I'll make it look pretty, you can do the rest.

Glossy Buttons

2011-12-30T14:15:00.000Z

I've been doing a spot of 2D texture work for a friend's game.

I've never done glossy before! It's quite exciting.

My scientific study of responses to Facebook and it's changes: 21st Sept 2011.

2011-09-21T21:18:00.000+01:00

Introduction
Here's my highly scientific review of the response to the latest changes that seemed to have occurred on the social site I love to be nosy on. It's short and sweet, factual, and I'd like to think fairly accurate in terms of the constructive criticism it presents. Written in true this-is-what-I-remember-of-science-class-experiment-write-ups-in-school fashion.

Method
It took me some time to find out some of these things [I searched for the term "facebook" in my friends posts to find out how many were talking about the most recent changes and it only brought up two posts - LIES! - one of which was in a language I kind of can't be bothered to Google-translate...]. I have also included the status update I'll post with a link to this blog post in the count.

Results

Number of statuses found today referencing recent changes: At least 20.
>:( - Number of those consisting of definite complaints: 15. That's 75%.
:? - Number of those that might be complaints hidden in dumbfoundedness: 3. 15%
:) - Number of those consisting of an "I can deal with this" attitude: 1. Bless you, Kozlik the Easygoing. 5%
:D - Number of those praising the changes: 1. But I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic...
["I personally like the new Facebook page, but then again I like unnecessary, complicated, pointless things."]. 5%

Evaluation
I haven't got figures for the comments posted on those statuses. There were a fair few of them, many complaints, but I'm not concerned about being highly thorough about those replies.

Conclusion
So, with 75% of statuses about the changes on my feed being definite complaints*, and only 5% praising the changes - sarcastically at that - I think it's safe to say:

WTF FB. WTF.

*While typing up this informative report, another person posted a status complaining at Facebook for "~~fucking~~ changing my Facebook!", bring the total up to 16 out of 21 posts being definite complaints; or 76.1905%. There was also a complaint about all the complaints, but it included no praise for FB so was ignored by the study.

JustClick Psychometric Test

2011-08-04T22:53:00.001+01:00

After automatically registering with JustClick when registering for something for Graduation day, I checked out the psychometric test on there. I was actually kind of surprised at what it came up with out of my input. Here's what it said:

DESCRIPTIVE WORDS
Dependable, compliant, deliberate, careful, amiable, systematic, persistent, precise, good listener, accurate, kind, perfectionist, logical, hesitant, reserved, mild, reflective, suspicious, self-conscious, accommodating, non-demanding, probing and serious.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
- A perfectionist who strives to avoid error.
- Dislikes unrealistic deadlines and being pressurised to release work before she is satisfied it is correct.
- Works in a thorough and systematic manner in order to reach the perfect solution.
- Prepared to follow systems, rules and procedures.
- Needs time to adjust to change.
- Wants to tie up the loose ends and see an assignment through to conclusion.
- Logical even in adverse situations.
- Non-aggressive; dislikes trouble, conflict and hassle.

Motivators
Charlotte Gyseman is motivated by a happy home life, constant appreciation and security of situation. Maintaining the status quo is also important, as are reassurances and standard operating procedures. She dislikes sudden or abrupt changes and should be given sincere appreciation for a job well done.

Should Charlotte Gyseman have a boss, then ideally that person will be democratic in approach and recognise the need for security within the working environment. The requirements of the job should be clearly defined, understood and preferably given in writing.

Values Charlotte Gyseman brings to the Organisation
Charlotte Gyseman will be recognised and valued for her natural ability to perform consistently and predictably. This will be particularly noticeable when working in specialist or administrative roles and where she is called upon to maintain exacting standards of performance, both personally and for those with whom she works closely. What will also be apparent will be her special ability to stabilise excitable people, demonstrate loyalty and develop unique skills.

Not sure what percentage of the time this would be an accurate description of me, but it feels fairly accurate...

New Project: Chav City

2011-08-01T17:42:00.000+01:00

A short while ago I asked my housemates to give me a game brief to work on. Here are some of the current details:

Chav City [working title] is a turn-based strategy game inspired by the Harry Brown film and a turn-based strategy game that I unfortunately don't remember the name of right now [should have written it down...].
There are three teams to choose from; the Chavs, the OAPs, and the Police, and there are three kinds of unit; Melee, Ranged, and Heavy.
Each team has a base [Council Estates, Retirement Home and Police Station], and the aim of the game is to take over an opponents base.

I'm pretty sure it would be easier to just make it as a board game, but the point of the project for me is just to see what it takes to make one of these kinds of games digitally.

I've learned a tiny bit of Blender by watching the videos here: http://www.blendercookie.com/getting-started-with-blender/ It feels a bit odd learning something from the start again, but it will be good once I know how to use Blender as well as Maya.

I've also just discovered that there is a new version of Unity3D or something, it's been that long since I opened the program last. Not sure yet what has changed, so I will have to find out in a bit.

Back in the World of the Wide Web.

2011-07-20T14:22:00.001+01:00

Internet man was round yesterday to give us internet access at our house.

Now that I'm not a student [I am a student, I'm still studying, but I don't think studying independantly of any organisations like Universities or schools of my own accord using the Internet and any other sources available to me counts as being a Student in the Gov's eyes, for Some Reason[?] ], I possibly won't be having my free licence to use Maya anymore. So, today I'm downloading Blender again to re-learn it so I can make stuff.

OH! And I forgot to mention, I seem to have gotten me a 2:1 for the past three years of work. Nicely done :)

How NOT to stand out with your advertising.

2011-06-12T18:42:00.002+01:00

Quickly went onto IndieDB today to accept an invite to join the group Flying Bones [the team name for our final major project], and lo and behold, what did I see?

I'm guessing those adverts on the edges are supposed to be in the background - but they're not and have ended up covering a fair portion of the screen's edges. I can't read any of the numbers on the side. I'm not amused. Especially since Ctrl scrolling doesn't do anything to help it.

I don't even know what they're advertising precisely, but already I've probably developed a subconscious link between it and the feeling of rage it's giving me. F.

Quick Prototype Development

2011-06-06T22:38:00.000+01:00

Today I registered at IndieDB.

Then I read through this article by the people from the Experimental Gameplay Project on how to prototype games in 7 days.

... A very short post today.

Fuck it, I'm in.

2011-06-04T01:14:00.003+01:00

Okay. I know. I've ranted and raved and then gone back on my word and then gone back on it again about whether or not I wanted to make games. But after the challenges, the expected failures but also the surprise successes of working on this final project, I'm up for it. I have been extremely inspired by the success of Q.U.B.E., but I have no idea where I want what I will do to go. Probably into my collection of stuff I have done for myself.

Over the next month I'm going to work on the mechanics and the code we used in our final major project and make myself a new game. It won't be FP[3], but it will come out of that. It won't be all fancy and story and AAA style animations and look beautifully like real life. It will be extremely simplified, extremely basic, it will not try to be arty; it will just be a game. A tidy, efficient, well executed game. Maybe with some funky colours and a feel of abstractness about it. Maybe. Who cares. I'm in charge on this project and the only one grading it will be me.

Do I sound angry? I think I sound angry. I'm not angry... Just very, very determined to do what I want, and get what I want, when I want it.

... Although, I have also been listening to Queen's I Want It All all day, which may have something to do with it.

Personal Statement.

2011-05-09T23:00:00.001+01:00

Well, it is now almost ten to 11pm, and I've been quickly typing out a personal statement for tomorrows lecture.

I've given up on trying to pursue a career in something in particular. Here's what I typed out. Italicised text is just the stuff I wrote to get into writing mode.

---

Personal Statement.

I have experience in:
- modelling and UV mapping in Maya,
- texturing with Photoshop,
- some javascript programming in Unity3D,
- organisation and planning within spreadsheets, including Excel, Google Docs and Google Sites
- animation in Flash and Maya.

You know, writing a personal statement is really fucking hard when you have so many varied and sometimes conflicting interests, especially when you don’t know who you’re trying to impress.

Maybe I should start with why I chose to study Computer Games Design at University.

Well.

I do not have a passion for games. I have a passion for creating, making, observing, learning, exploring new areas and concepts, and an insatiable desire for acquiring more knowledge and skills that allow me to do even more for myself.

When I chose to study Computer Game Design, I was looking for a course that would allow me to further develop multiple skills, including my visual art skills [drawing, painting, photography, photo-manipulation, sculpture, architecture, animation and film making], story writing [be this for games, music, film or plain prose], audio creation [including song writing and ambient music and audio clip selection for conveying feelings and sensations within a situation or area - although usually for use in film/visual work], research skills [including historical, psychological and scientific understanding, and learning how things and systems physically work and the concepts behind why they work in this way, and what these things could mean for future developments in various areas], programming skills [to allow me to create and control interactive virtual environments and systems myself] and teamwork skills.

When I was younger I was never able to seriously answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As a young adult, I still feel unable to pigeonhole myself into a single specific career choice.

---

Haha. What do you think... would you give me a job?

A more important question to me would be; would you give me a job I would enjoy?

FireBENCH!

2011-04-17T23:16:00.000+01:00

This is a little something I made last night, for fun:

... I call it "FireBENCH!"

When you click, you fire benches that are on fire at the targets on the wall.*

... The targets are flammable.

Each time you click, the word, "Fire!" can just about be heard over the background music of a version of Firestarter that had Eric Cartman dubbed in as singing along to it.

* The targets' faces originally looked like a slightly modified version of the "troll face" that I've seen around the Internet, except with pink skin, brown hair added and an orange hoodie. I believe the picture was drawn by Frodey [or Frody?] in the year below me, but I hadn't asked to use it so I've got some more standard targets in for these screenshots. Also, I started feeling a bit creeped out by the fact that I had made this game when all those faces were looking at me, so I thought I'd better change it anyway..... Yeahhh.

Yellow Snake

2011-03-16T14:42:00.002Z

Today I made a little artwork to splat onto the walls of room two. Wasn't sure what to do though, so I'm drawing a little inspiration from my 4 Pillars [if you don't know what that means, don't worry. It's one of those Chinese Horoscope things].

Here's my year pillar, the Yellow Snake:

I literally just painted the body with the touch pad on my laptop, and sneaked a peek at this tutorial for some help with making it look like old graffiti.

Here's a quick look within Unity:

I'm going to paint some walls

2011-03-15T14:22:00.002Z

Project

Well, the animating plan didn't work out too well. I found it really hard trying to work with a rig I didn't understand. I might have done better if I had used the same tutorial Tim had worked from to rig a character, so that I'd know from the start what all the lines on the rig meant [perhaps I should rig up Mr Shiny when he is made?].

So this week I've got to texture up the second room of the first level. Here's what I've been given to work with:

Tim has shared a bunch of textures with me using Dropbox [Dropbox is a file sharing/syncing software and website that's pretty cool. If only I had more computers with files I want to keep track of so I could play with syncing stuff with myself...]

UPDATE: Have put the base texture on the walls, floor and ceiling, now it just a little ~~tender, loving care~~ ~~vandalism~~ decoration.

I've also made a little task chart for us to look at and use. I'm not sure how up to date it is at the moment and we haven't thoroughly discussed Milestones at all, but it's up there and is shared in our Dropbox folder for us to edit as we go.

Dissertation

I think I've gone into denial. The sun is out, I can smell freshly cut grass, I've got plans for living arrangements next year in Cardiff with some friends, and I've got texturing to do today. Let's just say I will be happy when I have seen the end of the dissertation period.

I'll be like Dr Frankenstein

2011-03-09T15:06:00.000Z

Looks like I've got me some animating to do! Tim's gotten sick of looking at Tagger, so we're having a bit of a switcharoo. He's going to take over the environment for now, and I'm going to animate the rest of Tagger's animations. Except I haven't done any 3D character animation since the tweaking of old Igor back in year 1...

Tutorials to the rescue! Here seems to be a nice little one from OliverBarraza on YouTube about importing character animations from Maya into Unity. Not hugely in depth but I think I get the gist of that side of things.

What I seriously need now though is some tuts for tips on handling a rigged up character for animating. Part 2 following the above video has some tips, not sure I quite understand some of them yet though. I think I will just have to have a play and see what I can do.

He has some more tutorials in his Advanced Unity Tutorial series, so I'm going to check those out now and see what I can learn.

Paper Production Grades, and Minecraft

2011-02-21T18:21:00.000Z

Got my grades back for the Paper Production module today.

Post Mortem/Diary:
Creativity = B12
Research = B13
Development = B13
Overall = B13

Design Portfolio:
Creativity = B12
Research = B12
Development = B11
Overall = B12

Presentation:
Creativity = C10
Research = C10
Development = B11
Overall = C10

Overall grade = B12

Nice.

Minecraft

I played Minecraft for the first time last night, and I think I probably shouldn't buy it. It seems like the kind of game I would waste a lot of time and attention on. That said, I might end up buying it anyway, because I had a play on the free version on their site and got annoyed that I couldn't craft things from the stuff I found, only place blocks and destroy blocks...

Did I say might? I kind of... just did...

dA Portfolio

2011-02-06T14:42:00.001Z

Wow. I totally forgot I had this.

DeviantArt gave us all some kind of portfolio space ages ago. I like it, but I haven't updated mine in over a year. Hmm. Nor have I signed in on dA for a few months.

Where have you gone again my sweet?

2011-02-04T22:56:00.008Z

Woah. I can't believe I actually missed out an entire month from writing on here. And I've had two hand-ins to write about.

Dissertation Draft

I handed in almost the required amount of words in time on Moodle [the online submission thing]. Except, I might have posted it on the wrong submission link and I didn't hand in a hard copy, so the other day when Rich emailed me asking for it, that may have been the first time any of the lecturers saw it. Woops.

Also, I've been staying away from it since the draft hand in on Jan 13th. On the plus side, I finally borrowed Raph Koster's Theory of Fun from the library. It was an interesting read and some of it might come in handy. I definitely should be focussing more time on the dissertation than I have been though. I guessed biggest problem is a lack of dedication. I should probably set myself some extra deadlines to meet to make sure I have something half decent to hand in.

Portfolio - Paper Production

Handed in a concept doc [or "Design Portfolio", I should say], dev. diary and 1500 word "post mortem" of the process. The hand-in itself was pretty easy going in the end. I wrote up my post-mortem on Sunday, the day before the hand-in deadline. Then because the deadline was at noon-ish the next day, I figured I'd hand it in via Moodle early, that Sunday night, so I could have a sleep in if I felt like it. I don't think I did sleep in, but I did keep on my pajamas.

In other news...

The 365 page-a-day Project

I wrote about this on my "business" blog [I'm not sure I can really call it that until I sell something]. Check out the post here [I also talk about sheep poo paper. And tiny houses].

It's been going okay, I've noticed after 3 weeks of doing it that I've started to attempt colour coding my days.. Standard sorts of emotional colours, adding random extras of yellow for happy, blue for sad and red for angry. The pages have also started to be less about drawing something artsy and more about recording what I was doing or focussing on that day.

Shown here are 28JAN, in which I accompanied Sam and Tom of the Irving and Booth varieties on their day off to Barry Island, and then drank wine, helped invent a new game, and went to a fairly empty Uni rave, and the 29JAN, which was when I spent part of the day catching up on five days worth of pages. Apparently I'm not very good at doing a page a day sometimes, especially when I spend a few days over at Camp Sausage.*

*Camp Sausage n. the house at which numerous friends of mine - of the male variety - live

And oh my! I totally forgot. According to page 25JAN, that was the day I died.

...Not for real. Dave of the Ware variety phoned me up and asked me if I could help him and Dan of the O'Hara variety with a teaser tape. I had to run around Caerleon for a bit and look scared and then relieved on camera and then - oh no! Turns out there was still a murderer nearby. I had to lie on the muddy pathway and pretend I'd been killed while they dripped fake blood on a real knife and tried not to drop either upon me. It was all quite fun actually. Still need to wipe the mud off that coat though.

And Claire's acting was really interesting to see. I say interesting; I should probably say awesome. It was really unnerving - in a good way - and as a result, half of my acting wasn't even acting. She really was behaving the whole time like the kind of person who was on the edge enough to kill me, and until she said "I'm back" and laughed her friendly laugh, I was slightly scared that she might actually kill me [I'd seen her around before but had only met her properly that night].

It was brilliant, and totally freaky. It was as if she'd put herself under hypnosis - she wasn't acting the character. In those few hours, she was living it. Dave told me later that when they filmed some other scenes at her house while she was back in character that it was even more intense and freaky, as she'd actually be talking back to and staring at them while being this on-the-edge and unstable, agitated character.

I know that story is not much to do with CGD but.. self induced hypnotic trances? The whole thing just fascinates me.

Did they do that on purpose?

2010-12-28T17:46:00.002Z

I was just doing some research for my dissertation [guess what, it might actually turn out okay!], when I noticed an advert on the right hand side of my screen.

My mind, like most people's, tends to wander now and then when doing work. It wasn't hard to keep my eyes on the ad to see what happened next.

Picture the scene; you're on a boat, on your way to America. But it's not just any boat; you're on The Unsinkable Boat.. the one that sank after hitting the iceberg. You know the story. You don't make it onto one of the few lifeboats around, and die a long, horrible, freezing death.

Less than a hundred years later, someone makes not only a movie about it, but there are also at least two films called Titanic 2, and there are novelty icetrays to allow people to "recreate history in their glasses". I'm not joking, my sister received a "Gin and Titonic" icetray for Christmas. The ship shapes are too large to fit in a cup floating horizontally the way a boat should, so until they melt they assume a slanted half-submerged position.

