "Jouhou". Later this year look for the last DA CD, still untitled, which will have DA covers by a variety of artists, the DA cover of the Sega Bass Fishing song and the new song by War Chalking (with Dave Witte, Jon Chang, Steve Procopio and Ted Patterson). A limited edition box that holds all the DA CDs, DVDs released on Hydrahead will be available for direct mail order customers through Hydrahead.com. BTW Hydrahead also have a 1-2 DA shirts available in their store. Enjoy ^_^