dos picas

Kongregate Card Game at PAX07

// September 12th, 2007 // No Comments » // Design, Games

Here is some footage I shot while attending PAX 07 up in Seattle, WA of the Kongregate CCG (collectible card game). I have been working for Kongregate as a freelancer designing the CCG for some time now and this was the first unofficial demo of the game to the public. Seeing peoples reaction to the game for the first time was priceless.

The team at Kongregate gets much props for busting the game out with all their other design and programing duties in time for PAX 07. It has been a great experience designing a game and I have learned a lot in the process. The game is far, but not too far, from being complete and things morph and grow over time. I am slowing weaning myself away from the project as I can not devote enough time to it. As a designer it is always hard to see your baby take wings and fly but it is in capable hands.

Maybe I will make my own Flash Game one of these days… hmmm. If you want to find out more about the game and Kongregate go here. Also a user, r3p3nt, from Kongregate has posted a link to the video as well, he has additional information about the KCCG on his blog if you are interested.

Retro MacOS WordPress Theme

// August 21st, 2007 // No Comments » // Design, Web, Wordpress

I saw this posted up in my feeds from TUAW and was shot back to being in school getting my first dose of the computing world on a Monochrome Apple II. Folders! Windows! oh my…

The theme created by Stuart Brown is a great rendition of the old Macintosh System 6 OS.  Using WordPress myself I love to see people take the time to develop a theme for this great platform. I promise myself that after a large project goes away I will create a new template for myself. Thanks for the inspiration there Stuart.

NES on the iPhone

// August 7th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Design, Games, Technology

By end of day I hope to have NES playing on my iPhone. I have been reluctant to hack my phone but what the heck, I can always go back. But how cool is this…

Sweet!

In The Blink of an Eye

// March 31st, 2007 // No Comments » // Art, Design, Film, Quotes

A great book about film editing, life, and much more. His commentary on the process of finding the emotion in a clip, really this could be applied to also any art discipline. It’s a quick read to, which is good for me… he he. Check it out if you are into film or just a novice.

It is frequently at the edges of things that we learn most about the middle: ice and steam can reveal more about the nature of water than water alone ever could.
- Walter Murch “In the Blink of an Eye”

Sketches of Frank Gehry

// February 1st, 2007 // No Comments » // Art, Design, Film, Personal

I recently watched a documentary by Sydney Pollack, “Sketches of Frank Gehry“.

Now I am no architectural buff, I knew his buildings and knew he was famous but I didn’t really ever give his art much thought. What struck me most about this film is the look inside the path of an artist and dealing with the creative process and making it work both for yourself and to make some kind of living.

I love that Frank goes outside of the normal bounding boxes of what architecture should be and function, and he creates what he sees as right, what he is passionate about in that moment of creation. This was very inspirational as an up and coming designer myself struggling to find my way in this American commercial world of now now and cheaper.
The path of human beings is most often twisted in many ways but I think the path of an artist is almost staggered and at times it seems as the path is off the mark but then you find yourself a famous architect. Frank Gehry at one point in the movie said he could of been a pilot if someone had shown interest in him. That really our career paths are often quite fragile. I started out wanting to be a musician, then an Audio Engineer, then fell into working with computers, IT, then found the web, and now here in San Francisco I find an old love of movies but still in love with web design. Some how all fitting together into the same path, the same design sense even before I knew what that was.

Needless to say the movie gave me hope in my creative endeavors and was entertaining as well. A must see if you are an aspiring artist in any medium.