I don't think I really need to go into detail about how sick it all kind of is... Meanwhile, the following advert for quick money transactions online appears on the net for anyone to see.

Now, is it just me, or is the wording on the second-to-last frame combined with the choice of movie displayed just a little bit unfortunate?

Dissertation: It's Christmas Eve...

2010-12-24T18:26:00.000Z

... And I'm attempting to work on my Dissertation.

What I seem to be having the most trouble with - just like last time - is choosing what to focus on and write about. I don't have anything in particular to do with games that is deeply and academically interesting me in a positive way at the moment. Instead, the thoughts that are weighing most heavily in my mind are:

1. Oh, this dissertation malarky is hard.
2. What am I going to do for a living next year after Uni?
3. [And everything else I wouldn't be thinking if I were a robot, including "I'm hungry and my feet are cold"]

The result is that I'm spending even more time rejecting the games design scene, probably due to a lack of confidence in myself to succeed, and am instead focusing on things that are less difficult for me... like binding books. When I stand back from how I feel, I can see that some things aren't that hard to do - I can do them, and the only reason I haven't done them is not because I can't but because I've talked my mind out of wanting to do them. It's a bit of actual cognitive dissonance in action.

This blog is a prime example. I used to write lots of stuff. Sure, they weren't particularly academic posts, but they were words and they were posted often. The last post on this blog mentioning any work to do with my course was over a month ago. I've just been writing things down on paper now and then, but most of the time I've just been stewing inside my own head, changing my mind about what to write about - totally at the mercy of whatever I feel is being most pressing - until I gave up a short while ago and spent some days not touching any coursework at all. With a few weeks to go until I have to hand in the first draft, the awareness of the deadline being right after the Christmas holidays has prodded grumpy little me sharply in the back of my skull.

My desire to escape from all thing computer gamey revived in me the ideas of pursuing handicrafting. Unfortunately, it's not something I can picture myself writing about academically. I tried, but it got out of hand and like watered down PVA glue ended up being all over the place.

I just want to make stuff.

From what happened with the last essay I wrote, I can see where this is going to end up. I'm going to take the essay I wrote about writing essays and work from that and how I'm feeling about writing the dissertation and end up writing about the difficulties students can face when writing dissertations. As you can see in the picture above, I've already started. Who knows when I'll finish.

And then after I graduate, I will start to feel less pressure from the whole game thing, and I'll start to return again. I will play with all the free software I learned about, and I will make little games, and write up ideas for bigger games, and think about stories for narrative games and come up with mechanics for seriously simple but fun games. This won't happen all at once; it will happen slowly over time, mingled in with numerous other things I like to do and tend to return to, like playing things on guitar and reading about history and magic and learning about science and love and art and me.

This is what I'm hoping. Life was much better when I wasn't worrying about how long I would be able to keep going. I mean dude, I'm not even 21 yet!

Better looking ArtFire Studio & Blog

2010-12-17T20:30:00.003Z

I made the studio look prettier:

I've also created a Blogger blog for the work I do, here :)

ArtFire Studio

2010-11-27T01:42:00.001Z

Teehee. Does this make me a shop keeper now?

Plan of Action!

2010-11-18T18:11:00.001Z

Final Project

I've been feeling very unorganised lately and don't feel like I've been focusing much brain power on course work. So, today is going to be a full on organisation evening, where I'm going to gather up all the different bits and bobs to do with the final project, such as placing blog posts into the dev-diary, and gathering written work into the Concept Doc, so I can figure out how much time we've got left to do what.

Rapid Films

Jess and I managed to hand something in, unfortunately I can't figure out what the problem is with the exporting of the avi... it did the compressed version but all the colours were screwy and the animations didn't play, but the uncompressed version ended up being 3.3GB and wouldn't play... I don't know.

The next brief is to add to the story of a video the organisers created, in which each of them died an unorthodox death and there was a mysterious brown envelope involved.

Only rule is that entries must contain the brown envelope. The original rules were to have exactly 3 minutes 33 seconds with an unorthodox death and less than 25% dialogue, but the organisers changed it and pushed the deadline back to December 5th to try to get more people involved and not scare off those already around. Personally I didn't think the original limitations would have caused any of them any problems, but some people seemed put off for some reason.

Dissertation

Got some a couple of interesting links about Digital Natives and Immigrants recently [here's Part 1 and Part 2], which nudged the direction of my dissertation over again. Definitely going to have to rewrite my proposal now and change what's going to happen with my chapters. I'm hoping this will be the last time now for major direction changes, especially since the Digital Natives idea has brought the ideas in the dissertation closer to the essay I handed in last year. It gives another explanation as to why writing an essay would be difficult for students now.

Lots to dooo

2010-11-06T16:02:00.005Z

Dissertation

Had a help session on how to write a dissertation yesterday, was probably very helpful. I realised that if I write a minimum of 500 words per week [starting yesterday], then that will be 9000 words in the 18 weeks I have left [not including 2 weeks for proofreading the final draft and a week for printing and binding]. I'm still a bit iffy on the subject I'm writing about, but I think it will definitely be centred around the concept of fun and having fun and the effects of the need for fun on society.

Final Major Project [blog]

It's going alright, this week I'll be working on the house which will act like a hub for the levels, while Tim works on the levels and some character designs.

Rapidfilms

The animation seemed well received, I enjoyed how many laughs the "that's what she said" joke got. The next challenge is to create a 2-3 minute film by Thursday based on two characters, in the genre our groups picked out of the hat. Our genres were Horror and Scorsese styled gangster/crime.

It's probably going to be an animation from us again, but so far all I've actually drawn is this picture of De Niro's face:

The story I came up with is this:

A gangster is walking along a street. He's somewhat aged and world-weary. He passes a young pretty girl; he doesn't know her, but her face seems familiar. He wonders where has he seen her before. As the girl passes, she also seems to find his face familiar.

Flashback to a faded past, and the guy is much younger. He has been sent to kill the men of a rival family - the girl's. Shots fire everywhere. Blood falls everywhere.

Colour returns. The man's eyes widen as he realises who the girl is. He turns, a breeze blows by. She's not there.

Colour fades and we're back to the past again. The camera pans up towards the nearby window. The girl has been left alone, surrounded by the dark red of her brothers. The breeze blows by, the scent of blood filtering out through the night, attracting the attention of a dark figure. The dark figure, fangs glinting, dissolves into the darkness, and the scene fades to black.

The quiet echo of a scream is heard, as the camera pans across to a close up profile of the man's troubled face, still peering out at the dimly lit street before him. Out of the darkness behind him, the girl emerges, hate ablaze in her eyes.

Just as she is about to strike, the scene cuts swiftly to black.

"Stealing's Bad"

2010-10-29T22:41:00.000+01:00

There we go:

Hand in for it is before 7pm on Monday. As this was pretty much just for fun for Jess and I, we're not going to spend the weekend making it look better... Especially not after Jess said it looked "delightfully crappy".

Being Productive: RF, D, and the FMP.

2010-10-27T16:21:00.002+01:00

Final Major Project:

Have not done a lot of work the past few days due to RapidFilms and life, but I did find some more beautiful pics of abandoned places and copied out Escher's "Relativity" to get to know it better. Tim sent me a link for another website with more nice photos of abandoned places too.

RapidFilms:

Been working on a RapidFilms project this week, so far spent two days on it. The brief was to create a film no longer than 2 minutes based on your favourite joke. I'm working with Jess Reynolds and neither of us seem to have one favourite joke [because all of life is either hilarious, or ridiculous...], so what we've done instead is taken some things we have found funny and worked them together into a storyboard [day 1].

Yesterday [day 2], I pulled all the images Jess drew into an animatic with silent-movie style piano music by Kevin MacLeod. I made a few minor changes to some of the text that would appear and switched the first and last scene around, but yeah, we're pleased with it so far for two days work. All it needs now is the images to be done properly and the transitions and camera movements put in, which will probably take a couple of days.

Dissertation:

Jess posted the help sheet under my door this morning that they were given for writing dissertations. I copied it out, did the exercises, and I'm now going through the Georg Simmel text on "The Metropolis and Mental Life" we were given last year, separating the sentences with pencil lines. It looks horrendous until you separate the sentences out; then things become much more clear..

Here's what I wrote for the exercises:

"Free" writing [5 mins each]:
1. State the subject of your thesis in one sentence.
Fun - what it is, why we want it, and why it sometimes feels like we shouldn't be having it.

2. List the aims of your research/analysis.
To explore the feelings and mentality of those who strongly align their arguments with a "superego" kind of point of view. To suggest that living a life of fun is not at odds with working hard and being a productive member of society. To show the importance of "having fun" as a driving force and as a glue for a productive society.

3. "My project is about"
... the relationship between people and what they perceive as fun, and how society sees "fun" and those who have it.

4. "The stage I am at now"
... still the "Free" writing stage, although I have some authors to look at as well.

5. "The main argument is"
... that the freedom to have fun is vital not just at the beginning of our lives, as children, but throughout a person's entire life.

"Generative" writing [5 mins each]:
1. What I find difficult in writing and researching my dissertation is:
... keeping my mind on one subject. If I come across something interesting I will take the time to read it, even when it has nothing to do with my subject.

2. The key sections of my dissertation are:
- What is fun? [because fun is a term that covers different things for different people]
- Why we all NEED to have fun
- The ways we prevent ourselves and eachother from having fun
- "Rules were made to be broken". Thanatos and Chaos. How humans strive to break free and remain free.

3. What I can write about NOW is:
Expand the section about the ways society has prevented itself from being a fun one...
- Law, order, rules.
- Morality, religion, thou shalt not.
- Goals of a society and the accepted norms, how people are expected to behave, and the attitudes towards those who deviate from the expected behaviours.

Dissertation: Shouldn't be too hard...

2010-10-16T17:08:00.002+01:00

Had a group session with Caroline, an animation lecturer, about dissertation stuff yesterday [I think.. my memory is mixing my days up a little thanks to Freshers Week], and it doesn't seem too bad. She said a dissertation is basically taking a few key texts about what people have been saying about a subject [preferably something academic..], and rewriting and writing about them to show that you understand what they are saying, and that dissertations normally get better marks if they are posing a hypothesis, an idea that needs to be tested.

So, just thinking about it today, I was thinking of writing about what people think about ethics or moral duties in computer games or what should or shouldn't be put or allowed to be put into computer games. Should give me plenty to read about, but I'll have to check out academic stuff to see what's there.

Dissertation... Hmmm.

2010-10-05T18:49:00.002+01:00

I don't know what I'm writing about.

The other day, Henry posed an interesting question on FB:

What would have the most real world impact? Making a fringe game for social change that preaches to the converted... or making a commercially successful mainstream game and donating the profits to charity?

Maybe I'll write about the different motivations behind making computer games; for money, to send a message, to create a world or stories, to make something fun or to have fun in the process of making something.

Oh, I don't know.

Bend it, bend it, just a little bit o'...

2010-09-27T17:13:00.006+01:00

... I don't know the rest of the words. For some reason I want to say "Tetleys Tea Bags, just a little bit o' " and then repeat.

Sooo, I had an idea today about what I want to do for the final major project. No one got back to me about my begging to make the best game in the world [except Todd, who said he had already made it], so I started thinking about what I would rather do if I had to work on something by myself.

I fancy working on something that kind of doesn't make sense.

Something inspired by the transforming furniture and cool and crazy architecture I've been looking at a lot lately. I'm thinking, something that I would find as fun as I found wandering around Croft Manor; pressing buttons, making things move, exploring and making my way around.

Something that looks a little bit Julian Beever, sounds a little bit [Alice in] Wonderland, feels a little bit Indiana Jones and seems a little bit like a giant hamster cage in a mad scientists laboratory that's been "improved" with secret rooms of it's own.

Looks like I've just turned all the looking-at-cool-stuff-on-the-Internet that I did while on autopilot over the Summer into "important research for pre-pro". Nice one.

But before I get too excited over the possibilities, better learn to walk first. Time to find out how to actually implement hinge joints in Unity.

Gyland: "Strange Stone Home Discovered"

2010-09-24T20:38:00.008+01:00

If Gyland had newspapers, that's probably what they would have reported today.

Taking a little inspiration from some of the articles I read on dornob about modular buildings and other articles about modular dollhouses, I've added a building to Gyland made of 6 identical pieces.

I literally just plonked them together with one of the textures already in the Standard Assets, paying only a little attention towards making sure they were lined up vertically, and that access to each room was possible. I think I'm going to have to make a few modifications to the module to make each piece link up better, and I'll probably look into creating some linking stair-modules so you can reach the upper modules from the lower ones.

The model of the house is kinda starting to take shape aswell. I've got the basic roof shape modelled, but the upstairs internal walls need to be shrunk down vertically so that they don't stick out from it. And then there's still all the UV mapping to do... Good thing this is just a side project.

The real world roof is getting there too, dad is aiming to get it finished for the end of the month. Here's mum and dad working on it. I did take some funny shots of a local cat chilling out and licking it's bottom while the parents worked on the roof in the background, but apparently mum didn't find them funny enough to display on her FB album...

As for the annoying sister situation: they're all annoying me a little less now. It could be because I'm starting to feel less distressed in general about life... or it could be because it's nearly 2 weeks until I get to go back to Uni...

It's probably both.

Soon, my pretty, soon...

2010-09-21T15:47:00.005+01:00

In three weeks, I'm getting a divorce.

No, not really - but I will be going back to uni, and back to the freedom of having my own room. Who would believe a 15 year old sister could spend so much time nagging. True, she doesn't actually do it all the time... but she does it way more than I'm willing to live with.

Oh well. On the plus side, the experience will drive me to work harder at number 4 on the list I wrote back in January. Too much of my Summer has been spent experiencing hell and I don't fancy spending any more of my life like this.

So guys, my fellow CGDers, please help me by letting me help you make an awesome game this year so I can get a job earning enough for me to pay for a room somewhere with cool flatmates. Please.

I am actually dying to be back in Uni. The freedom. Oh my; the freedom. So what if it wasn't true freedom, in that I probably signed an agreement somewhere to work hard and abide by rules or something - it totally beats living with someone who nags me like my sole purpose in life is to do exactly as she says before she has to say it like I'm some kind of mind reader...

To the men married to nags everywhere: I feel for you.

Transforming Furniture and Cool Homes

2010-09-13T12:17:00.006+01:00

My latest obsessions were inspired by a link a friend posted on Facebook [my, does that Facebook get around. I've been hearing it referred to on TV as if it were an everyday part of British life.. So it's official, then].

Tranforming Furniture

I've kind of picked a really rubbish picture to illustrate. It's a .gif and it worked better when it was actually moving.. Check out Dornob for tons of better pictures of weird designs, and not just of the transforming variety.

Stylish transforming furniture is super cool. Maybe I just think it is because I've been living in 3-bedroomed houses in a family of 7 since 1996, with 4 girls squidged together in one room on two bunk beds for the majority of the time, or maybe it's because it makes me think of secret laboratories and hidden rooms. Or both.

I started figuring out how some of it works/could and even made a lame cardboard mock up out of a Cream of Mushroom Cup a Soup box. I think if I had the time and room to work in and my dad would let me borrow some of his tools, I could probably knock up something cool. But if that fails...

Dolls' Houses

Okay, so my recent project of building a virtual version of my house is probably quite like building a virtual doll's house. It makes sense I guess.

- I had Polly Pockets when I was little. I made a little flat out of paper for one. I think it had an elevator, but how I managed to come up with that and make it work I don't know.

- In a big bucket of sand I sculpted a haven for woodlice when I was around 5-7 years old, with some damp wood for them to munch on. They loved it.

- In DT at school I made a Barbie-sized plywood chair, complete with foam padding and light blue material covering [didn't quite get around to gluing the arm-leg pieces onto the main chair piece though, for some reason].

I'm fairly sure wanting to create little environments and worlds was probably one of my motivators for getting onto a CGD course in the first place.. But why stop there when I can create awesome little houses out of actual physical objects! ...Haha.

I'm pretty sure it'll be a full blown hobby eventually, but at the moment I'm thinking about making and publishing a book for kids who were/are like me. I could make one about Castles. And one about Fairy Hotels. And then when I'm rich because I've sold billions of copies, I can get onto the next project:

Cool Homes

Basically, my plan is to create a cool home for me. I've been spending a lot of time browsing the pages of WebUrbanist, and if I have learned one thing from them it's this: homes don't have to look like any of the houses you've ever lived in before.

I would probably have a secret laboratory, as well as a workshop and study [although they might be integrated with the lab]. An indoor gym and outdoor assault course like Lara Croft has in Tomb Raider III would probably be cool, and I'd have to have a party room or hangout area for friends to come chill in, and I would have other cool [a secret cinema?] and useful things in my house [like, um, an Internet connection and plumbing and electricity]. And it might be situated in a tree. And part of it would be underground. It would probably end up being the kind of place someone would walk into and say,

"... What?!"

Unless they were kids, in which case they'd probably just want to live there. And I would be like,

"NO! MY HOUSE! Go and buy all of my books and make friends with constructors and you can figure out how to build your own awesome house."

And then they would, and we'd all live happily ever after, each in our own houses. The End.

New House: First Floor and Stairs

2010-08-16T23:13:00.007+01:00

Showed my sister Yvette and her friend Shannon what I've done so far.

Yvette used to love play Tomb Raider when she was little, and she is loving seeing our house take shape on a computer. Haha.

I haven't actually done any UV maps yet, and there aren't any windows. I've just applied a texture in Unity to help you see where the walls are as you wander around. Gotta say, it's looking a lot tidier than my actual house.

We have a lot of random stuff in our house, this shot doesn't really do it justice..

