Regarding the fabulous move(s).

IT'S been a few days since I've uploaded...mostly because I've been very busy putting together stuff for multiple projects, and moving, and worrying about this an that. It's difficult to keep up with all the new software that's being thrown at us, but like written Chinese, if someone sits down and explains it to you, it makes perfect sense that things work the way they do. Lahta has been very helpful in getting me on board with practical Maya stuff. I'll run through what I'm struggling with for each of my projects.

1. Procedural Animation Project (Due April 13) -- I'm still working out what I want to do with this, but I think that all the work I've been doing in 3D will probably cause me to do something using Unity. I've stated that I'd really like to do something that would involve feeling like you're in the middle of something that's changing from the outside. But this is conjecture.

2. Room Project  (Due April 6) -- I'm making a Kitchen for this project, as a sort of contributing asset for the Minor project that Lahta and I are doing together. We're going for a skewed aesthetic on all the objects. I'll have to post some stuff up when I get everything organized at home.

3. Character Animation Project (Due April 6) -- I'm going to create an animation of my ghost character entering a room, in a creepy way. At the moment it's looking like I'm going to do that in flash, or in adventure game studio.

4. Case Study (Due April 19) -- Not discussed yet. Have to talk to Hanjin and Jin.

5. Storytelling Interactive Treatment (Due April 5) -- I have to come up with an idea for this. I got down everything about how it needs to be made.

LATELY the stuff I've been connecting most with in classes has been the stuff that deals with interactive design...and I'm wondering what projects will actually be too large for me to tackle in the time I have this semester. Oscura, a game made by someone from my program from last year, seems to be the upward limit.

I feel like I'm running in front of a tornado made of deadlines, bills, and job opportunities. Ahhhhh! I think there's also something that happens if you haven't actually animated in a while. Maybe I just need to sit down and animate and get some things done for each project...

Freedom Fries.

Burning Safari.

Pyrats.

The hits just keep on coming.

Today I looked at some more Javascript. I'm using the time before my presentation (it'll add up to about 4 days of off-on studying) to find out as much as I can about the language before the presentation on Monday at 2 PM. Go go gadget self-destructive sleeping patterns!

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

So, I told Sofia that we would trade art styles. I would do some hand-drawn stuff, and she would work with pixels. Yes, I did my hand-drawn picture for the day. I tried to emphasize the lighting in the scene, as pictured right (not perfectly), by using empty space. I don't know if it helps to have the image on the right...but I guess I was pretty happy with how it came out, in the end.


But that didn't stop me from making pixel art stuff, as well. Yes, they're from Nintendo games. And if you are the first one to comment or talk to me in real life and name what games both of these characters are from, I will pixellate YOU in the next picture. It could be from a photo, or whatever. Deal? Deal. It's on. But no looking for the names of these characters by using a reverse image search, like www.tineye.com. Also, if you can't guess the first one, you have automatically signed yourself up for a lecture. Here are your two pictures.



1.

2

More of the s(H)ame.

That H was there for you, Lahta.

So, today I did some new, higher-resolution ghost images for the character sheet. It looks much more electrified now. Do you like it? Granted, they're still a little pixelly. Hush, you. I'm going to do a lot more work on them tomorrow, and try throwing some light effects up behind the ghost and write some notes about how it will react visually and emotionally to environments. But this is my drawing for the day, and it's enough for you.

I've been mixing around in Unity, getting ready to make my 3d room, and looking at some javascript. Funky stuff. I'm definitely going to be creating a 3D kitchen for my room project, as part of my minor project. The goal is to make it look as professional as possible in a one-week period, so that it's as usable as possible for my minor project. Ya dig?

Opposed to the typical.

So, I had a rather interesting discussion today with a lecturer in my program about the role of pixel artwork in my future projects. I know I have an affinity for this stuff, and I also know that I'm not really that adept at it. This brings up an interesting problem. Should I pursue the style I love even though it seems to have no appeal to my potential audience (kids who grew up on 3d and sun-flares with all kinds of fancy rendering effects)? Should I forget about kids for now, and reach for the professional level of craftspersonship in pixel art I've come to expect from playing games like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World or Fez? And if these are the professional quality projects, then why are Cave Story and Streemerz also so popular (we're spreaking relatively here...I ain't in no pop culture, consarnit...)? The answer can only be that the gameplay and mechanics have just as much importance as aesthetics when it comes to judging an interactive media experience. Anywho, Chris, my lecturer encouraged me to work in Unity to create a 3D version of the game I'm collaborating with Lahta on. I'll talk about this with her asap. I think it's probably a good direction to go in, since it means I'll be expanding my repertoire. But what of the fine tuning of the art skills? I suppose this isn't the place to refine them?

