Apr 9th, 2010
I wanted to highlight some new stuff on the front page, but ended up redesigning it. I like this new version much better than the last one, even though it’s just a retool gone a bit out of hand. Other than still featuring Cleo, it includes a favorite feature of mine: random colors. Another ‘feature’: it doesn’t work properly in IE.
As always, the previous design has been archived.
Jan 5th, 2010
I can now hold in my hands the physical result of half a year of work, the freshly printed book for children called Jugosa cocina para niños (juicy cooking for kids) that, in addition to containing plenty of recipes meant for them to prepare by themselves (with an adult’s helping hand), includes all sorts of trivia about ingredients and the culinary art, and which, the author says, is meant to help the children recognize the value in the food that they eat, think about nutrition, and put their creativity into practice. It was a fun project, in which I was involved as an art director and layout designer.
Jun 4th, 2009
In 2006, for my workshop course in that year’s first semester, I created a graphic work that ironized technology and how the Monkey King (humanity) wreaks havoc on Earth through its lack of restraint and its egocentrism. The next semester I was to base an animation on that work.
This was a semester-long project (it kind of doesn’t show, due to a long preliminary process) for Sebastián Skoknic and Bryan Phillips’s course. Other than being my longest animation since, it marks the first time I ever did anything resembling sound design; I even splashed a bit in the tub to get some water sounds. The most interesting part was using the Game Boy Camera (thus the Game Boy sound hardware) for the electronic noise, which I think worked very well.
The subject of this piece remains the same as the one it’s based on, though I didn’t make any specific references to video games this once, just computers.
3Apr 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The previous design has been archived.
1Feb 21st, 2009
Since I didn’t like the front page design I made last time, especially because of that glitch in Firefox, I decided to make a quick new one, and, in the process, get a bit more acquainted with Javascript. I think that the end result is pretty cute. It works properly at least in Firefox and Internet Explorer.
2Jan 21st, 2009
As of today (yesterday), I am a professional graphic designer. My final project, which I now refer to as Campodecolor (Spanish for ‘Colorfield’), was the same videogame I have been talking about for some time, the one about visual composition. It’s not finished as a project, but an important milestone has been reached: its first purpose has been accomplished, which was to get me my degree. Of course.
Here’s my project report (in Spanish), which is a bit out of date and a bit incomplete, but I guess it shows the main arguments that support my project. I have touched on these a bit in past posts, and I might do it further in the future, because they are based on my opinion that videogames, as an artform, can be a relevant contribution to society.
For my defense I had to —evidently— show the game, and do a presentation of basically a recap of the same points already covered on the report. On top of that, during the past week I recorded some playtests, and edited a brief video with that material to show to the committee that graded my work. It was pretty funny to watch the testers stumble around and finally grasp the mechanics a bit, though some came to the conclusion that the game was more about the music than the visual aspect, which, I suppose, is a compliment to the sound design in the end.
I have uploaded the version of the game that I presented today (yesterday). The algorithms are still lacking, I’m afraid, but I plan to make them my top priority now. The dynamic audio is created using the minor pentatonic scale, with the sound of a Rhodes piano, as recorded by Guy Cockroft. I’m glad it sounds as well as it does, considering the notes are selected randomly from the scale. Since it seems to be crediting time, I have to thank Stephen Lavelle and muku for their invaluable help and suggestions on all aspects of my game. Also, of course, my teacher throughout this whole process, Eduardo Castillo. (continue reading)
Jan 7th, 2009
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.
Dec 30th, 2008
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:
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.
Nov 6th, 2008
In a previous post I explained what motivated me to make the game I am currently making as my final project in college. In this entry I will actually describe what I have achieved so far, and my plans for what’s to come. If you so wish, you may play the game, incomplete as it is, before reading what follows. If you do, I’d be very interested in hearing about your experience, how you approached the game without knowing exactly what it was about, what could have been clearer or better.
What I sought, as I explained in that other post, was to create a game whose main objective is not to rack up points, but to create a visual composition. This is a game about creativity, indeed; a subset of games that, I have found, is not very largely represented.1 Kenichi Nishi said something in an interview that I quote here because I consider to be extremely significant:
Recently, games have been ‘passively interactive.’ Users do not really have to think about what to do; they are guided around until they reach the end of the level. These types of games do not rely on the creativity of the users.
This is why I started to consider my idea more important than at first. Although there have been games like Mario Paint, that are like tools that are given a context of fun, I wanted to make something simpler, something abstract and more concentrated. There was also the question about how this would work as a game; I didn’t want it to become a color-matching, chain-making fest, so how to evaluate what was being made for its own sake? It didn’t need to be competitive, but it also needed a purpose, a raison d’être. There was the possibility of it being multiplayer, and people judging each-others compositions, much like the abovementioned Nishi’s own game, Archime-DS (or LOL, as it’s being brought over to this half of the world). I took a bit of that idea, as I will explain later, but I deliberated some more until I came to the conclusion that the best would be not to judge quality, but to evaluate compositive characteristics, or parameters, as I’ve grown used to calling them. The point being that every visual composition can be evaluated in terms of different characteristics, like how symmetric it is, whether it uses warm or cool colors, whether it is rhythmic or not (presence of visual patterns), etc. We can use these parameters to objectively determine if a composition is harmonic and pleasing to the eye, if it is foreboding, if it is unsettling, etc.
Personally, I am more of a supporter of holistic rather than reductionist approaches to analysis, but in this particular case (and in many others) it is much simpler to compartmentalize the data—especially given that I am hardly a mathematician, or even a programmer, so it simply made my work a lot easier. I realize that to this point I’m still talking abstractly, so let me show you the game proper.
That is what it currently looks like. In the center, but leaning toward the top and left, is the canvas: a grid where the player creates his composition. To the right is the carousel; sort of a conveyor belt of colored groups of circles, that the player can grab at any time and drop on the canvas. In a bar at the bottom there are a series of pictograms of differing sizes: they are actually dynamic, and change depending on the current characteristics of the composition, as perceived by the game (right now the algorithms that calculate this are not very finely tuned). Each pictogram changes to either a neutral, high or low graphic depending on the value: For instance, the fire icon indicates that the colors are mostly warm, and it would change to a snowflake if it was the opposite. Its comparatively small size means that it is not leaning that much toward warmth. The pictograms still need some work for them to be easier to understand, since, as I said in that previous post of mine, this game will use no words, so they need to be self-sufficient. Finally, in the bottom right is the time counter, which, when depleted, will prompt the game to show a results screen, which is pictured below. (continue reading)