I think Yvette said she wants me to put Lara Croft into it, so she can run around shooting stuff in a place that looks like our house. Cough... although... I don't think I can really deny the fun in the idea..

New House: Ground Floor

2010-08-13T19:39:00.004+01:00

Here's how the ground floor looks so far:

The First Floor will probably be trickier because of the angles of the roof.. I'm thinking I'll model the First Floor separately then put them together later. Haven't actually finished modelling the ground floor, still need to raise the internal walls, do the windows, the actual floor and the ceiling. And then after the modelling there's the UV map... and then texturing...

I wonder who will finish the place first, me virtually or my dad for real.

Nerd It Up

2010-08-12T16:31:00.005+01:00

Soon after the last post, I went to my dad and asked him if he knew where a microscope was. I knew he had one, turns out he has two, and within the hour I was peering through the eyepiece at some mould I'd scraped off my bedroom door.

I'm so glamorous.

And now, I'm thinking about illustrating science.

If there is anything that Bill Bryson has made clear to me in his book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, it's that despite how much humans have learned, there is still a lot out there left for us to learn. Even the stuff we do know is a bit foggy. Whether it's illustrating species, explaining phenomenon, or presenting theories, there's always something to do. Which means... I'll always have something to draw.

Here's some I did earlier. What do you think?

I think I like painting bugs and stuff. One time, when I was younger, I painted a snail with nail varnish to make him pretty.

Maybe I'll utilise my CGD skillz to create interactive informative stuff. It doesn't even have to be interactive stuff, I could model skeletons, or draw bugs, or do cartoony learning aids like I would do for myself back in school...

Just an idea. In other news, I've actually now gotten my dad to give me the plans and elevations for our house as it will look when he's finished the extension. So, as soon as I've had some food, because I am very hungry, I'm going to get to work on them and start building the place up in Maya.

Feng Shui the mould away! [This has nothing to do with Games.. yet?].

2010-08-09T16:58:00.004+01:00

I don't know why, but ever since I was little I've been a little into astrology, zodiacs, fortune telling, faeries, runes, and all kinds of old mystical stuff. The human imagination is a fascinating thing. I should probably start a research blog about it, since I return to it so often. I wonder how many people actually make a comfortable living off of it. Anyways, recently I've been focusing on Chinese Astrology, with it's Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and Yin and Yang and Five Elements and Feng Shui and Four Pillars of Destiny.

It's a lot more complex and interesting than the Chinese Restaurants would suggest, where most people only ever come into contact with a list of 12 Animals. I'm not saying I believe in any of it, but I'd like to sometimes. Probably because I enjoy [and therefore spend so much time] reading about it...

As for Games stuff: Not done a lot. I have been pining away for uni because I miss the lifestyle, and my room here is horrible, cold and mouldy [literally]. I reckon my recent obsession with Feng Shui is just part of my drive to get rid of the mould. The sister I share my room with deals with the mess much the same way as I've read scientists in the past have dealt with strange phenomenon they can't explain: She ignores it. Instead of trying to minimise as much as possible the kind of environment mould loves, she buries her nose in a biology textbook and pretends it doesn't exist. But look what it does to my boots after only a week spent under the bed!!

The picture doesn't do it justice well, but they're supposed to be plain grey. I was raging. My sister probably doesn't care much because most of her stuff hasn't been that badly affected, and she doesn't want to have to do anything about it. I think I'd be more forgiving if she wapped out a powerful microscope now and then to examine the stuff that's started growing on the sides of the furniture, but alas, no...

Maybe I'll tell her that if she gets a microscope, I'll get a telescope and we can share them between us.. At least it would give me more stuff to look at in the RL, and she can feel more like a real scientist.

Gyland: Fire Oranges

2010-07-23T12:51:00.004+01:00

The sky is pink again, and I've now got those fire oranges in. Giant ones.

Next addition could be giant snails with fireworks attached, inspired by Ollie Elliott...

Like a Headless Chicken

2010-07-14T20:40:00.009+01:00

You may be wondering about the title of this post. Or maybe you're not. In any case, you probably won't be by the end of it.

Gyland: Oh, has it only been a day since yesterday's post?

So, what happened was this:

Which then turned into this:

Which then... uh.. became this...

Which inevitably resulted in this:

That's red biro hand-drawn circles on a scrap bit of paper painted with watercolour paints. Apparently there are only so many straight lines a girl can handle in one go.

In other news, I haven't developed the Morse Code game idea any further since I last thought about it. One of the WOF programmers, Dan Wynne, sent a few of us a message a few days ago about a game he wants to make based on a town like Dudleytown. Not sure what's going on with that right now, I think Dan's on holiday so I'll have to ask Pete what plans is.

I felt a little zap of inspiration today when someone I know posted on Facebook that Tetris is the reason kids drop bricks off of bridges. Made me laugh. I was thinking of a game based on the 'lives of Tetris block characters when they're not busy being dropped', but I don't know how long that idea is going to hang around for.

I also watched this recently:

Reminded me of a request made of me by a friend to make an inspirational martial arts film over summer... Except I don't know how I'd even begin...

I guess I'd have to start with baby steps. Maybe I'll watch some of the old Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for inspiration, since it was a childhood favourite... Or I could use one of my friend's own fight scene films as reference for choreography and recreate it with some snazzy cartoon characters in place of the human fighters. Haha. Ooh! Maybe I'll use some of the old flash characters me and Ben were working on. Maybe Squeak and Headphone Jack...

I don't think this is going to be quite what Mr Ware meant when he requested an inspirational martial arts film.

Gyland: Skylines

2010-07-13T13:03:00.005+01:00

I've been searching for a tutorial online for creating your own skyboxes by hand. The results were horrendous. Tons of pre-made [and probably really good quality] skyboxes, plenty of instruction on how to implement them, a few that show you how to make them by taking images within 3D software of terrain you've modeled yourself [but less good due to lack of distortion]... But absolutely nothing along the anamorphic distortion or warping of 2d images to create seamless boxes that don't look boxy.

I even saw someone post on a forum that it was basically impossible. Is this what we've come to? Tools created for the masses to make things easier for them, stripping them of the need to work things out for themselves, resulting in masses who seem to believe that working it out humanly is impossible and that it can only be done by computers? Ridiculous!

Check this out.

Looks messy, huh? But I know it can be done, and I'm not the only one - I'm sure there are plenty of modern artists that understand how to make it work, and it's only a matter of time before I join them... Ooh.

There's that mad-scientist feeing again. Excellent!

Gyland: PINK

2010-07-11T14:23:00.004+01:00

Yes, I know, it's very pink. I'd like to give you a scientific explanation for it, but scientists haven't made it to the island yet.

After Pete pointed me in the direction of FBX file formats, I got all excited yesterday and made a teepee style hut in Maya, very quickly textured it, imported it into Unity and then figured out how the import scaling thing works.

Then I decided to give the place a sky, except I didn't know how, so I googled it and learned how to put on a standard sky box. But then I wanted to know how to make my own custom skyboxes, so I tried making a really basic one, but it looked boxy, so I experimented with distortion and stuff in Photoshop. It didn't turn out too great, I think I distorted the image forwards instead of backwards so the sky felt really... close.. Also it was a quick bodgey experiment jobby, so the edges didn't match up either.. haha.

Think I'll try putting a square tiled textured into the skybox and play with distortion more. I do realise that there are probably tools out there for this... they may save time, but they take all the fun out of it!

Looks like this island isn't going to be much if an SAS simulator, I think I'll get carried away with my liking of fairies and stuff [yeah, I like fairies, what of it?], and make giant plants and other pretty stuff to fill the island. I might even make the camp fire be a giant orange peel oil lamp, based on the one I made today...

Gyland: Damn it Unity, what is your problem!?

2010-07-04T16:55:00.004+01:00

You know that thing that happens, where you try to import an asset from Maya into Unity, and it takes forever, and then it turns out it's not taking forever it's just crashing? Yeah? That keeps happening.

I'm trying to import a really basic structure made of interlocking diamond-shaped "logs" to mess with in engine and how big it ends up when imported.

It's having none of it. Wouldn't import the bunch of logs, and wouldn't import the initial single log. I won't even import a simple 10x10x10 cube.

I really don't see why. It'll probably start working after this rant is posted.

Gyland: Initial Layout Implemented

2010-06-25T10:00:00.002+01:00

Here's a quick screenshot of the island as of last night.

Want to add more scraggly bits all round the edges and smooth out some of the shore too, probably not going to happen today since I'm going to be out socialising for most of it :)

I'm thinking of maybe starting with making the different kinds of shelter, beginning in the tropical zone seeing as Unity already has palm trees, and working more detail into each area as I work in them...

Welcome to the Gyland!

2010-06-24T18:02:00.003+01:00

My sister bought John Wiseman's New and Updated SAS Survival Handbook while I was away at uni, and she's been laetting me read it. It's pretty cool, but also makes me really want to learn the stuff in it, like building shelters etc. You know. Just in case.

Of course, it's a bit impractical for me to visit all the different climates and make sure I don't die there while I learn how to not die there, so I've got a plan.

I make an island in Unity. I give it all the different kinds of terrain featured in the Survival Guide. Then I build the key assets that can be found and used in the different kinds of terrain to build the shelters that help you survive e.g. blocks of snow for igloo building, bamboo in the tropics, logs for log cabins. Then I build every kind of shelter shown in the book, and every kind of cooking thing found in the book, and even the latrine methods and other things that you get shown how to build.

Working title: Gyland - easy to remember as it rhymes with island. I know, I'm super creative.

I won't be a pro at survival, but at least I'll have a fair idea of what can be done if I get stuck anywhere. And I'll get in some modelling and texturing and Unity3D practice in while I'm at it. Not to mention, I like to make things. I remember when I was little, playing with Polly Pockets, then making little environments and structures out of wet sand and twigs in a massive bucket for little woodlice to run around in. I think I've just remembered one of the reasons I was ever interested in 3D modelling software in the first place! Ridiculously fun.

Get on it, girl!!

2010-06-20T14:02:00.004+01:00

I've been checking out the blogs of fellow CGDers, and it looks like they've been good and busy - unlike me. Seems like I've been spending more time tackling an imagined problem of feeling trapped, and in the process been thinking, "Work for The Industry? Urr, no thanks, I want to work for myself!!"

While the thought itself is sound, the feelings holding up that thought aren't so good. It's like I've built up The Industry in my head to be this monster that wants to grab me, trap me and squeeze the life out of me. But a lot of deep thinking recently has made me notice that this way of thinking - Me vs The Industry [or generally speaking, The Other] - is bad. It disturbs my peace, presents a sense of conflict, and quite naturally just makes me want to run the fuck away. It's also a feeling that's been seeping into other areas of my life, which to put it lightly has been... annoying. A friend, Dave, seems pretty aware of this and has been trying to help me, which kind of amuses me. I think he's trying to get me to be more open and expressive. I don't think I need him to be doing it, I think if anything it's just making me more stubborn to hide. Probably because I like seeing him push people to do want he believes they want to.

Okay, enough blathering about that. Enough stubbornly doing nothing but watch and think. Time to actually DO something.

Okay, so I've been reading up a little more on like, Cryptology and Steganography and stuff like that, coded message and hidden messages etc. And before I left campus to get back to the Shire, the flatmates had a time where they suddenly discovered Audiosurf for themselves. I started thinking about maybe writing my dissertation on Flow or being in the zone in games, but I also started thinking about maybe making a game myself that involved going along a track.

So, I've got got this idea of making a game that will inadvertantly teach the player a bit of morse code [something simple, gives me a bit of limitation to work with]. It'll have sound, it'll have to be fun, and the point of the game will be similar to games like DDR and Guitar Hero and stuff where you have to hit the timing right. Haven't figured out what engine or software to make it in yet. Thinking I might check out Gamemaker again to work out the mechanics or whatever.

Getting more familiar with Morse code.

Also, since Autodesk have started doing that free licences for students thing, I should probably make use of that this summer too. I've decided I've got enough cash to not bother with a usual summer job of cleaning or serving the public/guests to Pembrokeshire. This summertime is for me.

And don't worry, I'll be posting better posts with less moaning and more pretty pictures soon enough. My list of things to do this summer include buying a decent camera, and actually making some jewellery instead of hoarding my string and beads like they're the last load of string and beads on the planet. Not that anyone reading this blog should care about string or beads or jewellery...

Wings of Fate Project and the Essay.

2010-05-23T00:46:00.008+01:00

Well, it's definitely been a while since the last entry, but there we go. Wings of Fate seems to have gone pretty well, we managed to hand in a playable game and the presentation went well too. I made this animation on Flash with a little help from the team; they provided the stuff, and I put it together. I like it. Could have been better, but considering I set out to attempt to make an epic FMV in Flash with just under a week to do it in, I like it. I might be able to put up a downloadable link for the game itself, we'll have to see what's going on with that.

As for the essay, I managed to get it done and handed in on time. No official grade and feedback yet, but I have been praised for how "beautifully insane" it was. Not sure if that's a good thing yet.. Here it is:

"Handling Motivational Dissonance by Manipulating Perceptions"
by Charlotte Gyseman

Essay writing as a game:

By manipulating our perception of essay writing, we can imagine it as a one-player game with goals, rules, challenges and interaction (Wikipedia, 2010a). To “write an essay in an academic style” can be perceived as the rules of the game. The goal can be to hand the essay in on time, while the challenge can be to write an essay that gets a good mark. We can also view it the other way around, with the goal being to write an essay that gets a good mark but the challenge being to hand the essay in on time. When the goal is to write a good essay, interaction manifests during the editing process where the “player” or essay writer will write the essay, read it back to see if they think it is good enough, and then make adjustments and continue in this manner, manipulating information and then evaluating their perception of the information until either they are happy with the essay or until they have reached the deadline (Wikipedia, 2010b). To make clearer the concept of essay writing as a game, I can compare it to a game of TicTacToe. We could say that writing a good essay is like getting three in a row, while meeting the deadline is like preventing the opponent from getting three in a row before we have run out of squares. While the ideal situation would be to hand in a good essay on time [just like the ideal situation in TicTacToe is to get three in a row before the opponent has a chance to], handing in an essay on time may not always result in a “win” or a really good grade, but you at least still have the chance to “tie” or to get a passing grade if you keep working against the clock, whereas if you concentrate too much on trying to get “three in a row” or to write a really good essay, you may find that it is too late and your opponent, Time, has reached “three in a row” first and won.

This is not the only way the concept of essay writing as a game could be compared to TicTacToe, and is by no means necessarily the best way for students to think about it. However, it is quite similar to the way in which many students will often perceive the situation that so often results in the feelings of motivational dissonance that I will highlight within this essay. “Motivational dissonance” in this essay refers to the sense of conflict between motivations, which can result in the motives not being resolved. It is related to the concept of cognitive dissonance (Wikipedia, 2010c) but focuses more on the conflict perceived between motives rather than the conflict perceived between ideas.

Playing by The Rules:

One of the first hurdles the student must overcome is learning the rules of the game. If they cannot play by the rules because they do not know them, they cannot win. This is where independent research and learning may be required, as for some university students the teaching of how to write well academically is not always a prerequisite of the setting an essay question and deadline, as sometimes the intention is to force the student to learn “the rules” independently (Manning et al., 2010). Some students will not attempt to learn how to write well; as they will feel that the most pressing issue is actually what they write about and not how they write.

This parallels the feeling that W. Kadinsky (1912) puts forward in his essay, On the Problem of Form. His writing implies that it is not important what form the expression of ideas takes, but instead what matter are the ideas themselves. While we can agree that the ideas expressed are of some importance, in the context of writing an essay in order to achieve a good grade it would seem that the form is just as if not more important as the ideas expressed, especially if the student is in fact being assessed in part on their capability to write an academic essay; their ability to follow the “rules”.

The opposite point of view; that the form or medium is more important to focus on rather than the content, has been argued by McLuhan (1964) within his works on media, such as Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Not only does his work imply that students should pay more attention to how they are delivering their ideas, it also demands inspection of the motivation to demand the academic essay style in the first place, and raises questions of what effects will arise from the demand for students to express their ideas in such a way. The implication is that although these effects are obscured or hidden by the more conscious awareness of the superficial effects of the content, the effect of the medium is just as if not more important to be made aware of because of the very nature and danger of their subtlety.

One of the possible effects is implied by Maslow (1943) in A Theory of Human Motivation, in which he suggests that humans are perpetually motivated to fulfil pressing needs and that when those needs are satisfied, new needs emerge. He implies that most people will go around with multiple unsatisfied needs, but will have prioritised those needs based on what they perceive they are lacking, and what they perceive they are capable of lacking without much harm coming to them or their ability to acquire what they need the most. This can suggest that when a student decides not to learn how to write an academic essay well, it is because they do not feel that an incapability to write an academic essay well is a great danger to their overall capability to satisfy their more pressing needs. A key point to be noted is that the behaviour is more directly dependent upon the perception of the situation, be it conscious or subconscious, rather than the actual situation itself.

Staying Aware of the Opponents:

The opponent in the TicTacToe example we used earlier is the deadline, or more generally, Time. Completing anything with a deadline is essentially a race against time, and the odds of winning the race depend not only on the student’s ability to run in the race, but also the awareness that they are even in the race. Some students will often deny they are even in the race, until the deadline gets really close and the pressure of it is felt. Only then will some acknowledge that they are supposed to be racing, often resulting in the phenomenon known as “Crunch Time”, where suddenly huge amounts of effort will be put in to finish the work. This phenomenon occurs not only in students, but in many other processes of production dependant on humans (Hughes, 2008).

