Oct 14th, 2009
When agj.cl first went live, the only thing that was there was my old portfolio website, made in Flash. It was my first experience with actionscript, back in 2007. I took it down a while ago because it had grown too outdated, and since it was so hackishly conceived, I wasn’t planning on updating it. Well, I’ve finally made my new portfolio page. Things have changed enough that only two of the works I selected for it remain from the old Flash portfolio.
I’ve archived the older one (in Spanish) for posterity.
Sep 14th, 2009
I forgot to report back then, but my game, Viewpoints, got tenth place in the competition it was created for, TIGSource’s Cockpit Competition. Considering that there were 41 entries, that’s not too bad.
More surprising is that Sheets, the game I entered in TIGSource’s latest, the Adult/Educational Competition, also got me in tenth place. This is so surprising due to my making the game in a rush to get something in at all, and it being mostly just a ‘choose your own adventure’ interactive story. More so, because there were a few very good games that didn’t even make it into the top ten, such as Gregory Weir’s Silent Conversation. All I can say is that I got lucky, this time.
Aug 24th, 2009
I had the opportunity to hear Jem Cohen talk three times in the past three days. The first was a supposed ‘master class’, which was really just a talk, where he was accompanied by Guy Picciotto (of Fugazi) and Todd Griffin, both musicians. The talk was called Another kind of music, and it was about the way he approaches filmmaking in relation to sound and music. One of his insights was that making films can be a bit like making music; there’s rhythm, texture, and other sensory elements in the mix, beside the more evident aspect of narrative that is most films’ core. He also said that the way he shoots his footage is akin to a musician’s improvisation.
He showed some of his short films/videos, or fragments of them. One of those was Little flags, which will give you an idea of what he does. The truth is, I went to this talk not knowing anything about this man, other than him being a filmmaker, and his link to music. For, you see, he seems to often work with musicians, or simply make sound a vital part of his work. The day before that talk, I was seeing Avi Mograbi’s Z32 while one of Jem’s works was being screened elsewhere, called Ciudad de México por azar, with simultaneous live music by the aforementioned musicians, plus DJ Rupture and Andy Moor. I didn’t know this event was taking place, or I would have been there, especially after seeing Chain the evening after the talk, which was already a day too late anyway. Chain is a feature-length, sharp, documentary-like view on the culture of consumerism. After the screening of that movie, he was there to answer questions and talk a bit about it.
He’s here in Chile because of Sanfic, the Santiago International Film Festival, which has been my chance to see some new films, and also hear the directors talk about them, which is quite an interesting experience. The final time I saw Jem was after a showing of a few of his shorts, including Lost book found, most likely the highlight among the bunch. In this short, he tells his story of what it was like being a push cart vendor in the city, and his discovery of a notebook that was filled with a strictly categorized, but seemingly nonsensical, list of numbers, places, things, situations related to the city. I asked him whether the story was real, to which he said it partially was. He refused to say if the book ever existed.
Jul 31st, 2009
The past five weeks I have been ‘attending’ an online course on game design, generously offered by Ian Schreiber, and named Game Design Concepts. His only condition was that one purchase the book he co-wrote with Brenda Brathwaite, precisely for the purpose of teaching, which turned out to be a very good acquisition in itself, and which I might review at some point in the future. The course itself involves a blog, a forum, and a wiki. In the blog, Ian posts, every monday and thursday, a ‘lecture’, and lists a couple of extra readings; plus, he leaves a ‘homeplay’ (as he calls it) assignment that usually consists of designing a game under certain limitations, or to make changes to an existing one. That’s when the forum comes into play, as everyone is expected to post their game and comment on a few of their peers’, to generate some inter-feedback. The wiki is mostly just an aside that has served no significant purpose other than as a space to offer translations of the different lessons.
I’ve had lots of fun reading the varied essays on games, some of which I would not have read otherwise, as they are about aspects that don’t particularly call for my attention. For instance, I’m not very inclined to reading on game systems, even though it’s pretty much the core of what constitutes a game, so it’s been very useful. The practical work has been stimulating; since I graduated from university, I’d missed that feeling of rushing things to get them in time for class, which ultimately helps to keep me active and on my toes. The course may not be the equivalent of an in-class course, but given the price of admission, it’s been fantastic.
I’ll be sharing the most noteworthy of my ‘homeplays’ in more posts to come. They’ll certainly be improved over the rather rushed state they’re at right now before I post them, though.
Apr 9th, 2009
In the tradition of writing a new post for every new front page design I make, I guess I need to write this. My late feline friend, Cleo, passed away yesterday. I spent half my life with her at my side. So, I made a simple new design in her memory.
The previous design has been archived.
Jan 6th, 2009
i apparently had kept songs from my all past lives. and apparently i have been mostly female in my past lives.
ok um i dreamt music stuff
so i was like “finally, i can record an album with female vocals”
i was listening to music and i wanted to play it
<somari> What kind of music stuff? Mostly female?
i think it was something lofi made
no
“nobody will need to know i’m singing with my past selves”
something played on a keyboard, and i wanted to play it on my keyboard because it sounded so cool, kind of melancholy
then i woke up and couldn’t remember the tune
which sucked
i don’t know anything else outside of what i recited
Dec 28th, 2008
To get my blog up and running as quick as possible, I initially just grabbed the most simplistic template I could find, and used that. It was still not exactly to my liking, of course, but it was only momentary. Well, six months later, and I was still using the same old thing—so I finally got off my lazy bum and created a new template. I kept it as streamlined as I could, and I like the results. Not everything is complete, though, but it’s good enough to use, so things will keep evolving for some time; just expect some rough spots here and there for now (especially if you’re not using Firefox—sorry!). You can see how it used to look.