In other news, above is my picture for the day, and here is a link to the

COLLABORATIVE BLOG for the AIM program. We just found out today that we have a huge collaborative art space to fill in a few weeks, and I think that by the time we get started even thinking about making this business, we should have a wealth of ideas about what we're going to do. If you are an elevenser (as Kate calls us) and you haven't been emailed permissions to edit that blog, please let me know, and I'll send you another invite. Simon out.

Character demo.

Be sure to blow this one up. It's a demo sheet of the ghosties I'm drawing for my character sheet this wednesday, soon to be part of the game I'll be making with Lahta. As you can see, this is a totally uninformed stage in the process. I'm half done with it.

Also today, some character details for the ghost.

NAME: Kneph

OCCUPATION: An Egyptian spirit, mostly long forgotten.

AGE: Approximately 4000 years old.

GENERAL TEMPERAMENT: Very patient. Constantly in search of new forms of entertainment.

Kneph is extremely bored of the spirit world, since it has been thousands of years since the height of Egyptian civilization, and no one makes sacrifices anymore.

MOTIVATION: The land on which the apartment in the game is built is Examo's ancient haunting ground. Because of his longstanding belief that cats are more intelligent than dogs, he has been challenged by another spirit from a dog-loving religion. The challenge is to prove that at least one cat can learn any trick a dog can. If he fails in his quest to prove this, he will lose the right to haunt the area, and thus disappear. If he succeeds, then he will be able to increase his own territory.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Kneph’s body is a gooey vapor which acts like a transparent, lighter-than-air version of silly-putty. Kneph is approximately the size of a human being. But he has a mouth in the middle of his lower half which expands and contracts as he “breathes”. He has eyes which glow with a blue-green light in the dark.

LIKES: Sacrifices, Egyptian culture, cats that obey, subservience, shadows.

DISLIKES: Small dogs, big dogs, medium-sized dogs televisions, bright lights and daylight (though they are not lethal to him).

METHOD OF LOCOMOTION: Kneph is able to move in and out of small spaces, the way a vapor would, but he cannot leave the ground and simply “fly”. He can jump, or leave the ground for short periods of time.

Whoa.

It seems you might not have been able to click on that ghost picture from yesterday. So here it is again. I've added a few spooks to the mix.

Warning. Contains birth scenes. Doesn't bother me. Does it bother you?

Ghost vs. Kitteh

Howdy, folks.

So, two items today. First, some color.

This was a picture for my dad's blog. I like how it came out.

I made this out of a photo of Tina rock climbing the other night...so she could use it as her desktop. I like the way it came out. You'll want to click on it and make it bigger. I always hate that about pixel art. It always looks like there's a messy little spot on your web page unless it's blown up. Czech it:

Second, some talk of agent + behavior projects:

The latest large project I'm embarking on is a sort of adventure language learning project. I'm working with Lahta, a marvelous, prolific art deity person that is also of the teacherly persuasion. The idea of the project is to create a sort of game for people to play that will teach them basic words in different languages by attempting to give them basic commands. The user will be able to direct a cat to respond to its owner's commands. So, for example, if the owner tells the cat to "Drink" and points to the wat

er, the user must click on the word "drink" and then on the water. The program would ideally present the user with a number of words like this, and then the cat would go to sleep (as cats often do, against orders) and night comes. When it does, either the cat's imagination or the spirits of the house start acting up (we haven't decided which yet) and ask the cat to do the same thing the owner do, but in an assessment context. This different phase of the game will probably punish/reward the user (playing as the cat) in some way.

ANYWAY, Lahta's working on the cat at the moment, and I'm working on the ghost. We have 3 weeks to do a sort of character study and create some animations which will act as an asset library for the larger project. Tomorrow we're presenting some basic ideas about what the characters might look like, to each other. Here are my ideas about the ghost:

Again, you'll want to click on it to make it bigger. I tried a range of styles with this character, but personally, I think the most successful version (which may or not be here yet) will combine a wispy, vaporous element with a sort of knifey, insectile arm aesthetic. I also want the whole character to look kind of like a stain on the objects around it. The less visible stuff on top is supposed to represent that. So far, though, I think of all of this, I like the bottom left (white) ghost idea. I think tomorrow I'll have to do more drawings like this... to explore it before I meet with Lahta. I don't know if whiteness is going to stand out in the right way from the dark parts of the room that it's going to be in. But maybe the visual element I'm really looking for is opacity, which is why the whiteness seems to work. That's all for now. Got to go with my flatmate to steal some chairs from a dumpster. Yes, at midnight. No, you can't come :).

On whiteness, from Moby Dick...

• "Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?"

Procrastinators! The leaders of...tomorrow.

So, I'm posting my daily picture. It's a sort of mock up of what I want my behavioral/character study animation, and possibly my minor project, to look. The The grid is there to help organize the space that each character will take up, and each object will take up. This is really a basic picture, so that I can show my soon-to-be collaborator, Lahta, what I meant when I was describing the project. Note the Lucasarts adventure games style action words at the bottom. The objects in the bookshelf are meant to be random, as are many of the objects in the room.