Possible causes for the Crunch Time phenomenon are implied by Maslow. If his suggestion that people will satisfy those needs that demand the most attention to the detriment of all other needs that are perceived as less important is true, then it is safe to assume that those who bring upon themselves what Maslow would likely describe as “the symptom” of Crunch Time, do so because the pressing need to finish the essay in the time left before the deadline is not seen as important as satisfying other needs demanding their attention, at least until Time is short and is brought to the foreground of the student’s attention.

Procrastination is another symptom that seems to manifest often within students and humans in general. Continuing along the ideas present in Maslow’s theory of human motivation, we can suggest multiple causes for procrastination, which can be (but are not necessarily) linked to and feed off of each other (Maslow, 1943). Procrastination can result from feelings of inadequacy stemming from the student’s lack of knowledge of how to write a good essay. They will shun the essay as long as they can, doing instead the things that they feel they are much more capable of doing, anything, even cleaning their rooms, so long as they don’t have to face writing the essay, reassuring themselves as they do by saying they need to do those things first (AgentXPQ, 2006).

Procrastination can also result from a feeling of retaliation: in being told that they have to do the essay, the student can feel that their freedom is in danger, and as a result will ignore the fact that they should be spending time doing the essay and instead spend their time doing things they would usually take for granted. This need to exercise their freedom can also work with the need to feel adequate or right, and the student will justify their actions to themselves, for example, “I’ve been meaning to tidy my room anyway.” Maslow’s theory also suggests that social needs can play a part; students who ordinarily spend large amounts of time with friends but are not used to handling deprivation from their friends may react quite strongly, and will feel a stronger desire to go out and have fun. The needs that will take a student’s attention away from the task of completing the essay on time will not always have any relation to the essay itself. A student can be so focused on another problem, for example, an issue satisfying their need for love or comfort, that they will have trouble concentrating, not just on the essay, but on anything that will not help satisfy them directly. It is also possible that while the other needs can be merely somewhat unsatisfied, the combined dissatisfaction felt from these needs may be greater than the need felt to write the essay. (Maslow, 1943)

Winning the Game:

The good news is that if a student can be made aware of needs and issues such as these, then they will be better equipped to work out a solution. If they are made aware that feelings of inadequate skill in writing is a problem, they can more easily realise that to make things feel easier, then a possible solution is to get help with their writing until they can write well enough to feel like they have adequate skill. If they feel like the essay is taking up valuable time, they can realise that wasting time doing things in retaliation to this feeling of a lack of freedom is actually even worse, as not only are they wasting time, they are also allowing the essay to control their reaction, further thwarting their satisfaction of freedom.

When the essay is no longer seen as a dominant threat or enemy, the student can more easily accept the reasons why doing the essay would be more beneficial for them than not, and can even use it as an opportunity to satisfy needs that feel more pressing, essentially co-operating with the motives of the people who have set them the essay. To win the game of essay writing, we must manipulate our perception of the essay and what it will mean for our ability to achieve our own goals. When we work as if the essay is an opportunity to help ourselves, and not a threat designed with the intention to trap us or humiliate us or waste our time, then we can win. Otherwise, the best outcome that we can hope for is a tie.

References:

AGENTXPQ. 2006. Youtube – “Procrastination” Tales Of Mere Existence [VIDEO] < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P785j15Tzk > (May 10 2010)

HUGHES B. 2008. InfoQ: Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work. [WWW] < http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/crunch-mode > (May 10 2010)

KADINSKY W. “On the Problem of Form.” Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, 1912) [WWW] < http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/kandinskytext5.htm > (May 10 2010)

MANNING J., MORGANA C. & SURMAN D. 2010. Games and Animation Studies 2 Handbook 2010. [DOC] < https://my.newport.ac.uk/public/Students/Modules/G106147%20-%20GAS2%20Games%20and%20Animation%20Studies%202/Documents/HANDBOOK%20%202010-609270250.EML/GAS2Hbook2010.doc/C58EA28C-18C0-4a97-9AF2-036E93DDAFB3/GAS2Hbook2010.doc?attach=1 > (May 10 2010)

MASLOW, A. H. "A Theory of Human Motivation." Psychological Review 50 (1943): 370-396 [PDF] < http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.152.465&rep=rep1&type=pdf > (May 10 2010)

TicTacToe: a simple turn-based two-player game with the objective of getting three symbols in a row within a 3x3 square table, also known as Noughts&Crosses and 3-in-a-Row.

WIKIPEDIA. 2010a. Game – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [WWW]. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Game&oldid=359827337 > (May 10 2010)

WIKIPEDIA. 2010b. Interaction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [WWW]. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interaction&oldid=358062065 > (May 10 2010)

WIKIPEDIA. 2010c. Cognitive dissonance – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [WWW]. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&oldid=360884554 > (May 10 2010)

WIKIPEDIA. 2010. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [WWW]. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man&oldid=349059906 > (May 10 2010)

Basically, I just want to rant today.

2010-04-29T19:23:00.005+01:00

I'm pissed off. It's odd. It's like the rebellious difficult-teen phase that I seemed to have skipped has decided it does want me to go through it after all... despite the fact that I've already turned twenty. Basically, I'm a slow developer.

I have to write an essay, but I don't feel like it, and every fiber of my being seems to tell me that I don't have to write any dissertation or essay if I don't want to. While it probably wouldn't kill me to just fucking go ahead and write it, telling it to fuck off seems like a much more attractive option. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because I know there are a gazillion ways to make money to survive. Maybe it's because I know there is a woman who survives on the skills and friends she's acquired, not on little bits of paper.

Maybe it's because trying to make myself make sense to other people is a fucking chore. I put in loads of effort trying to understand stuff that doesn't make sense [admittedly, I seem to enjoy that sort of thing] and if they want to understand my point of view, why don't they put in the effort?

Maybe it's the same reason I have a preference for finding out about cool stuff, not for explaining it to other people.

Maybe it's the same reason I always preferred writing fiction stories in English class at school than writing essays that analyse things.

I think eventually, it all comes down to persuasion. I mean, I definitely need people to point me towards things to check out. I joined CGD because it sounded interesting. Barry made it sound interesting during the interview, and his lectures were always pretty cool, but he stopped lecturing us to do research. Surman always made it sound interesting to me, but he's not here anymore to continue making it sound interesting.

So now, nothing is really succeeding in persuading me to keep submitting to the course's demands, except for maybe a little part of my own will, and the University life outside of study, with my Uni friends. Except they don't seem to really be persuading me very hard either [and why should they?].

If I don't want to do something, I have to be persuaded into wanting to do it. Give me some really good reasons. Otherwise, I won't see the point, and I won't want to do it, and I'll put it off, and then get angry at it for wanting me to do it when I just don't fucking want to. I'm pretty sure a lot of people work that way, and not just regarding what course they're paying for.

...Fuck it.

I'm going to write the essay.

But if it doesn't make sense or doesn't get a high grade, then quite frankly it's their own damn fault for not making the ability to write academically properly look valuable in my eyes.

Hahahaha, my work is on UmmYeah.com

2010-04-25T14:00:00.004+01:00

Move aside Youtube.. [but don't disappear, you're still useful...]

The tagline of UmmYeah.com is "Dear Productivity, It was nice knowing you."
The About section says:

UmmYeah.com leverages bored@work arbitrage and nihilistic synergies to create an enhanced time-killing web platform.

It's for people who'd rather watch the best videos from all the different video sites than, well, whatever else it is you're supposed to be doing.

I came across it just now, when I was on another one of those see-what-people-can-see-about-me quests. Typing "Charlotte Gyseman" into Yahoo, I found that somebody calling themselves Abygale had submitted the Unpoppable Waterballoon video, which I had uploaded to Youtube, to UmmYeah.com

I think I'll take that as a compliment.

Immersion, Escapism, Addiction

2010-04-24T12:42:00.002+01:00

I don't think people play games just to avoid "real" life. I think they play them because they find Life in them. When I say Life, I don't think I mean many of the things that you'll probably naturally assume I mean - unless you've read and understood the same material I've read recently... and understood it in the same way I have.

This article seems to make the assertion that players falling in the Immersion category play in virtual worlds to forget their issues.

For this group, gaming is an outlet for the anguish fed to them by the world. They play to forget their issues and for the most part, are breeding a sort of addiction.

If all they wanted to do was forget their issues, there are plenty of other ways for them to do that that don't involve virtual worlds or internet gaming.. And virtual worlds provide so much more than escape when it comes to this category of "Immersion", that to say the above is waaaaay too simplistic. Tsk tsk Alexis Garrett, tsk tsk.

Why I hate writing academic essays.

2010-04-23T13:22:00.002+01:00

I think this might be why. It's just not my thing; not my preferred method of expression.

But I think I know now what I'm writing my 2000 word Essay on and what my Dissertation Proposal is going to be.

Essay: Compare and contrast Bartle's Model of Player Types with Nick Yee's Model of Player Motivations, focusing on how they have addressed the question of why players play games.

Dissertation Proposal: ...Any attempt to satisfy every player's wants in a single game will ultimately fail, because you really can't please everybody.

Ooooh... Round and round she goes, where she'll stop, nobody knows..

2010-04-12T14:58:00.005+01:00

Recently, I've developed a thing for circles.

I think it was because of the video I saw on TED with the surfing scientist talking about his theory of everything, with patterns and physics, and then I read about the Flower of Life [ooh look, pretty jewelry!!*], and then I thought about how much sense it seems to make in life [while at the same time, kinda not.. Say hello to Absurdism and Paradoxes?].

I could probably write an essay on it. I actually might write my essay about infinity in Portal. I don't know. It sounds like a plan though, since I've spent all this time reading about them and have recently installed Portal.

And today, I saw these earrings, and I was like, "Ooooooh, I wanna know how to make that!" :D

*I'm such a girl sometimes.

Nice surprises are nice.

2010-04-06T03:35:00.004+01:00

It was after 3am, and there were beats coming from downstairs. I would have preferred it if they were what I would refer to as decent ones.

So instead of going to bed when I thought about bed, I stayed up a little longer and watched this:

I've been watching a lot of TED videos recently.

And then I looked up Maira Kalman, and found this, and I thought it was really nice. I wanted one, but I didn't want one enough to pay $35 for, so I settled for the feeling that resulted from the nice surprise of finding out such a thing exists. And then the music stopped, so I pressed Publish Post, and went to bed.

Essay: Shuffling Paper, & Maya modeling practice

2010-04-03T00:32:00.007+01:00

Shuffling Paper: Terminology used by Rebecca Hills to describe the method of working in which I finally decide on everything [e.g. where to stick my pictures in my Art Book] at the last minute.

I still have no idea what I want to do my essay on. Although by no idea I mean, too many ideas. I've gone from Binaural Audio, to Foley and SFX in Games, to how the Industry has reacted to demonization from the Mass Media [age ratings], to New Games Journalism and Player Experience, to how New Games Journalism never actually got around to being what Kieron Gillen meant when he first wrote about it in 2004, to Up is Up vs Up is Down. And that's not even listing all the different angles I could hit them at. Maybe I should just pick a game to install and play and write about something it does...

Urrghh, The Industry; why must you be so varied and interesting!!

In other news, I've decided to have a go at recreating my bedroom in Maya. Not only will this serve as useful modeling practice, it will also mean I can attempt to relive my Uni days when I'm no longer a student. Although... when I'm not focussed on my laptop here, I spend most of my time out with other friends rather than in my own flat... Hopefully, I can expand the world I'm modeling to include the basic environment of campus, then I can recreate the walk across campus to AberG and back whenever I want. Haha.

WOF: Cardinal [Cancer].

2010-04-01T20:34:00.003+01:00

Modelled, textured, and plonked on a chair:

Cancer wasn't really designed to move a whole lot, but he'll be going to Matt next, who is going to rig him up for a little bit of animating.

I'm in the Wrong Industry.

2010-04-01T10:41:00.005+01:00

At times I wonder, what are we doing? I watched Zeitgeist: The Movie and the follow up, Zeitgeist: Addendum recently, and it really opened my eyes.

People go about their daily lives, seeing most of what we've seen through moniters and screens; I've met hardly any of the animals that I think exist, so how do I even know they exist? Because I saw David Attenborough talk about them?

Right now, how do I even know David Attenborough is a real person? I've never met him. If I go into the Games Industry, all I will be doing is trapping more poor souls, showing them things, creatures, places, worlds, none of which exist.

I mean, it made me think back to that video on YouTube of Joe Rogan, who suggested what life would be like if suddenly all the scientists and clever people disappeared. We wouldn't know how to do anything, and we'd all end up living in caves. How would we know how to do anything? We need to educate ourselves properly. Education at the moment is a sham.

Learning stuff in school all leads to us getting jobs and becoming part of the system. It's a bit like The Matrix. How much of what we learn is actually useful to life? I don't even remember half the stuff I learned there because I've been so focused on making stuff that doesn't exist. All in the name of fun.

... Fake fun. It's not even real! It's all just pixels...

Our lives are not free. Zeitgeist proves it's all because of money. People say money is the root of all evil, but has anyone really thought in depth about it? It makes us competitive, makes us try to earn more so we can buy stuff. Do we even need this stuff? There are people going into advertising, and why not? It earns them money to buy stuff, by showing people stuff they could buy and persuading them to buy it, and so the circle goes on and on.

Over time, we are sucked in. They lull us into a false sense of security, and sell us their make up and their fashion, and engage us into big debates about films, which are all made up anyway. If we continue on this path we will end up like the people on WALL-E. Nothing is real, we've made it all up. The only way we can free ourselves is to remember that we are one with nature, we are one with the rocks, and the plants, and the trees. I am not me; there is no me, "me" is just a made up word, a word made up by a bunch of atoms that we have called "humans"...

Life, as we "know" it, is a joke.

So, this is the end of the line. I'm going to finish this year until I have enough funds to go out into the world, to break out of the system where funds are even required, free myself from the prison of money, live with the land and experience what's really real. Maybe I'll meet David Attenborough.

Midnight Edit: Notice the first letter of every paragraph... Aled, as if I would really post a post like this on any other day but today, after reading the link you sent me! Haha. Although I've gone on that site just now, and it's all changed. The owner seems to be playing a prank of their own:

Error loading web site, reverting to default document.

SAC, Los Angles (157-6666)

Federal Bureau of Investigation

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
CONSPIRACY THEORIST AND MILITIA GROUPS

Codename "Winston" 4/1/10

Winston requests a web site be created to help promote disinformation and dissidence among groups untrusting of the United States and United Nations. To protect sensitive source of information, as to how "sources" are obtained, from possible comprise and to insure the success of our plans, Bureau feels it would be better to wait approximately ten additional months until Alex Jones predictions for the year fail and become apparent to everyone. If deemed warranted, submit your recommendation of other ideas. It is imperative we quiet questioning of the authority delegated by those in power, as it could be disruptive to their plans. Further funding of conspiracyscience.com for disinformation purposes is recommended.

1 - San Francisco

JFM:drl
(5)

NOTE:

While it is obviously impossible for us to put a stop to louder voices in the conspiracy movement, we can promote dissidence among the followers of the likes of Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, and Peter Joseph in order to ensure that they are unable to go forward with any plans they may have for changing society in their favor.

POST SCRIPT:

Chief Executive believes that we should hurry to spread disinformation as to the overall purpose of organizations like Planned Parenthood, as well as vaccinations and genetically modified foods, due to the conspiracy theorist use to promote information regarding population control.

Signed,
Reurairtel

I am awake. And I am like you.

2010-03-30T14:46:00.007+01:00

Unlistedoo7, this one is for you.

A friend of mine on the Animation course, Fitz, posted this up on Facebook today:

A brief look at the comments on the video showed the possibility of it being a fake, a video produced by the person who directed Lady Gaga's Pokerface video, intended to be a viral video.

Comments on the video included rage at the "parents and steacher of the school", rage at America for raging about society and then allowing kids to pretend to be gangsters in school plays, rage at the people who thought it was real, rage at the way the kids were used, and awe at all the ragers who need to calm down because "they [the kids] know that it's only pretend". Personally, I felt a bit of rage for all the people who said "Chill the fudge out" or "What the fudge??", but only because the word fudge stopped being funny about halfway through the first use. Mmmmmmm... Fudge.

Unfortunately, as is the way with videos that attract comments like this [or any subject for that matter on the Internet], you get people commenting on what they see, exactly as they are seeing it. This leads to responses from others who are slightly more informed,who will try to tell them, for example, that the video is not real.

As the discussion continues, the views snowball and more people come to the discussion who are just as uninformed as the initial commenters. The comments that originally tried to explain the truth of the video get covered by the avalanche of new comments. Some people will see this happening, and in frustration attempt to relay the fact that the video is not real. But more people arrive, and they don't know what to believe.

This was me. One of the posters, TheKidJKR, said:

This play was put together by the director of numerous lady gaga music videos. The children were casted like any other role. Not a real school play. Intended to be a viral video.

I wanted to know what his source was, but there are over a thousand comments for me to try looking through at this point, so I asked:

How do you know?

I was aware that it might be a while before I got a reply from them, so while I waited I tried having a browse through the comments anyway. In less than half an hour, I'd found out the comment stating Rockhard Films and googled it, and while I found an article saying it's not a real school play, I don't know where TMZ got their information from [I also found a comment stating it is an advert for a video game, but I haven't found anything more on that so I can't verify that claim either]. It's been a while however since I've commented on controversial matters on Youtube; I kind of forgot that other people would read my question to TheKidJKR and reply too.

Dear unlistedoo7: I'm as awake as you are.
But I am also aware that I can only pay attention to what is not hidden from my awareness. I know you are aware of this; I've looked at your channel. If what you wrote up there is true, we have similar intentions.

