Changed the design of the front page. Tried something different this time—I wanted it to be more disorderly, less clean; a bit more striking, perhaps. It didn’t come out quite how I envisioned it, but it will have to do, for now. The main reason for this redesign was that I wanted all the links to my different accounts at community websites there. I had something else entirely in mind at first, a design that integrated the last few piclog thumbnails and blog headlines, but since I don’t know much Javascript or PHP, all that will have to wait until I have the time to sit down and learn.
There is something I still don’t understand, which happened in the old design too, and that is some Firefox rendering glitches when it first loads the page. After refreshing, it goes away. My guess is that it’s a bug related to blocks with the CSS display property set to ‘none’, which is how I make the popup effect. Well, nevermind the jargon, but the point is that it somehow screws up the design.
This is a video I made in 2007; it was my final exam for an experimental video class. It’s the story of a young girl, as she documents her own cathartic ritual. The script uses some stereotypes, to match the ingenuity and simple mind of the main character, and also to leverage immediate recognition. I also let many scenes drag on, despite the initial storyboard’s briefness, because I felt that such a contemplative style suited it best, and a fast editing would have done a disservice to the aesthetic. This was proved later, in fact, when I made a 30 seconds ‘digest’ (no subtitles) that didn’t really capture what I was after. That short version was created for an awful contest which I only entered because the topic matched perfectly: stories of sneakers, and it was an advertising campaign for a department store.
As you can see, the video could not have been made without the help of the star, Sigal, who was also the main camera-person. In fact, the concept was created around her, so, had she not agreed to help, I would have been forced to make something else entirely.
And since I’m on the subject, here’s another video I made for that same class, as an exercise in shooting and editing. All of the material was recorded at the Diana arcade in San Diego, Santiago. My original idea was to make it much more musical, but due to time constraints, I was only able to do so much. (continue reading)
Chile has a rather rich mythology, particularly from the island of Chiloé, from where the better recognized mythical figures, such as the Trauco and the Pincoya, originated from. That was the subject for the final exam of my workshop class, the second semester of 2007, with Jennifer King and Ximena Undurraga. What we created was a (loosely termed) dictionary of local mythological beings, a full book of them—since we were around 20, and everyone had to create ten, the result was around 200 pages worth of illustrations.
That was the final cover, I’m not sure whose design it is, but it showcases some unfinished illustrations pinned to a cork board. I created two concepts, but they were not selected (one, two).
And that is how the book looks on the inside. The page on the left is my own work. Some are better than others, but here are all of them:
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.
As a Christmas gift, I made a game that stars my little sister (she’s two-and-a-half) and the rest of the (her) family as ‘supporting actors’, or ‘enemies’, if you will. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to make it, I went with a really crude style, probably inspired by Life of D. Duck II. I also recorded voices for everyone (and even some things, namely toys), and a brief guitar tune. The goal was for it to be surprising and funny rather than fun to play, so I made what amounts to a Road Fighter clone, but simpler. In this case, though, you guide Antonella upwards, avoiding objects and people. I called the game La Hazaña de Anto (Anto’s Feat). It didn’t take them long to finish it, but everyone got to play, so I think the difficulty was just right. They laughed and enjoyed it quite a bit. Mission accomplished!
A first: I finished my Klik of the Month Klub entry within the time limit. It is, sadly, a step down from last month’s. This time I didn’t really know what to do, until I just decided to go for this idea of exploding fireworks I had at some point. I didn’t feel particularly inspired. The result is not really a game, more like a short-lived toy. Matt helped out with the music, once again, and it really fits.
In six days, spaced over three weekends, three guys online, recording songs collaboratively, grabbing what the other made and putting some guitar on top, or some stream-of-consciousness vocals, or some crazy radio static. That was the dynamic that resulted in the creation of Tree, a full-length (well, 30 minutes long) digital release by The Color and the Leaves project!
What we lack in technical skills we make up for in craziness, I think. Lots of good stuff in there, and I can even count some of my own in that category! Tools used (other than the boring ones) include: a Game Boy emulator, an actual Game Boy, a keyboard running out of batteries, and a kettle. The two guys who made this with me are Matt Peter (go listen to his stuff) and Cody Ross (first timer, like me—though he can actually play his musical instruments, which is unlike me).
If you think that having this digital thing sitting there in your harddrive is not very exciting, and decide to burn it on a CD, here’s a sleeve design I made, which you can print on a regular letter, or similar sized, paper sheet (on both sides). After you print it, all you need to do is fold around the edges of the square, length-wise first. The overlapping flaps can be fit one into the other to neatly close it.
I’m honored that The Lake was linked by awesome blogs such as Indie Games and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Although some people found some hilarious bugs, and many had trouble getting it to run (due to Construct’s dependence on some recently released DirectX runtimes, but read on for more on this), the reactions were mostly positive. So, mission accomplished!
The abovementioned runtimes can be downloaded from Softpedia, if you’re having trouble getting them. They’re a hefty download, sadly. As people have commented, it’s kind of ridiculous to download over 80 megabytes to play a game that will take under five minutes to finish. Oh, well.
I made a very quick game (though not quite as quick as the Klik of the Month ones) for a competition that is due today. The game is called The Lake, and it’s for the TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition. The objective was to create a game inspired by one or several of the brief ideas that H.P. Lovecraft jotted down in his Commonplace Book, most of which never got turned into full stories. This is what I did; my game is not ‘based on’ as much as it’s just ‘triggered’ by one of these ideas, though.
My goal was to create a game that would not take me too long to make. I wanted just a full day’s work, it ended up being three, but that’s quite okay. It was created in Construct, which truly is a great promise for the future, but so full of bugs for the time being. I managed, though. The end result is more of a short interactive story; it’s completable in about a single minute, which is a common factor for all my games so far, but in this case the experience is more focused on the narrative. I’m pretty proud of the fact that everything in the game was created by me (well, except for the engine, of course), though I wish I had the time to do something more with the sound design, which was part of the original plan.
As I mentioned above, the idea for the game just came to my mind as if it was a dream when I read one of the entries in the Book. This sounds pretty romantic, but rather than describe the creative process, I want it to be apparent that I applied very few filters on this initial flash. This is why the game may not be very coherent, or have a palpable meaning; nevertheless, it’s there, and I tried to make it as close to this initial spark as it was possible in the time that I had available to do it. I think I’ve just always had a thing for surrealism and their techniques, and this is why I like this kind of pure, unadulterated slice of subconscious, which I oftentimes value more than very produced and over-thought pieces of work. There’s more to life than logic, is what I say.