Oct 31st, 2008
After salivating a bit for the Korg DS-10, a software that simulates a synthesizer named Korg MS-10, for the Nintendo DS (not a game), I came to realize that I did not need to wait or spend money to make music using my DS, for there was NitroTracker freely available to us lucky flashcart owning people. I had known about this tracker (music sequencing software) for a while, but I had never attempted to use it. I was feeling adventurous now, so I downloaded it and read the rather short explanation on using it; it has a surprisingly approachable interface, which was put to the test with someone as ignorant on music composition as myself. Thirty odd minutes of toying with it later, I had made a song. Hooray—my first recorded composition, ever! I only used the samples recommended in the short tutorial I read, which proved to be insufficient, so I went looking for more. After seizing my arsenal, I went back. And, right now, I’m sitting on four frankly awkward tunes that no one would likely want to give a second listen, but I am, honestly, pretty proud of myself. As much as I love music, it’s surprising even to myself that I can’t play any instrument, so it was not only satisfying to have finally drafted something listenable, but also like taking a weight off my shoulders. I crossed the line, and it feels pretty great.
The little horrors are in extended module (XM) format, which should play fine in Winamp if you have a not-too-old version, and probably in other audio players as well. The first in the list below is my latest ‘oeuvre’, and you could consider it my contribution to this year’s Halloween. The others (chronologically ordered, with the oldest last) are unintentionally terrifying. Boo.
Oct 13th, 2008
I’m currently in my final semester for the Bachelor of Graphic Design degree, so I’m devoting my time to a project I haven’t discussed here so far. Now that I have something to show, though, I think it’s time to talk about it a bit. I’ll start from the very beginning: the conception of the idea.
I’ve been an avid videogamer for the best part of my life, so I can account for many hours spent in front of a screen, with a controller in my hands. One day, around two years ago, probably while playing this brilliantly elegant game called Polarium, I realized that I was having more fun creating levels, and making sure that they were both solvable and aesthetically attractive, rather than just playing the game proper. I found that the visual patterns created by the simple colored shapes in puzzle games like Tetris, Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Bobble could, and sometimes would, form beautiful patterns. This is, of course, where my training in design comes in; I realized that a game could be made where the objective, the very goal, was not to match shapes or make chains, but to create an interesting visual composition.
I had very little experience programming, though, so I never took it upon myself to make that game. Time passed, and one day there was a special event, hosted by a friend, called the Super Game Bakedown, that simply consisted of creating a game for the duration of a single month, in the spirit of the NaNoWriMo. I knew I couldn’t achieve such a feat, but I joined anyway, and made it my goal to finish a design document for this dream game of mine. I even added a secondary characteristic to the game, which was an idea that had intrigued me for a while: The game would not use words (or numbers) whatsoever. In the end, I didn’t even finish the design document, but I did get a clearer idea of what I wanted to, and could, achieve. (continue reading)
Sep 11th, 2008
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been very observant, always trying to understand why things are like they are or why I perceive them the way I do. Even though I can’t say I have studied physics, philosophy, neurology or psychology very deeply during my life, they are subjects that have always fascinated me. Often, upon being perplexed by some mystery of nature, I would keenly observe and finally conclude its reasons and solve it, as if it were a puzzle. There was one such mystery that I was never able to solve, though. I believed that I was simply not smart enough, so for the longest time I forgot about it. But today, as I was waking up, I seem to have found the answer.
This mystery is a trivial one, like most others that have puzzled me over the years. The enigma is: why do we see ourselves horizontally flipped in the mirror, and never vertically? It doesn’t matter where I’m looking from, the freckle on the left side of my face will always be on the right, but my head will never be where my feet are. I had always deduced that it was a matter of perception, but I was never able to solve the riddle in its entirety.
Now I believe I have found the reason. You may already have been ‘enlightened’, but if you have not, please read on. The key is: gravity. We are beings that not only cannot imagine living without gravity, but even our bodies have been shaped to match this fact, as we are symmetrical on an axis perpendicular to the ground. What this reveals is that we find left and right to be interchangeable, but never up and down; we cannot conceive the possibility of the sky being under our feet, but we very often take a right turn when we should have taken a left.
The next key, then, are expectations. If you ask someone to turn a chair around, will you expect them to put it upside down, with its legs up in the air? Of course not: they will turn it around a vertical axis, because gravity has conditioned us to it, so it’s the most logical response. They won’t even think of doing anything other than the latter, unless they’re being playful.
You might already see where I’m going with all this. Take a look at the following picture:
The leftmost picture is what you’ve always seen when you look in the mirror; nothing new. The second is what you’d expect to see, with the image in the mirror ‘corrected’. And on the third hinges my argument. If you look carefully, the second and third reflections are the same image, rotated 180º of one another; the third was simply the result of ‘flipping’ the image (as you would a paper sheet) vertically instead of horizontally. In fact, I could flip the image around any odd axis, and the result would be the same, only crooked to a different angle. What does this boil down to, then?
We choose to see the image in our mirror as having been ‘flipped’ horizontally, when in reality it could have been any direction, simply because we are conditioned to our expectations: that the feet must be against the ground. The correct image, in our mind, is the horizontal ‘unflip’, because flipping vertically would result in an image that is opposed to gravity; thus, we eliminate any other possible unflip. So, next time you’re in front of the mirror, looking at your face, stop and think that what you see is an inverted image, and left and right, up and down, or even north and south make no difference: it’s just backwards.