You probably weren't aware of my motives in asking my question, and possibly assumed I was ignorantly asking for the sake of asking, or trying to poke or prod or antagonise. I was not. I wanted a lead, so I could find out what was going on.

Although I'm 20, I consider myself still a child. There's a lot I don't know, but at least I know that. I'm a truth-seeker, just like you.

New Essay Idea: New Games Journalism

2010-03-29T16:01:00.006+01:00

In my previous post about what to write my essay on, I said I'd do it on Binaural Audio. Then I spoke to Corrado about it, ditched the idea, and scaled back to just talk about Foley and SFX in games and how they add to the players' experience.

I've since done little actual research about sound. Instead, I've spent most of my energy on the WOF project, and pretty much totally neglected my essay... Muppet.

Anyone reading my blog may have noticed my recent [or is it?] interest [obsession] with media and journalism. In fact, I've spent the last 3 days researching it as a possible career option. I'm possibly not the greatest writer in the world, but it's not like I've been trying to write greatly...

So here's my new focus: New Games Journalism and it's relationship with the idea of Player Experience, or how Player Experience can be used successfully in New Games Journalism.

Burn The Witch

2010-03-28T17:48:00.005+01:00

This weekend, I have been mostly reading about journalism, games journalism, and magazine publication.

This all comes after a recent vague feeling I had that newspapers are evil, before quickly realising that they're only as evil as video games, nuclear energy, and the entire human population as a whole.

I can take some of my own advice; if I don't like what people are broadcasting about the games industry, I can try broadcasting something myself. Although technically, I already am via this blog. As I went through all of my previous posts last night, I noticed that while a percentage of them were about work I produced for the course, a large amount consisted of brief comments on things I'd seen and found kinda interesting within the games industry, comments on life and philosophies and concepts, and rants against the demonisation of Computer Games by the media.

Bad disguised as Good vs. Good disguised as Bad...

So perhaps after uni, or even during, I'm interested in attempting to start something up. A tidy and attractive bit of entertainment with serious motives to defend the witch that is the Computer Games Industry from the demon that is Fear and Moral Panic, who screams "Burn them all! For the children!" Fighting fire with fire, you could possibly say.

Although when I think about it, there are two seperate ideas going on in my mind. One involves storming the world, exposing the demons for what they are and helping new kids to the industry become aware of the mob that metaphorically cries for their blood, while bringing them entertainment in the form of clever nonsense, and useful tips to get into the exciting industry of games.

The other involves metaphorically dressing up as an old lady, selling magazines targetted at mothers showing them all the games they'd find lovely, so that wild accusations like "Video games promote rascism, sexism and hatred" can be seen for what they really are.

...We'll see how it goes.

So... [Ping Pong / Tetris / Brain Training] promotes hatred, rascism, sexism, and rewards violence. Is it?

2010-03-25T17:04:00.014Z

If you are a concerned parent reading this, please read the information on the following link before reading the rest of the blog post: The Byron Review [Wiki]

---

So check it out, they're trying to make us look like the bad guys again.

It parades itself as a concerned look at whether video games are corrupting children, but it is quite clearly just another attack on the computer games industry. There are so many things wrong with this, I could write a book about it.

The Industry places age ratings on games. The Industry is aware of the possible effects of exposing children to violence, and the Industry has taken steps to prevent those kinds of games getting into the hands of the children. If children are playing violent video games, it's because someone old enough to know better [such as their own parents] have been buying the games for them. It's the responsibility of the parents or guardians to be aware of the content they are buying for their children.

Knowing all of this, it upsets me to hear people old enough to know better speak as ignorantly as Julie Peasgood did here. I was quite offended when she pretty much proclaimed that video games were evil [at least when I said it, I was sleep deprived. Also... I was joking].

She is writing off the entire video game industry [or did she merely forget to add the word "violent" onto the front of her statements about video games promoting hatred, rascism and sexism?], speaking as if the whole thing should just be exterminated. She is only promoting hate, when you get down to the bare essentials. And on television [oh, and on the Internet via ITV's Player], too. Nice.

What she needs to do is open her eyes and see how video games actually are, in their entirety; the good, as well as the bad. If she still doesn't like what there is to see, then what she ought to be doing is helping to change it positively, by promoting the positive aspects of video games, for example, the potential for use in education. This would attract more people to the industry who want to use games for "good", which in turn would result in fewer games about "bad" stuff.

If people carry on slandering games as evil, worst case scenario; those people who want to help the world will forget that using video games is an option, and so they won't use them. Only the people who want to make violent games are left, so only violent games are made, so people will complain that games are violent, so people will assume games can only be violent, because "that's just the way things is". It's a vicious cycle, and though it can be broken ["Making a game that's non-violent? You innovative genius, you!"], it's better not to let it get to that stage in the first place.

Escaping from Life? Man up, will you.

2010-03-22T18:02:00.009Z

Ollie sent me this link today: "The most dangerous drug isn't meow meow. It isn't even alcohol..." by Charlie Brooker

Combine that with the post I wrote yesterday, and it makes me wonder about people. Life is actually really interesting when you stop to examine and experience it properly. What is it that we are doing to ourselves, our culture, to make us feel like jumping the ship of reality?

Is it because we have shackled ourselves into lifestyles that feel so boring that we feel like we have to create virtual realities to escape to, and exaggerate the stories we write in newspapers to make life sound more interesting than it seems?

Look at Second Life.
What is stuff like that all about? I mean, fair enough if you have serious disabilities preventing you from getting out there and doing much, like connecting with people. But if you're perfectly "normal"...?

Or fair enough if you want to quickly see how it might feel to dress a certain way, or have a certain colour hair, or go to a certain place. But to do it in a virtual world is not the same as doing it for real.

Get out there. Wear those different clothes, for real. Try out that hair style, for real. Go to that place, FOR REAL. If you are capable of doing it, then why aren't you doing it?

-------

Stubborn Response #1: But I don't have the time...

Make time. Plan a time where you can do what you want to do, and just do it. I don't care if your job doesn't like you dying your hair. If you have a job, then you can probably buy a wig, and wear it out one day in public. That's all it takes to experience a day of purplehairness. Well, purplehairnessish. To do the job properly, dying your hair purple would help you experience true purplehairness. Wearing a purple wig would only help you achieve the experience of true purplewigness.

Whiney Response #2: ...But people will stare at me if I "wear that purple wig".

So what? If people stare, you can relax knowing that you've just made someone else's day more interesting. If you have to, make up an excuse to do it. Wear a sign around your neck saying you're doing it for charity. Even better: Actually do it for charity. Why wait for Red Nose day? Charity can happen any time of year.

Naff Response #3: ...But I don't know how to "get a purple wig".

Are you serious. One word dude: T'INTERNETZ.
You're reading my blog. Surely you know how to use a search engine.

Lame Response #4: ...But I can't afford "that purple wig".

Then start saving up. If you're not earning anything, start earning. Read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. If Siddhartha can go from being a ragged beggar to wealthy merchant, why can't you?

Decent Response #5: ...But I have mental issues. They're like physical limitations, except they be in me brains.

Professional help exists for a reason.
If you can't afford professional help, please see my reply to Lame Response #4.
If you can't think of a way for you to earn dosh, please see my reply to Naff Response #3.
If you don't have time to check out the internet for a way to help yourself, please see the first two words of my reply to Stubborn Response #1. If you have time to read my blog, you blatently have time to google something.
If your mental issues consist of you feeling slight apprehension towards the idea of doing something that's different to "normal", please see the title of this blog post.

I don't want your excuses, I want you to get rid of those mental barriers.
Accept responsibility for your own life.
Stop putting it off. Stop being lazy. You can start doing it today.

Observational Comedian's Response #6: ...But I don't want people here to discover how cool life can be and stop complaining about shit the world seems! It'll ruin all my observational jokes about how the British are.

Trust me, when people in their 30s and 40s start following a 20 year old Computer Games Design student's advice and start wearing purple wigs to their office jobs, the newspapers will go mental about the PWE [PurpleWigEpidemic], and you'll have plenty to joke about.

Warning: Charlotte Gyseman is not a certified advice-giver, although she has got lots of certificates that she got in school for various things. Some of them were even laminated. So if you're thinking of taking her advice and end up doing something stupid, please see the part where she told you to accept responsibility for you own life.
[This means: Don't sue me. Especially not if your kid does something stupid after reading this article. If you have kids, they are a part of your life, and therefore your responsibility, not mine. Two words: Parental Controls. If you don't know how to use them, google it. Or get your kid to show you.]

P.S. The important bit is the big bit in bold.

I watched The Truman Show last night.

2010-03-21T11:11:00.005Z

So basically, I go this email invite from someone from the Shire:

Subject: Invited you to Miss Bimbo!

Hello

Your friend Nikalix has invited you to join the worlds premier fashion community at Miss Bimbo.com.

Miss Bimbo.com is a free to join community of fashion conscious girls, ladies and women. Enter fashion contests, make friends, socialise and gossip amongst the largest female population on the internet.

Click the link above to accept your invite and proceed to the coolest place on the web.

See you soon on Miss Bimbo!

The Miss Bimbo team

http://www.missbimbo.com

First of all, I laughed because I wouldn't say I'm fashion conscious. And then, I laughed when I checked out the site.

And then I thought how ridiculous it sounded:

Are you ready to become Queen of the Bimbos!?!

Then I clicked on the Blouzar Ltd. link at the bottom, and was somewhat surprised to find Papermint listed under the "Our Games" header.

And then I was actually reading the Papermint site, and this part caught my eye:

Escape to a cute 3D world!

And then I realised that I kind of dislike ongoing-virtual-worlds that are there for people to "escape" to, because it makes me sad that people feel the need for an escape from life. A brief retreat? Fine. But a full on escape from life...?

A game to me is a bit of fun. It should be no substitute for real life - the biggest game of all.

Happy Mummy's Day

2010-03-14T17:18:00.002Z

The Internet told me it was Mummy's Day, so I made this video.

I didn't actually spend an entire day making it - it's currently 5:26pm and blue-sky outside, which means I've still got part of my day left to do some texturing and schtuff :)

The Butterfly Project with Ollie Elliott, and Dealing with Shizz.

2010-03-11T17:55:00.003Z

We got a B12 in all areas and [surprise surprise] a B12 overall on it. Nice one.

Time to up the game I think though. My personal life is beginning to distress me to the point where I start getting in a childish strop over silly little things that don't really matter. I have two options.

1. Focus on my personal life and all it's silly little annoyances.
I could talk all day about how this would be a bad idea. The amount of energy I've been spending on tolerating situations I don't like is ridiculous. I could try putting more energy into it and try to figure out what to do about it all, but I think I my time would best be spent writing articles on Uncyclopedia about Carew's evil robot sheep [watch this space]. Or I could try option 2.

2. Focus on my professional skills, and let my personal life sort itself out.
Let's take a leaf out of the Tao-te Ching. I'll be honest, I've only read bits and bobs about the Tao, but I'm under the impression that if I'm struggling AND things are still going wrong, then there must be better ways of doing things. Someone said energy flows where attention goes, so if I spend so much time worrying about annoying things, they'll just grow out of proportion in my mind. Which they definitely have been.

"Doritos: King Of The Ads"

2010-03-10T23:42:00.003Z

Scott gave me the last of his Doritos the other day.

The packet says if you make and enter the best advert by the end of April, they will put it on the TV and pay you for it... I'm seriously consider trying it, if I have the time. I'm also going to let my film-making friends know about it, because making short funny videos should be right up their street :D

WOF: "Look ma, no hands!"

2010-02-28T19:57:00.003Z

No longer a floating head of doom, but still needs hands and feet.

The one on the left is the view of the actual polygons, the center one is what it looks like when I press [3] for the smoothed view, and the right one is... possibly asleep.

One of the things I Love about Humans.

2010-02-27T15:47:00.009Z

I love how we can take One thought, One idea, One concept, and express that in so many different ways.

A Look.

A gesture..... An action.
A sensation. An experience.
A word. A voice. A song. A tune.
A sound. A video. A picture. A color.
A shape. A movement. A dance.
A story. A poem. A book.
A puzzle. A game.
A blog. A list.
A graph.
A...

And haha, the next post shall be my 69th.

WOF: Floating Cardinal head... of Doom.

2010-02-26T21:06:00.003Z

I'm basically relearning how to model in Maya, except better than I knew it before, because I'm using orthographics properly. I think.

"Avatar da Hip Hop Musical on Ice"

2010-02-25T19:21:00.002Z

Some friends of mine had to do a "hip hop musical based on Avatar" for their course. Check this out:

Essay Idea: Binaural audio / HRTF

2010-02-25T17:20:00.004Z

Okay, I've changed my mind. I'm going to find out and write about binaural audio in games, because binaural audio is cool. Although, my question could be to do with what impact the research on binaural audio can have on digital games. Should be cool.

If you've never heard this before: put on headphones, close your eyes, and press play.

I found the following video just now - it's not quite to do with binaural audio, but it's pretty cool anyway.

If you read the whole of this entry: Haha, you must be bored :)

2010-02-22T21:54:00.005Z

Today, I didn't do any work.

And by didn't do any work I mean, I did read some articles about the possible futures of gaming for ideas on what to write my essay on. I also went to a gymnasticy gym and learned how to front-flip into a foam pit with and without a trampoline. And then jumped out of my friend's [slow] moving van when he dropped me off - everyone else had and he said I had to too, so I did, because I'm a ninja in progress...

But I didn't do any Wings of Fate work.

Somehow, I managed to get the animatic done by yesterday afternoon, so I didn't need today free for emergency work-overflow. I spose I didn't need to spend any time creating audio with which to sync the scenes to because I wrote it out onscreen as subtitles for easy adjustment, so it didn't take as long as I'd anticipated.

Although, I could have spent some time taking the slides and putting them into a tidy printoutable storyboard doc, but I thought my time today might best be spent beating the "Smelly Unsociable Gamer" stereotype out of existence by doing womanly things like cleaning clothes to make sure I had clean socks and tops and tights.

...And learning how to be a ninja. Because as I learned in last Thursday's lecture: primary sources are the best. So it's better to make games about ninjas after you've tried being one for a day. Or two. Or three. I'm currently on a mission to learn how to front flip on grass without any aiding bouncyness. I think I've got diving rolls pretty much down.

Grow my pretties, grow!

2010-02-21T16:27:00.018Z

During the research for Squeak's desk, I found that plants are supposed to help in the area of creativity. Failing a real nice pot plant on the desk, a tree outside the window is supposed to improve mood.

Two of my cooking onions started sprouting. I've put them in cups of water on my window sill to see what will happen. All I've noticed in the past few hours is bubbles appearing and the water turning very slightly brown.

Perhaps if they live and grow, their presence will improve my mood and creativity. Maybe I'll stick googly eyes on them and make a film about them having a conversation.

---

Day 2: 11:30AM
The water is now twice as brown as it was, the one on the right being a slightly yellower hue. I've taken photos but for some reason the bluetooth connection between my phone and laptop is failing. [Update: Bluetooth now works..]

Most of the bubbles have disappeared, but I've noticed the one on the right developing lots of furry little hairs. I think it's mould regrowth, because it was starting to go a little mouldy under the outer layer, but I decided to try salvaging it because it wasn't really squishy and had the biggest shoot. It possibly won't survive. I put a tiny bit of antibacterial Listerine in the right one to see what would happen...

I feel like a mad scientist.

---

Day 3: 01:00AM
Just got back from AberG, where a massive cookie was made and Father Ted was watched [I now have a song about a lovely horse in my head]. It seems the Listerine hasn't done that much to stop the tiny hairs growing in the right one, as there's now possibly 2 or 3 times as much underwater fluff as there was before. Although it does smell like Listerine, which can only be a good thing. And the water in it has turned a much darker tint, but not cloudy. I wasn't expecting that.

As for the left one, the water level seems to have dropped more than the right one, even counting the Listerine I added [it wasn't that much at all]. I'll take a photo tomorrow morning when it's daylight outside, it might show the fluff better.

12:20pm: I've decided not to put anymore photos up on this post, except for especially interesting occurrences... I will continue to take a picture daily however, and will probably edit them into a video. The right mould-grower seems to be doing fine apart from the mould, I'm fairly sure the shoot is still growing.

---

Day 4: 01:45PM
THEY'RE GROWING NEW ROOTS!! ^_^
And both shoots are definitely growing :D My brother suggested I change the water, so I've given them some fresh stuff.

---

Day 7: 03:45PM
The one with mould on. She's still ALIVE.

As for the other one, I put it into my bathroom to see if the dark would make it grow a bit faster. It hasn't really. Not sure why.

Day... whatever day the 10th of March is: 10:37PM
BEAST!!

I'm naming her "Medusa" after my brother's odd comment on the subject of growing onions. The other onion is sprouting well now, I think I'll name it "Kaa", after that discussion I had with some friends in which we couldn't remember the name of the snake from The Jungle Books. Cheers, google. I think there's another onion sprouting in the cupboard. I might put it in another cup and try a spot of time-lapse filming on it.

Day... whatever day the 27th of March is: 10:37PM
Haha, and I thought they were beast before.

The new addition is doing well. Kaa seems to be quite small compared to Medusa regarding shoots, but has 3 groupings while Medusa has 2 [nice, considering I live in flat KA3]. I'm thinking of renaming them as Kaaa and Metusa. When it comes to roots, Medusa's seem comparatively short. Oh! And I've only just noticed, by the roots on Kaa and Medusa have started branching.

"Who knows what tomorrow will bring?"