I'll write more about this project tomorrow, Lahta's glorious artistry/website, and my ideas for this project. My first educational game! Yay.

Feeling a bit stressed out today.

Picture! Ka-DONE.

And here is my picture from a few days ago. I've figured out, finally, how to embed flash files on this blog, so no more linking to slow slow swfcabin.

Chalk two up.

Three things:

1) Yesterday I completed my drawing, but I hadn't finished the flash code for it yet, so it wasn't ready for public viewing. But now I've finished it, so here it is! Feeling green?

2) I finished the cutout movie with my group! It's called Pixel Critters. That's the second project for our program. First, watch it. Then let's talk about it.

Laura, Isis and I all worked on it together. We each created a character--I the cockroach, Isis the caterpillar, and laura the mouse! We also each did parts of the set. I did all the sound, the intro, and the work with the pixels during the movie. Laura and Isis are extremely talented artists--I don't think it could have looked very good without them. I feel like the movie is strong structurally, but weak on timing and the motion is very...sort of spotty. Some parts are alright, but I think because the pace is extremely fast in the movie, it's hard to pay attention to the motion, if you're the viewer. Part of it is that one affects the other, I suppose, but I think that there are slight problems in both areas. I still like it, though! What do you think?

3) So, I had a talk with my friend andy about my story grid project, and I think we've reached some important thoughts there. Firstly, I think that some of the grids are better viewed wholly, and just looking at one frame at a time takes away from the experience. I'll post some examples here to give you an idea.

a) This is better viewed as a large picture, as it's better to look at it and know where you are in the story:

b) This one is better viewed in the player, I think, although I also like looking at it.

So, I wouldn't assume that either of them are worth looking at anyway :), but perhaps you can see what I mean? The point of my project was to design an animation, anyway, not a grid of pictures, even if they are in sequence. So I'm a little disappointed that they aren't all best viewed as animations. I'm not sure at this juncture what would have made them better viewed as animations, but what do you think?

Let's get pick(let)y.

Hey, kids. My picture for the day is a page of Stewart Haines' Picklet Comic Jam. Here 'tis. If you're not hip to this yet, Stewart created an app for the iphone that allows you to create rockin' popup books in photoshop, and they animate and stuff. If you're interested in doing a page (you can do whatever you want, provided you follow the script), check out his website, picklet.net, or just check the dummy pages he's made up for all 15 pages of the comic. It's sort of a Scott McCloudian style thing. Very cool. Here are the pages. But you can't do page 3, because I already did that one. So there.

Story Grid Player update: I'm still working on improving my story grid player. Right now my main goals are to implement a sort of banjo playing element when you switch the pictures, and to put in detection for when the edge of the story grid has been reached, so it can remind the player with blinking arrows what directions they can go in...

Also, let's talk about two pixel-style game makers I totally idolatize. Or rather, let's not talk about them. Look at this video, and then go to the Polytron website, and the Pixeljam site. Chris Barker, I take back what I said about not feeling confident about using low-res graphics to get the school kiddies' attentions. I probably just need to get hip.

FEZ PAX TRAILER from POLYTRON on Vimeo.

There's a party in my nucleus and you are not invited!

Sophia (spelling?) and Karis and I, all artists in the same elite RMIT postgraduate program, have decided to draw a picture a day. I don't know if they were serioustown, but I am. Here's my first random picture of the day!

Retro adrenaline artificially added via youtube.

The most amazing animation I've seen this week. It's called 8-Bits.

I've been trying to decide what sound to use to give the feeling of a quiet caterpillar walking on a desk in my animation. I'm having trouble deciding whether to go with a sort of 8-bit approximation with bip and boop sounds, or going with a sort of sliding sound...

Anyway, while I was looking for sounds that other people had used to animate caterpillars, I found this lovely little Japanese commercial. Pretty hilarious. I'm interested in the way the CG seems to work very well with the live action shots of the tea picker...I think it's the smooth green colors throughout the commercial that cause it to work well. Not sure.

A word on debugging.

So, word was going around that debugging took up less than 95% of your time when you program. I assure you, IT DOES. I have gone back into the amazonian jungle of programming oh behalf of all of us the last few days to try and figure out if that was correct or not. I assure you, do not go there. It is a dangerous place where there is no sleep. I've got this flash thing now, though, a kind of storyboard navigator which tells you a story at random. I have dubbed it, presumptiously, TELETALE. Here's the link to the 9.9 meg file:

TELETALE .SWF FILE DOWNLOAD (You need a flash player to play this.)