2010-02-19T19:30:00.007Z

I'm listening to an RJD2 Breezeblock Mix or something. It's just under half an hour long, and there's a bit I keep wanting to listen to that starts around 25 minutes in.

"Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Maybe sunshine, and maybe rain.
But as for me, I'll wait and see.
Maybe it'll bring my love to me, who knows.

Who knows?"

So, today's post is about the future. Sort of.

---

After the lecture yesterday, we had a sort of seminar with Corrado. It was more of a, "put your names down for the slot you want for ten minutes of feedback". I did get the last slot, but then I gave it up to someone else because they were on their way to campus and would have got here for nothing if there were no slots left for them.

But before I left to go sort out where I'm going to live next year, Corrado mentioned to me that there was something he wanted to talk to me about next week regarding my essay. I was like, yep, okay. But then he said don't worry, but there is something I wanted to discuss. Then the automatic thing happened that usually happens when someone puts the word "don't" in front of the word "worry".

After I read back my essay for the first time since handing it in, I noticed a silly mistake or two, as well as the fact that I didn't really like how I'd written it [I was very tired and at my wits end after trying to finish a 30second flash FMV in the same night]. So now I'm trying to forget about it and relax into the fact that if it turns out I've done terribly, I would probably have done better had I not made the paired FMV project with Ben my priority over the essay [I'm not actually sure how I've done in that project either yet, but we'll see].

---

Back to the topic of the Thursday lectures: they've been about essays and research. It sounds boring when I write it like that, but the actual lectures have been pretty interesting to me. The next essay we're doing is going to be the introduction to the dissertations we'll write in our third year, and we were set the task of thinking of a broad area within games or animation on which to concentrate.

I, as usual, didn't know off the top of my head what I wanted to do. So I did a little soul search [woohoo for google] to find out what I'm all about. I think I wanted to see if I could compare what I found to the ideas and work I had come up with in the past.

I found out a while ago that I'm an "Idealist", possibly an ENFJ [Teacher] according to one online test. I could go on forever about how this matches me, but I won't do that here right now. One of the key things about Idealists is the idea that while Artisans live in the now, Guardians live in the past and Rationals live in the "eternal", Idealists tend to live in the future, in the world of possibilities and "what if". Sounds just like me.

It's true that, while I keep a lot of my old journals so that I can look back through them now and then, I don't actually spend much of my time reading through them. I spend a lot more of my time imagining the future and the possibilities and outcomes of my actions. I do it in all aspects of my life. I do it when I "shuffle paper" in my artbook because I don't want to stick anything down just yet. I do it when I write notes about characters for stories I could write one day. I do it when I have a billion conversations with people in my head and try to imagine their responses, but then never go on to actually have those conversations with them for real. I do it when I read about things that have been invented recently and think how they'd effect events in the world.

And then it hit me. Why don't I write mine on the future of gaming? I may have to narrow down the topic to something more specific like "The future of the games industry" or "The future of games in education" or "How games can help people in the future" or "How games can evolve in the future". But it's definitely a subject area that would engage me.

Haven't written a post in over a fortnight!?!?!

2010-02-13T13:41:00.004Z

How naughty of me. The Interaction thing came and went, but apparently there wasn't enough drive or momentum in most of the groups because only three people including myself turned up to the showing... we ended up watching inspiring videos on Youtube on the big screen :D

Sebastian's Voodoo. I saw this ages ago and can't believe I forgot about it. It's so beautiful. Totally still makes me cry, haha

Watched this later in the evening with friends, but still posting it up because it's another one I'd forgotten about and couldn't believe I had. I love it.

My group didn't finish our film/animation, I think mostly due to technical difficulties [with not being allowed to use uni equipment, e.g. cameras, for it for some reason]. Shame. But never mind, Hains has said he still wants to finish it eventually because it would be a good showpiece for him. It probably wouldn't do that much for me except possibly teach me how to put film and animation together maybe, but if it'll help out Hains then I'm happy to help finish it.

As for actual course work, we've got a new project underway, 8 of us CGD designers working with 3 of the Games & Artificial Intelligence dudes. We seem to have a good group going people-wise, but we've got the brief that was rejected by one of the groups last year. Not sure exactly why they rejected it because we like the idea and are pretty happy to work on it. Here's the brief we're working from on the website Pete set up for the group. I may have to set up a blog especially for Wings of Fate pre-pro and production work.

"Interaction"

2010-01-24T19:02:00.004Z

Went to a meeting last Friday - my friend Dave Ware has set up a little independant-of-uni event going on where people from different courses meet up and work on a project together for a couple of weeks, with the aim being to help people network. Basically we have to create a piece [be it performance, film, animation or game] under the theme of Interaction.

The group I'm in consists of Matt Hains and Matt Lee from 1st year Film and Video, Ollie Elliot from 2nd year CGD, and moi. So far the plan is to create a film/animation of a looping relay race, where live action, 2D animated and 3D CGI characters interact and pass a baton between eachother.

Here's a quick idea for Mr. 2D, based on a run cycle guide I found online. Not sure why but the animation sort of skips on the last few cycles..

For some reason, possibly because of my experience during the AIR project, I feel like doing some side entries done just by myself. There are soo many things you could do for this theme. Recently I went climbing at Boulders in Cardiff, and also went to a Capoeira session with Dave, and both of those things involve interactions...

I think I'll do it if I think of anything good, but won't neccessarily show them at the screening thing. We'll see. Hehe.

And then I was like, Yay

2010-01-20T04:28:00.002Z

19th January 2010: FMV Critique

Well, Richard wasn't there because he came a week earlier because that was when he was free, and Babsi wasn't there today, but Surman says she will be looking at the work with him during assessment, which will be happening over the next couple of weeks. But I quite liked the feedback we got in the crit, especially the bit where Surman said the cutting and editing was good :D I think the main issue was the way the quick cutting was at odds with the complexity of the characters, so I mentioned the idea Ben had of doing like little animated shorts about each individual character. Kinda like the Team Fortress 2 ones.

In other news, I was chatting to my friend Sam today about what constructive things I could be doing over the next two weeks. He mentioned that he was intending to get some video's for teaching people Parkour, and what kind of things I'm able to animate. I think I'd quite like to help him with this. They'd be like live-action diagrams with labels showing things like centre of gravity. If I did help, I would definitely learn something about Parkour. That would be cool.

Urghh. My brain is hurting.

2010-01-18T18:43:00.009Z

Handed in my essay and the FMV today. There was a sound issue where I'd imported some narration, but for some reason it was playing twice as fast and was high pitched, while none of the other sounds were. I felt well proud when I figured out how to fix it :D Also I've noticed that I learned how to change the volume of audio in flash, that'll come in very useful.

I finished the FMV first this morning at like 4am I think, and then started finishing my essay. My laptop was really hot though, so I paused to let my laptop cool down, but I ended up falling asleep. Luckily my alarm went off at 10am and woke me up thinking "Huh? Where am I?" because I'd been having some strange dream, whose details I couldn't actually remember. Then I checked through my essay and it was kinda weird because I could think slightly better, so those two hours ish of sleep actually might have helped.

Then before noon I went to hand in with Ben, then found out I didn't have to hand my essay in right away, so I went back to mine to tidy up the Research section [I had more links than some other people, yay for thorough research], commonly known as a Bibliography - except I didn't want to call it that because most of my research involved looking at the opinions of people which they had posted on the 'net, as opposed to stuff I'd read in books.

As for the FMV, I don't like it anymore. I'm not sure whether it's because I actually don't like it, or if it's because I know who did what so that differences in style jump out at me, or if it's because I've been stressing about it for the past 7 days because I wanted it DONE a week early so that we could have a whole week to polish it, as opposed to the zero minutes we had instead because the "proper" slides were only started on... what was it...? Friday? Grr.

Or if it's cos of the associated pain of the horrible horrible brain ache I now have because of all this intense concentrating I've been doing on it to try to get it finished combined with the slight sleep deprivation. I hate "crunch time". I hate deadline stress. I hate knowing that despite spending considerably less time procrastinating than I have done in the past and focussing over the Christmas holidays [which contained not just Christmas and New Years, but also my birthday] on work instead of play, I STILL had to pull an all nighter.

The moral of the story is that video games are evil, and that I want to be a recluse artist philosopher who answers only to herself and lives in a pretty mansion cottage with a tree that fairies live in outside for me to look at when I feel like looking at a tree or climbing one, but isn't actually a recluse because she has lots of friends that invite her around to watch films all the time or to play truth or dare or to have an innocent massage party.

I'm halfway there.

"Ti Ob"

2010-01-10T13:45:00.025Z

Since last night, I've been taking another look at what the message that the team are looking for could say. Here's a section from my notes:

The story would end in the successful instance with the designers finding an ancient creed, which reflects the holder’s image, that says “LOOK FROM WITHIN.”

Or, they find a glass object, with a nonsensical inscription on it…

“…What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”
“Fuck it, why don’t we just make another action game. We can base it on what we‘ve just had to do to get here.”

They then make this very game that the players have just completed.

Basically, the characters would be looking at the message the wrong way round and wouldn't understand it, but because they have to make a game anyway, they just go ahead and make one about themselves.

“LOOK FROM WITHIN” “NIHTIW MORF KOOL”
“THE IDEAS COME FROM YOU” “UOY MORF EMOC SAEDI EHT”
“THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX” “XOB EHT EDISTUO KNIHT”
“LOOK AROUND YOU” “UOY DNUORA KOOL”
“USE YOUR HEAD” “DAEH RUOY ESU”
“LOOK AT YOURSELVES” “SEVLESRUOY TA KOOL”
“LOOK AT OURSELVES” “SEVLESRUO TA KOOL”
“OBSERVE YOURSELVES” “SEVLESRUOY EVRESBO”
“EVERYTHING” “GNIHTYREVE”
“LOOK AT US ALL” “LLA SU TA KOOL”
“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME FOR” “ROF EM TA GNIKOOL UOY ERA TAHW”
“WHATEVER WILL BE WILL BE” “EB LLIW EB LLIW REVETAHW”
“MAKE A GAME” “EMAG A EKAM”
“JUST DO IT” “TI OD TSUJ”

Then I thought this:

“DO IT” “TI OD”

or better:

"dO iT” “Ti Ob”

I stopped there cos I quite like this idea. For a start, it's simple.

It fits in with the genre the game is aiming to be - a beat'em up action adventure.

It also fits in with the idea that games are supposed to be interactive. The player doesn't just watch, like they would watch a movie, or just listen, like they would listen to a piece of music or a story being told to them. To move the game along, they have to do. You could say the language of game is doing.

I hear that showing people in cinematics that the character they play is a certain way can be better than simply telling them that the character is that way, and expecting them to go along with it. I hear that it's even better to work it into the game's mechanics or the gameplay. Think Sonic the Hedgehog. Probably wouldn't quite work if Sonic was the protagonist of a game that turned out to be like Farmville or something [I probably shouldn't say that, since I've not actually played Farmville. But I imagine that it's a slow paced game, that involves a lot of waiting around for stuff to grow before you can harvest them].

"Do it" can also be quite wise advice in regards to any goal someone wants to accomplish, in that sometimes it's better to just try something and see if it works, and then learn from that then develop a new plan and try that, rather than sit around forever thinking about how to get it perfect the first time.

I had an idea that completing the game could unlock a short humorous animation explaining why the object say "Ti Ob", where the glass object is on a pedestal in a temple or something that feels a bit like an art museum. It starts off saying "dO iT" and then some naughty person comes along and looks at it, and chuckles, wanting to make some mischief, and the object is there looking at him, telling him to dO iT, so he does, and sneaks under the barrier to swivel it the wrong way round, so that it doesn't make sense anymore. Hehehe.

Headphone Jack: Version 3.0, and the other updates

2010-01-09T22:51:00.016Z

Just noticed that I seem to have changed Jack's personality from what it was before, although he looks exactly the same. He isn't such a soppy git now:

Headphone Jack [The Sound Designer]
When he’s not slinking around like a self loathing cat, quietly contemplating the shadows and tortures of the world, or tinkering with technology to make it “better”, he’s a reckless, risk-taking cowboy. If you piss him off, he’ll jump on your head and torture you through music with his wonderful view of the world.

I think the change happened when I moved the bonsai tree off his desk and onto Squeak's. Speaking of Squeak, I've revised the description of her as well, although there aren't many major changes to her story:

Squeak [The Visual Designer]
Once upon a time, she lived on a ship as a princess of the pirates. Feeling like there was more to life than stealing from others, she rebelled, and ran away to assume a new creative identity as a games designer. She didn’t leave everything behind however, and retained a love of pretty or glittery things. Unfortunately, she found that her high pitched voice caused some people to not take her seriously and earned her the nickname “Squeak”. She was not amused.

She'll still use glue to stick people to stuff in the game, I've just taken that bit out of the brief personality descriptions. I may as well post the other descriptions up as I've written them just now...

I've just noticed that if you take the first letters from "Jagged", "Angry", "Blunt" and "Straight-to-the-point", you get "JABS". That sounds like a good name to me for the Key dude, seeing as I've noticed a lot of confusion in some people regarding this character. I only called him the Key cos he looked like one, but people were reading into it a bit much, saying, "Is he the key figure?" or something about how he shouldn't be the programmer because the key role in games design seems to them to be something else. So:

Jabs [The Programmer]
Easily frustrated and quick to anger, “psychotic” is often the first impression he gives off. Sometimes he feels like he’s surrounded by morons - that he’s the only one who can see things for what they really are, and copes by insulting everyone with his sarcastic, dry sense of humour. He doesn’t hate everything, however, and has a passion for [brutal] acrobatic movement. He may have no legs, but that doesn’t mean he can’t kick ass.

The BigOomphGuy I've started to call BOG, because I can't be bothered to keep typing "BigOomphGuy" when I write about him. Whether he finally ends up just being called BOG though remains to be seen..

BOG [The Manager, or Team Director]
He’s the “big boss man” of the operation, trying to co-ordinate the efforts of the rest of the team. Despite being taller than everyone, the unfortunate position of his face means he wrestles with the fact that he has to look up at everyone everyday… resulting in a strange “mean-little-man” mental complex.

And finally, the little potato guy, who's name we shorted to Po, partly cos I thought it was funny that he was supposed to be a little shit and the German term for the bum is "das Po" or something.

Po [The.. What’s his job again?]
Po is, basically, a cocky little runt. He wears a tie to work and thinks he’s a pro, but the rest of the team don’t actually pay much attention to him. They’re not even sure how Po came to be on the team. What they don’t see yet is the fact that, while Po may not be all he makes himself out to be, his imagination, ideas and determination are a force to be reckoned with.

Thing is, I randomly had a thought today that our game reminded me of Kung Fu Panda, what with the one character who's all lame and stuff but he's with this other people who are pros at what they do, but then he turns out to have a vital skill or something. Also the part about a special item, ours initially being:

"The story would end (in the successful instance) with the designers finding an ancient creed, which reflects the holder's image, that says "LOOK FROM WITHIN". They then make this very game that the players have just completed"

Then I googled Kung Fu Panda, cos I needed reminding about what actually happens in the movie. I'll be honest, I was surprised when I read that the Dragon Scroll was reflective, and then freaked out when I realised that the main character was also called Po.

Seriously, WTF.

It's not too bad though, because I realised the moral of Kung Fu Panda was that there was no special ingredient, that all you needed was to believe.
Our is slightly different, because ours focuses more on the power and importance of the imagination. Sorta.

Oh shit.. wait.. that's not different at all, is it 0_o

Story Telling in Games, and how I'd like my own secret time machine.

2010-01-08T16:35:00.005Z

During my research for the essay I'm writing on emotional realism in Mirror's Edge, I found out that it was written by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Terry Pratchett. When I was checking out the interviews section of her website, I found some articles that tugged on the strings of the storyteller in me.

I've been told I'm rubbish at story telling - when telling stories face to face, that is - but I also remember a time when I was good at writing stories, and not only good, I really enjoyed it. There's a big difference between telling stories off the top of your head and writing them, and that difference is in editing time. There's also a big difference between writing stories for games, and writing stories for books - in games you have to keep interaction of the player in mind...

Before I start getting too much into the idea of story telling in games though, I should probably finish my essay. Oh how I love deadlines.

Speaking of deadlines, I've noticed some of the blogs of the others in my course, and I'm worried I haven't been mean enough. A time machine would be handy so that I could tell my past self to tell santa not to get Ben a PS3, because I feel like we're behind on our project. I also kind of wish I didn't have to do the essay at the same time, because I keep fretting about whether I should spend more time on the essay or more time on the FMV, which just wastes more time. I also feel like I'd be getting more work done if I were in my room at uni. Life at home is not the best work environment for me, seeing as I keep getting moved from room to room with no desk of my own here, and often have one sister telling me to "Do something productive and tidy up!"

Unfortunately I have no time machine to help me with my time-fretting, nor a teleporter to teleport me to my uni room, so it seems I shall have to learn to stop thinking and start doing again.

Imagekind - Would you like a pretty picture for your pennies?

2010-01-03T02:15:00.005Z

I've always liked the idea of walking into someone's home and finding a picture I've done, looking all pro, hanging up on one of their walls. So when I came across this Imagekind site that will sell prints of my images [that is, assuming anyone wants to buy any of them] looking all nice on posh paper or on canvas or framed up in a proper glass frame, I couldn't resist checking it out :) I've got a couple of images up on there at the mo, and a third is on it's way.

Since when does it snow in January here? :D

2010-01-02T14:38:00.003Z

Had a bit of a play in the snow today, got a few nice action shots of my sisters throwing snow at eachother, tehehe :D

My surname is not actually pronounced "geezmun".

2010-01-01T19:17:00.008Z

Before coming to the realisation that I will live until at least the age of 120, I joined some sites in a frenzied panic, just incase games design is the direction I end up going to for my career. Here they are, in order of creation.

- YouTube: I already had a YouTube account, but I decided to let that be my personal piss-about account, and made myself an account especially for professional porpoises. And yes, I do realise what I just wrote.

- dAportfolio: So, I checked out my deviantART account recently [it's been feeling extremely neglected], and it turns out they have this new thing where they let you have a "portfolio" site for free, and it's all nice and simple and easy. Why not, I thought.

- deviantART: My first dA account was under the username Marlwood, but since I've noticed that there is a school with that name somewhere, I'm claiming the name Geezmun.

- theGreatGamesExperiment: I can't remember how I came across this, but it looked helpful, so I signed up.

- IGDA: I was reading up on Robyn Hunicke to see what projects she's been involved in, and then came across the IGDA. Again, looked helpful, but I've only signed up with a free membership at the moment, instead of a paid Student membership.

Oh, and "Gyseman" is pronounced "Guys-man", if you were wondering.

In other news, my sister just showed me this. I love CollegeHumor, tehehe.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The End of the Naughties. Cough, I mean, Noughties.

2010-01-01T01:39:00.015Z

Maybe it's because this year is the year I leave my teenage years behind, but I have been freaking out about my future during the past couple of days. In 10 days, I will be 20, and then 10 years after that, I will be 30. And so, I'm not going to make any New Year's Resolutions [...as if I even remember what they were by the end of the year. I definitely don't remember whether I made any last year, let alone what they were].

Instead, I'm going to make New Decade's Resolutions. This is a list of things I intend to do by the time we reach 2020. And yes, I intend to live past 2012, and expect everyone else to do so too [except for perhaps Michael Jackson, Brittany Murphy, and all the people I have actually met who ended up passing away in the past year. There were far too many of you]. I caught the last ten years of the 20th century, made it to the 21st century, and fancy seeing how things go into the 22nd century. I don't think it's too ambitious. But anyhoo's, onto the list:

1. Go to the Philippines

This is where my mother was born, and where I was conceived [...TMI?]. It seems that all I need to do this is to get myself a passport, and then wait for a time where I'm free and can tag along with the Fam when there's a nice deal going on.

2. Get a provisional driver's license

I think it would be nice to at least have the ability to drive, but mostly this is for ID purposes. It really wazzes me off when I find that a night out with friends gets sidetracked because I look young. As for actually learning to drive, I was originally going to learn ASAP, but now I don't really intend to start until at least after I have finished uni [...if ever].

3. Invent a new language for an imaginary world

I've always wanted to, and I don't see why I haven't started already. It'll probably be a mix of allsorts of languages, like Filipino, and english slang, and nonsense. All I have to do is get an English dictionary, take my pick of the words I want involved in my new language, and then write my translations next to them. Haha.

4. Set up my Life as an "adult"

This is the big one, the main thing that is freaking me out at the moment. At this moment in time, I do not intend to end up living at home in The Shire after leaving uni. Mostly because I dislike being told to tidy up a mess in the house by my sisters, because after living in my own space at uni I know that I'm not a particularly messy person. Or maybe I've just gotten used to being able to come and go entirely as I please.

...I did write a couple more paragraphs here, stressing about where to find a nice place, with nice people, and getting a nice job, and I'll marry a nice man like the lady in The Notebook, blah blah blah. I'll get there eventually, wherever there might be. When I think about my plan to live to see the next century, it kinda puts the timescale into perspective. But then, that just leads me back to the question: Other than live to see the next century, what do I really want to do with the time I have on this planet?

It's a bitch of a question. I think I'll let myself sleep on it.

Cheers, Steam Sale :)

2009-12-28T02:21:00.006Z

I was quite stuck on what to write my 2000 word essay on, seeing as I was going to write about how Fable 2 expresses an emotional realism and yet couldn't really remember how it went, nor could I really replay it as I don't own any form of Xbox nor the game...

Enter the Steam Holiday Sale.

I bought myself Mirror's Edge for some lovely cheap price. Never played it before but I'm liking it, despite causing Faith to die a lot because I'm not very good [yet... well, I'm playing on easy, and she's dying lots even when there's no one shooting at her... hah..]. Although I did somehow seem to get quite good when I had to chase Jacknife around the rooftops before he grabbed a loose pole [*snigger*], but that was probably because I thought that if he could do it, then it could be done.

So, I'm still answering the same question [“While photorealistic animation and gaming visuals offer a graphic realism, in what ways have contemporary titles such as Half Life 2 (Valve, 2004) succeeded or failed in expressing an emotional realism?”], but I'm now doing my essay on Mirror's Edge.

I noticed earlier today that the question says "expressing", not "creating", which might be a little trickier for me because I keep noticing the ways it creates emotion in the player [which one has to argue is probably real if the player is really experiencing things like adrenaline rushes and satisfaction from getting it right and stuff.. ? Yeah... We established in the seminar sesh's that the term "emotional realism" has to be carefully defined...]. But I don't think "expressing" and "creating" are quite the same enough for me to go too deeply into it. We'll see, maybe I can carefully word it into a loophole, cos I'm finding it quite interesting.

And yeah... If you're anything like me [constantly being told to play more games], then go check out the Steam Holiday Sale and see if anything takes your fancy :)

Warning: The following article contains lots of unBleeped Bleeps.

2009-12-20T21:43:00.023Z

I like the fact that Rage Against The Machine's single Killing in the Name is number one this Christmas. It illustrates some of the things I learned during the Games and Animation Studies module regarding the fact that [THIS IS NOT A PIPE].

Sometime in the past week, I saw what I thought was a silly but well written article that claimed that the Rage Campaign means nothing [unfortunately, I've totally forgotten who's FB profile I saw the link on, and I can't find it again]. I can't remember the logic behind it. It could have been the thing about both tracks being done by Sony, as opposed to an indie band being chosen instead of RATM, or about no one caring about Christmas No.1 one anymore, or something...

If I could have been bothered to register to the site to state what I thought [and I rarely am, this seems to happen a lot], I would have told him that people will attach meanings to anything they want to, regardless of whether he, the article writer, thinks it means anything or not. We can't help it. Take the word "FUCK", for example.

Warning: The following video contains the word "FUCK".

Some people are offended by the word "FUCK" - but why? "FUCK" by itself is not offensive. It's just four letters of the alphabet arranged in a certain way, representing the sound someone makes when they say "Fuck." At some point, people decided that "FUCK" means.. well, all of the things it means in the video above, amongst other things. You could switch the word "FUCK" around with the word "PIPE", and all that would change fundamentally is the word used to represent the things that "FUCK" and "PIPE" represent. And what thing or meaning does the word "FUCK" even represent? It means many things... which means whether the word "FUCK" is offensive or not depends entirely on the context.

The only time people should be offended by the word "FUCK" is when it is used in a context where offense is intended towards them. However, if they are aware that the word "FUCK" is sometimes used to offend, they can get offended whether they were supposed to or not.

The BBC had to apologise after RATM started swearing at the end of a live performance of KitN on Radio 5.

The general public shouldn't be offended by the word "FUCK" in the line "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," because taken in context, it's not even aimed at them. They are not the "you" in "Fuck you", and in the same way, pissing Simon Cowell off or bullying Joe McElderry was not the reason I bought a copy of KitN. But some people do get offended because they may feel the rebellious energy behind the statement, and feel it is directed at them [okay, I'll acknowledge the fact that pissing off Cowell or taking the piss out of McElderry was on some people's minds, but those people were not representative of the whole campaign].

Now that I've been thinking about it, it seems kinda odd that to make a statement with a swearword in it less offensive, we would Bleep out the swearword. How does replacing an expletive with a bleep make the statement any less offensive? Is it to make the listener feel like they have someone on their side, if they are of the offend-able persuasion?

Hey, we're going to to play you a song with swearwords in, but we know you might not like them, so we've Bleeped them out for you. What's that? Why not remove them entirely instead of Bleeping over what must clearly be something offensive enough to be Bleeped over? Oh.. I dunno.. But I don't fancy the artist coming round to the studio, and Bleeping me up the Bleeping Bleep for messing with their message.

The Games Developers Characterers

2009-12-16T00:46:00.020Z

Check out this post for the previous Character Mini-Bios.

Here are the [almost] final characters all nicely drawn out.. :)

Squeak: An ex-Pirate princess, she ran away from home to join the Games Industry as an artist, because she thought there was more to life than just pillaging treasures. She's really good at arts and crafts, and by that I mean, sticking people to things [such as the floor] using glue, and, dare I say it, chucking glitter at people. Meh, why not, it's pretty. I changed her hair to make her look more feminine, an then invented the new back story now that her hair looks a little like a tiara from the front, but a mohawk from the side; rebellious royalty that she be.

I did this today in Maya to see if it works in 3D. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

Keydude: Mr Angry&Jagged on one hand, but Blunt&Straight-to-the-Point on the other. He's rather good at being brutally acrobatic. After a little bit of discussion, we've decided to round his head off a bit, cos he looks a little bit too straight in amongst the other characters. Not sure yet if I'll make it properly round, or just slightly. I'll probably go with slightly. Also may remove those stumpy little legs of his seeing as he doesn't really use them [check out this guy for one-limbed awesomeness].

Some quick drawings of Keydude doing a cartwheel and a breakdance move that may or may not be called a swipe:

Jack: The Sound Guy, who is like some kinda emo, cowboy, Earth child, cat thing, with headphones for legs and a headphone jack for a tail. He's depressed because he's really into nature and feels like industries are ruining it, but that there's nothing he can do about it but go with the flow. Conversely, he likes to tinker with sound technology. Maybe cos he's kind of made of it and it seems perfectly natural to him. He walks like a cowboy strutting, can use his tail like a lasso, and jumps on peoples heads to play them music out of his headphone-feet. Don't think I need to really change anything on this guy at the moment. Do need to try modelling him up in maya to check how he looks in 3D though.

And here are the ones Ben designed:

GamesTesters: I don't really know the full story behind these guys yet, but I do know that they are intended to be NPCs in the game, and that they are generally always together. I think we've changed it so that there are now only two of them.

BigOomphGuy: The guy keeping everyone else in order. He can't stand being told what to do due to his strange mean-little man complex, which is why he's satisfied with a role that allows him to tell everyone else what to do. And let's face it, who would dare push him THAT far? Just need to define the face a bit better on this guy, through some colouring on the nipples. Cough, I meant, colouring on the eyes. And possibly move the eyes up a tiny bit.
Po: He's a little runt. Nobody knows what the point is of having him around, but they don't really care to ask. Nobody takes him seriously. They let him sit at his desk, furiously scribbling away. But when he gets really worked up, his imagination becomes a force to be reckoned with; literally. Shadows from his mind spring up behind him, and he controls them like puppets. Apparently this was the weakest looking character in design terms, so we're giving him some hair possibly and a tie to break up the "weird neck thing" he's got going on, and to give him some more detail. Also, he thinks he looks more pro because he wears a tie to work, and he thinks it's awesome that he makes games for a living. If he had any friends outside of work, chances are he would brag to them about it.

Bayonetta

2009-12-09T14:51:00.005Z

Surman was talking about this the other day, and I hadn't heard of it. Sounded interesting..

Bayonetta

So.. she's a glasses wearing, four-guns-named-Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme-wielding, long legged, sexy, witch, mum with a British accent.. is it? Even if that's not quite right, I'm still definitely intrigued. I want to get it, play it, and then let my sisters play it and see what they say. The last badass lady they played was probably Lara Croft.

Yr2Proj2/"Game Designers"/We-really-need-to-come-up-with-a-decent-name-for-this-thing

2009-12-02T19:28:00.005Z

Just chucked the characters together to see how they look together, and then messed with filters and such about a billion times on Photoshop...

I totally forgot to add the ActorMan though...

So far we've got a Concept Doc [a lame half hour effort because we thought the first pitch was supposed to be powerpoint stylee], which I need to update and expand a bit more, and the storyboard, which I need to redo the images for as they were pretty much quick little thumbnails done in my notebook and then uploaded to the doc via a camera phone...

Oh, I didn't explain on here what the game actually was, did I?

Basically, it's a humorous cartoony pisstake of games designers in the games industry trying to make the perfect game.

Here are the mini-bio's attached to the Storyboard- names used may differ from final product ;) See if you can figure out which is which in the picture.

Po [The... What's his job again? A.K.A. Little "Stereotype" Guy]
The team don’t quite know what his job actually is in the office, so they’ve decided to make him be in the commercial for the new game they have produced. All he needs to do is sit quietly and play the game while Mr Actorman does his thing...

Mr Actorman [Voice actor, and Narrator in the commercial]
With his career in the film industry flailing, he’s left it for what he believes to be the way forward; the computer games industry. And almost everything he says sounds like an innuendo.

Mr MusicGuy [The Sound Engineer]
He’s a bit of an emo/scene kid, if emo/scene kids were made of headphone equipment.

Mr KeyDude [The Game Programmer]
He’s a bit angry, a lot of the time. And also rather violent. I guess you could replace “angry” and “violent” with the term “psychotic”.

Squeak [The Concept Artist]
So named for her squeaky, and kind of annoying now you mention it, voice. She’ll be the one trying to make everything look nice and pretty [and no, not with pink paint and glitter].

The BigOomphGuy [The Design Director Manager... Man]
He’s the “big boss man” of the operation, trying to co-ordinate the efforts of the rest of the team. Despite being taller than everyone, the unfortunate position of his face means he still has to look up at everyone... resulting in a strange “mean-little-man” complex.

The Game Testers
There are three of them... but only two are in the pic above. Unless one has invisibility powers that I didn't know about.

Forcast for [Yr2Proj2]: "Scorchio!"

2009-11-22T16:04:00.004Z

Just had a meeting with Ben, things are looking wicked. We're planning on having a tutorial sesh with a lecturer, because they could really help us with certain aspects regarding presentation.

No idea how the coursemates will react to the idea, but I'm pretty sure a few of them will think, "Are you serious?" Which, to me, is a good thing, because it is going to be a little out there... But it also means we have to be very careful and really think out how we present it to the big boys. Some of the rest will love it and laugh, while others will be a combination of the two, who might laugh while asking, "Are you taking the piss?" [Reply: Maybe. Whatchoo gon' do about it?]

Ben's also brought a contact to the table, a friend he made last year who's doing music [possibly Creative Sound and Music, I didn't ask]. He can create ambient stuff like this. But from the looks of some of his other YouTube videos, he's also got a sense of humour on him.

New Project [Yr2Proj2]

2009-11-20T17:47:00.005Z

Sooo, for this project I'm working with Mr Ben Williams. Never ever worked with him before, so there's a chance it kinda of goes against what Dave said about picking your next partner carefully. That said, I guess I wouldn't have agreed to Ben if I thought he was someone who wouldn't pull his weight.

I had trouble coming up with ideas to begin with, blank pages tend to do that to me. So I tried to get Ben to give me something to bounce off. First thing was: He didn't want to do anything to do with butterflies or ants [my old project], or water [his old project]. Sounded fine by me, seeing as the only constraints we have is the fact that we'll be pitching to people who will tell us our idea is crap if it is, and Dave said that if we're up against anyone, we are up against the animators. That leaves a lot of scope for game ideas, seeing as we can make it about anything we want.

Second thing was: He fancies doing something playful, cheeky, and non-serious, with some memorable characters that people can talk and reminisce about. Also fine by me. It reminded me of the Gastronomy project [originally titled Fartman].

We've started off by doing some character designs, then met up to look at what each other had done, then decided things were looking good and that we can expand them a bit by putting them into scenarios and give them family members. Here's what I've drawn so far:

I've also come up with a rough idea for the scenario in the game, but we'll see what Ben thinks before I write it up here.

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles trailer

2009-11-19T20:53:00.003Z

It's well interesting. If you've not seen it, click here, put in your date of birth, and just press play [no need to watch it full screen].

OH MY GOD!11!""!2

2009-11-17T16:30:00.005Z

...Traditionally, what would happen next on the course is, we would produce a 30 second animated vignette to be handed in to the desk in 6 weeks time based on what we've been working on in the past 6 weeks.

INSTEAD

Dave is bringing over what is basically the panel of GameCityU, in 6 weeks time, to critique a 30 second animatic thing, based on a brand new game concept that we have to come up with starting from now and pitch to everyone in exactly a week's time, with a brand new partner.
WARGHH

But then, I spose it's not unlike that time in Year 10 doing the Enterprise thing, where I worked with some classmates to come up with an idea to place Pembrokeshire on the map and pitch our idea to the teachers in like, a day. And then when we went on to do pitch it again for our area and went on to London to rep Wales. And then came second in all of the UK... [Woo, go Ysgol Greenhill School!]

Except, this time we have like 6 weeks to prep...

Okay, I think I'm calm now.

The 300 Words...

2009-11-16T20:00:00.004Z

... plus a bit more, adapted to put the player into the narrative.

The large blue sky lies above. You focus on a bird gliding across it, which suddenly stutters. Changing its direction, you guide it down towards a tulip, whose head is heavy with water from rain the night before. The bird swoops down, crashing into the tulip and spilling the water. As this flows out of the flower, you release the bird, which shakes itself as if waking up. It gets its bearings again and then stretches its wings out, taking back to the skies. But the water quickly spills into a little hole in the ground.