(the automatic story generation function doesn't work yet). Let me know what you think! My plans for the future of this project are just to get more of the features up and working, and to get rid of the music--instead I'd like a different fretted banjo string to play every time you move from one frame of the story to the next, so you end up playing a little song, or can play this program like an instrrument. I'll repost when I get it all working. This project has been sort of been a re-boot camp for my actionscript knowledge.

Toodle-oo.

PS: Have you seen this? It's amazing.

*crack the whip*

Onwards!

So far, my experience at RMIT has been a realization of some frustrations, and a lack of others. I'm still not at the point where I'm able to use any Adobe software in a meaningful way. I'm used to using paint.NET as opposed to photoshop, and FlashDevelop as opposed to CS5. What results is that I'm really comfortable using simpler tools, but when I get into photoshop and realize I have to adjust the hue/saturation in order to correctly fill a color in in a crisp way, I get frustrated. I feel like unless I take a good amount of time to familiarize myself with these more complicated tools, I'm going to end up continuing to fall back on the ones that are simpler, and as a result I am worried that I'll end up with a less professional end-product.


I enjoyed the animation, Balance, that Kate screened for the class yesterday. I think an environment like that would would make an interesting kind of social medium for play.

Some notes.

0) I have been asked to create/use a blog while studying in my program, so I'm just going to use this one as my space for reflection...that means more updates, I promise, Meemee (my grandma).

1) My cubital tunnel syndrome in my elbow is acting up. Will need to get a cortizone injection to continue my program sans pain, I think.

2) I duked it out with the elements of productivity all night last night, getting some animation taken care of. I finally felt like I was getting involved with games and animation after years of looking at them from afar. It's a small step in the right direction.

3) My dad has generously (and impartially) elected to use a picture I made for him on his blog, punishmentforglutton. It's the banner. Does this count as street cred, or something?

4) Tina and I search for a new house, as our flatmates half suggested we should go our separate ways, and half told us they weren't continuing our lease.

5) As a comment on what's been going on in course lately, it's been quite a rush--I've probably put more time into my work than I had to, but it's incredibly gratifying to study this stuff.

6) Poem:


ON AGAIN OFF AGAIN

I stayed up late, looking around on the wire,
reading nothing in particular, and not feeling any one way about it.
I was being conscious of my own existence;
it was one of those "I am modern man at leisure," moments
very self-aggrandizing, full of friendly juggernaut feelings, you understand.
And I thought, boy, it would be great to chat with
one of those old friends of mine, maybe some girl
I went steady with, someone I could really shoot the can off the fence with the beebee gun with.
Maybe then I could go to sleep, just for lack of anything else to do.
So I got on the wire, and everyone was there, ready to talk,
the exes, the acquaintances, the long-lost childhood buddies. The wire had even organized them
so I could see who wanted to talk about what, who was looking for sex advice, who just wanted to share some invaluable little piece of art.
And suddenly I thought look at all these people, who wants them,
I don't need to talk to them. I thought I was the needy one.

So I got off the wire,
and started to write, but then I thought, well, this is anti-social and kind of pathetic, even for three in the morning, even for the modern man at leisure,
so I went back on the wire,
but this time I put five dollars down on a good old fashioned game of poker,
and I put it all on pocket queens, and he had higher, and often you lose in situations like this. It's a classic thing in poker that contradicts life--often in life you are good enough to beat most people, and that will get you partial credit, except in poker somebody's always got you beat, and there is no consolation prize in poker. Anyway, that's okay I think, because somewhere someone can now buy a cheeseburger, I thought, even if it's some greasy type in a suit who owns a poker corporation, and I got off the wire and started to write again, feeling pretty good after all. The modern man is allowed moments like this, it's in his blood. He's got money he's saved from a previous job and it's not all gone yet, though some of it is, and he's got his quick eye on the big zero. From the lounge chair, I mean.

Anyway, that's when things started to get real nasty, because my girlfriend arrived on the scene--
of my mind, you understand, and I reflected on the last quarter's profits
and thought maybe we were in some kind of love-slump
because what is a slump, that's when you don't feel one way or the other, you're on the wire and you're off of it,
and everything is just so susceptable, everybody's ready to throw the first punch.
But then I thought we probably weren't in a slump.
Real life, real romance, is slow. It isn't any action movie, anyhow.
So I decided to go to sleep and forget about it.
That way I'd be safe. No one could blame the modern man for sleeping on it. Maybe it was just a mood.
It's so hard to tell with oneself, isn't it,
to guess the waves against the tides against the depth,
you've got to have experience in these sorts of things.
Anyway, that's when I started to get sleepy,
and wondered briefly before getting off the wire for real.

Is this what seperates us from the cavemen?
this two hours after your bed-partner goes to sleep,
and you lose five dollars and read nothing in particular from all around the world
and casually dismiss hundreds of thousands of hours of advertising designed to sell?