It shoots through a tunnel, and you follow as it winds down into the darkness, until it reaches an open chamber full of surprised ants. Some are washed off their feet, but they quickly realise that they need to move the larvae to another chamber. You focus in on one near a pink caterpillar, adopted by the colony by disguising itself as a queen grub, and guide the ant to rescue and carry it to a safe chamber along with its “siblings”. It is left alone with them, while the naive workers hurry and rescue more of the others…

Outside it becomes night time; you can see the silhouettes of bats against the stars, as they dart around catching unfortunate moths. You watch them a while, now and then switching between helping a bat catch a moth meal, and saving a moth from becoming that meal. Then a badger catches your eye, and you make it the centre of your focus. You try and guide it towards a nearby fox to see what happens, but it resists like a reluctant horse pulling against its bridal. Suddenly the badger starts digging where it is, dirt and little stones and ants flying everywhere. Ants… You realize the badger is digging into the ants nest, and you pull back harder on its mind, trying to make it listen to you. The fox saunters off, on the hunt for rabbits.

Months pass; it’s been some time since the great flood. There’s an unusual stillness in the tunnel, apart from the gentle twitching motions coming from within the pupa resting near the entrance. After ten months of hiding away in the ants’ nest, a Large Blue Butterfly is finally ready to reveal its true identity to the world. It pulls itself out of its protective casing, out of the tunnel and into the bright world outside. Having not seen the sun for as long as it has been adopted, the butterfly bathes in the light, waiting for its wings to warm up, shimmering. It’s been a long wait. You take the butterfly to the sky in triumph, and large blue is reunited with large blue.

DJ Hero [..is that even what it's called? I'm a bit tipsy atm]

2009-11-08T02:40:00.006Z

Soooo, today was, uhh, interesting shall we say, slowly leading on to pretty rocking, to absolutely epic rocketing multiplied by two! :D ... I'll leave that at that for now.

Onto the topic of this evening: DJ Hero [I think]. I just played it for the first time ever with some friends who have had much more experience with it than me. I gotta say, it looked a little daunting what with the little twirley nobs and slidey switch things that you're supposed to use... when? [I'm a guitarist, not a DJ...] And the buttons on the circle thang, which moves under your hand almost when you least suspect it, like a skateboard when you've never stood on one before.

But, [oddly, not unlike the rest of my night] once I got into it, it was pretty damn cool. You'd probably have to have some kind of appreciation for mixing and remixing tunes and the like, because it could get confusing if you're not used to the kinds of sounds and beats you can get out of it. But yeah. It's definitely a game I would recommend myself to buy for the Fam. The little ones [who aren't that little anymore] and possibly the brother would be well into it.

Games Designers are People too, & The Importance of Notebooks.

2009-11-02T14:49:00.013Z

Got back from Nottingham's GameCity on Halloween. It felt very different to last year's GameCity, but it was still very interesting, possibly more interesting to me than last time because I've become more into the whole thing over the past year. I won't write about the whole thing here because I got a few points from the different talks, so I'll write about them seperately.

One of the events, GameCityU: 2 Hours is Not Enough, involved my lecturer, Dave Surman, and a lady named Raina Lee asking a panel of people [including Mr Katamari: man of few words, sweet Dr. Babsi from Papermint, Masaya music man Masuura, and sad Jon Burgerman below.. I realise those descriptions would make more sense if you'd seen the event] a series of questions such as "Boxers or briefs?", "What's the worst dating experience you've ever had?", "Rock, paper or scissors?", and "What are the best and worst things about being a creative person?".

I did overhear someone saying "..it was like watching Dave have a gathering with his BFFs", which to me was a pretty good summary. However, as trivial as I might be making it sound, I did actually find it both entertaining and interesting to hear all their responses and reactions to the questions, as it really went to show just how varied the personalities in the industry are. I think it would shock some gamers to actually think that behind those companies who make those games, there are actually real, normal people, people who you can chat with, have a drink with, and partay on down with if you ever get the chance [as some people did. *Cough* Todd *cough*. I wonder if there are any pictures].

I can't remember now whether it was the GameCityU event or the GameCityU: 2 Hours is Not Enough one in which Robyn Hunicke, a lady from ThatGameCompany, talked about how important it is to have a notebook [illustrating my point nicely; if I'd had one with me, I could have written it down]. When she spoke about it, she referred to it like a journal, a place to write stuff down so that it would free your mind to think of other things, as well as letting your brain relax and spend less energy juggling all your thoughts.

This is something I tend to do, although I don't write in mine everyday. If something's really annoyed me or upset me, I'll end up carrying that around with me until I can write it down and get it out of my system [it's also quite fun to write in it when I'm drunk, and then laugh the next morning at my inability to write legibly when under the influence. It's also probably safer than posting things on Facebook while drunk]. The video below shows Jon Burgerman explaining another good reason for having a notebook with you. Mr Burgerman, over to you :)

Sexiness Issues

2009-10-13T19:56:00.007+01:00

We had the second lot of pitching today, except I think everyone who pitched today were just the ones who hadn't pitched last time. The main point I took at the end is the sexiness issue; how appealing does "salmon shoal shepherding" sound to you [...and how many times can you say it quickly without messing up...]?

It seems we all have decent ideas, but we need to learn how to make them sound really appealing to the people we are pitching to. Appealing, attractive, seducing... all those words came up during the lecture, and I thought hmmm... how sexy can one make an ant-baby-eating caterpillar...

This probably isn't what Dave meant.

Next task is not quite another pitch, but 300 words setting out how the intro to the world in our games. I've also written down "structure" and "flow of spaces" in my notes... but I think I'll need to think about that some more.. [annoying quirk of lectures, they always seem to make more sense at the time].

As for this morning, we had a tech sesh in Maya. I love playing with Maya, although it still feels like an iceberg to me with all it's little buttons and menus that do things I didn't know it could do... We were learning how to put a texture map on a cube, which we've done before but a refresher was definitely in order. After Charlie had taught us that, I started fiddling with the model I made last week and tried to figure out how the textures work on a shape with many more than six sides. I might have broken my first model somehow though.. dunno how, I was working in a copy of the scene saved seperately, and somehow the copy AND the original changed? *shrug*

Pitching, pitching & pitching.

2009-10-10T16:01:00.007+01:00

Been back in uni for a while now and our first task has been to get together with a partner and come up with a game idea based on a natural process.. and then pitch it to the rest of the group a week later. That intial pitch has come and gone. I noticed a few of the ideas being influenced by the same process, and also some of the ideas seemed to have similar game mechanics but different subjects [one involved moving planets to influence the path of a meteor or comet, another involved using seismic activity or wind or waves to direct a ball or similar object though a course, both ideas using the mechanic of changing the environment in order to influence the path of something].

I teamed up with Ollie on this one, and we've come up with a game that involves attempting to influence the behaviour of creatures [insects mainly] in order to save the Large Blue Butterfly from extinction. It's pretty much based on the real life extinction of the Large Blue, which disappeared from the UK in 1979. In 1980, conservationists imported Large Blues from Sweden, so now there are like 30 colonies of the pretty little Large Blues fluttering about across the south west of England.

Watercolour image I did of a Large Blue Butterfly. I did actually adjust it on photoshop, the sky is darker on the original painting and the dusky pink in the background was added later aswell, to match the Thyme's colours and make the ground in the background darker.

For those of you interested in stuff like this, the Large Blue is interesting in the way it depends on a specific species of red ant to survive, who in turn are quite dependant on a specific kind of environment. If there aren't enough rabbits keeping the grass short enough, the ants won't be able to hack it because they need it to be a certain temperature, and even a centimeter difference of grass length causes a big difference in temperature to the ants. If the ants are not around, then there's no way the Large Blue can survive through caterpillar-hood, because the later stages of it's life involve living and hibernating in the tunnels of Myrmica sabuleti, eating ant grubs while disguising itself as one to prevent itself being attacked and eaten by the ants. I'm getting a slight sense of deja vu writing this, so I've either written this on here before, or I've just spent a lot of time explaining how the Large Blue lives...

Which brings me nicely onto my next point to which the title of this post refers: pitching. Again and again. It seems to me that the main aim of this exercise is not to create an amazing game USP [although that is an important part of it], but to learn how to present our ideas to another person; to be able to explain to another in a way that inspires and excites them, and makes them want to support your idea and become involved. I'm not surprised to be fair, pitching ideas to people who have the money to pay you to do the work seems quite a fundamental part of the system in the games industry at the moment.

Moving back to the topic of ants [yes, I know, I'm going this way that way forwards and backwards over the Irish sea...]: they're brilliant aren't they? I've got to do an image of a flood in an ants nest from an ants perspective, and while I was trying to find some good underground images to look at I found a couple of really intriguing videos. The first was of an ant colony building a raft out of themselves. The second was the video below.

I find it ironic how, in trying to make it sound epic, the narrator actually makes the video seem a bit hilarious to me - despite how really quite amazing the subject matter is. It might just be me though - I get amused listening to the different voices narrators have on adverts, such as the chummy way supermarket ads often talk to us, how car adverts are always cool, but car insurance adverts are never ever as cool, and how films are always advertised in pretty samey ways with the narrator who always talks in that special voice that tells you whether the movie is scary, a comedy, an action film.. or even a comedy taking the piss out of the scary film genre. If you watch TV in Britain and aren't hard of hearing, I know that you know exactly what voices I'm talking about.

Pretty little Bugses

2009-09-25T14:27:00.007+01:00

First page: Done when I wasn't really sure what I wanted to focus on. I did these all in pencil first, then went over them in biro and watercolour later on, after painting the first thirteen bugs on the second page.

Second page: Bugs copied from Micheal Chinery's Collins Guide to the Insects of Britain and Western Europe.
Top row: Epilachna chrysomelina, Subcoccinella 24-punctata, Coccidula scutellata, Scymnus frontalis, Hippodamia 13-punctata, 7-Spot Ladybird, Eyed Ladybird.
Second row: Thea 22-punctata, Propylea 14-punctata, Wasp Beetle, Plagionotus arcuatus, Chlorophorus varius, Calosoma sycophanta, Common Swallotail.
Bottom row: Black-veined White [Aporia crataegi], Large Blue [Maculinae arion]. Large Blue larvae are pink to begin with, feeding on wild thyme flowers. They are then carried into certain ants nests, where they feed on antgrubs until they pupate.
Picture in the bottom left corner of page is of a hall with a ceiling decorated by beetle shells.

Third page: Oleander Hawkmoth [Daphnis nerii], Hoplia caerulea [top right], under that is the Spanish Moon Moth [Graellsia isabellae], and bottom right is Pterostichus cupreus.

Fourth page: Very quick colour studies of Calosoma sycophanta, from photos found on the net.

Me likey Anamorphosis

2009-09-24T19:44:00.002+01:00

[Source photo here]

Calosoma sycophanta

Looks a little messy maybe, but my eyes keep seeing the back end as 3D in the second photo :)

Small entry I know, but it is Freshers fortnight... More paintings to put up later.

Politics, Wellbeing, and that thing we call Currency.

2009-09-16T12:56:00.018+01:00

One of the major reasons I haven't been spending all my time doing the work I should be doing, has been Affluenza by Oliver James [my sister bought it because it sounded psychological and interesting, the same reason I even started reading it in the first place]. It's all about how money doesn't make you happier, but it goes much deeper than just making that old statement.

Oliver James travelled around the world to interview people in different English-speaking countries, giving snapshots into their personalities and emotional lives, and showing how their environment could have contributed to each. He's also extremely anti-Selfish-capitalism, and by the end of the book I had decided I really dislike adverts that tell you that if only you had their product, you would be so much happier.

Funnily enough, his book also gives his suggestions to avoid the "Affluenza virus" [known symptoms include wanting to be famous for the sake of being admired, wanting to have lots of nice things that you don't actually need in order to keep up with the Joneses, and thinking of people as commodities - including yourself - who will help you in your career or else you're not interested, as opposed to friends you like to spend time with], thereby reducing your vulnerability to emotional distress, giving you a chance to be happier. The difference between me saying that and an advert is that, if you buy Oliver James' book, I won't be getting any money for it. I'm spreading the word, not selling a product - there's a very fine line. It's one of the reasons I thought Lostprophets were awesome when I went to go see them in Newport. One of them said to the crowd that he didn't care if you downloaded their new song illegally, so long as you spread the word. Then again, I suppose they know enough of their fans would buy it anyway.

So what's all this got to do with computer games, eh?

Well. I was thinking about the politics of it, what Capitalism was all about, and I realised I didn't really know a lot about it and it's alternatives. I knew my friend Tito likes to write political things on his blog, apparently he's an Objectivist, and again, I didn't have a clue what that meant. He wasn't about at the time, so I googled it to give myself a vague idea. Then I had a look at what Socialism, and Communism, was all about, and then it struck me: how come I've not heard of any virtual worlds that try to put these ideas into play in the game? [If you know of any I could look at, do leave a link for me to check out :D] The unpredictableness of some players would be useful in seeing how such systems would work [or not work].

I thought about WoW and how it seems to involve a lot of [virtual] materlism. You kill one thing and what do you get? Copper. Silver. Gold. Maybe an item. Complete a quest and you get gold, or items. As you level up you get more gold to buy better items to increase your stats. When you get to the end level, your focus shifts towards group work to gain items in raids that have better stats that help you get better items in raids to give you even better stats. It's similar in the Sims in one way too - they NEED money.

They need it, not just to eat, but it's also decided that their happiness depends on the items they own - the items that are the most satisfying to Sims in-game are the ones which happen to be the most expensive. And [ignoring the money cheat for a moment] if your Sim doesn't have a job, you can't meet your needs very well, your Sim gets unhappy, and then it can't get a job. Then it dies or something. I'm not sure, I've never done a deprivation experiment on Sims, but I have witnessed how difficult the game got for one Sim a long time ago, probably before Sims 2 or 3. He ended up very depressed, and angry, and his wife left him. It was endgame for him then, because he had no one else in the house to bring in money for food, and he wouldn't get a job because he was "not in the mood", and we didn't know the money cheat at the time so we couldn't save him.

It might sounds like I've just been stating the obvious. But in real life, it's not always the most expensive things that make people happiest in the long term. "The best things in life are free". If you think about it, this system of materialistic punishment and reward is something many of us have taken for granted in games. I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time now considering what the alternatives may be and how they might be implemented.

I don't know if this post has made sense to anyone at all, seeing as this is all quite new in my head and I'm sure I have a few contradictory thoughts floating about. Oh well. Here's some more reading, an article I just stumbled across but have yet to decide on how I feel about it: Happiness, the new currency in France.

Only a FORTNIGHT to Go!

2009-09-05T19:05:00.007+01:00

Only a fortnight til I get to be back in uni :D

It might not look like it to the casual observer, but my mind is that hyper about the thought of going back that I'm actually losing sleep at night. Can't imagine how I'll be in a week.

I've started to pack by putting everything I brought back from uni into a big heap on my table. Now I just need to sort through it, and try to bring back only what I need [dad wasn't kidding when he said I'd accumulate junk there].

On top of that, I've got my Summer Assignment to do... For some reason, I had tons of motivation during my first month home, although I didn't actually do much proper work, and then after a few weeks it fizzled away so I could get on with holiday fun. Oh how inevitable of it. I feel like I'm at that point again where I don't know what to do, so instead I do nothing but ponder.

On the flip side, it took me 8 minutes to clean a shower-room at work today. 8 minutes! It used to take me like half an hour, because I'd have to think and try to remember what to do. But now I've got myself into a routine, I can spend those 8 minutes thinking about more important things as I clean... such as what on earth to do for my Summer Assignment.

It's not all bad I guess though, I'm making it sound like I've done no work. I've drawn, gone over in biro, and watercoloured the images of 13 pretty bugs in my book for use as reference [pictures to come]. Except they kinda only take up part of an A3 page... Hmmm...

Jonas Brothers - "Fly With Me" Cover Contest

2009-08-14T20:08:00.005+01:00

I was going to wait until we recorded a little segment to add onto the proper animated video, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen for a long while now, if ever. Basically, just over a month ago, my sister, Gen, found this video:

Win a guitar? Yes please! One of Gen's ideas to make our entry a little more original [other than completely change the melody and chords... haha] was to do an animation for it. So... guess who did the animation... :)

Gen kept listening to the JCB song, and we liked the simplicity of the video, which is why I went for the scrolling sky thing and cartoony us's.

Although, in the actual entry, the sky wouldn't scroll... because I'm not quite an expert on Flash [yet..] and I ran out of time trying to figure it out. But I've remade it now, so that when I exported it as an avi, it actually worked properly... It involved a lot of copying and pasting, but I got it done in one night. I think rotoscoping that wind up box thing took longer, haha.

Everyone you hear is a Gyseman gal :)
Me: Background singing, guitar and backbeat [...which was actually just me hitting the guitar]
Gen: Singing, and background singing
Abi: Singing
Yvette: Singing with Abi

Gen came up with the tune [the day before the deadline!] and did most of the sound editing. We didn't actually win in the end :( But so far all the commenters have loved how original it was :)

Aion Online

2009-08-12T11:30:00.005+01:00

By the people who brought you Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes, NCsoft have got a new game out soon, Aion Online. I saw this video and thought, "Oooooooh, ahhhh!"

I like the pretty places, I like that you get to fly, I like the customisation options in the character creation... but I have a minor complaint. In the videos I've seen [I've not played the beta] I think the running animation looks a bit weird. Like they look like they should be going faster than they are.

It's like the opposite of what bugs me about the kodo[?] mount run cycle in WoW [they're so massive, but their legs move really fast, and they sound like little gnomes when they run through water. It's actually kinda amusing now I think about it].

I dunno. Mebbe they tilt forward that far because of.. the gear they may be carrying? *shrugs* Maybe it's to create the illusion of speed, and the camera angles I've seen it at have just made it look weird. Or maybe, I'm being fussy :p