Limbo has a Roy Lichtenstein moment.

Great example of creative appropriation.  Love this Little Big Planet take on Limbo.  There is true art in this...

Comic Con 2010

Tron bike on the showfloor

 I spent a great 2 days down at Comic-Con last week.  It's always really inspiring to see the amazing amount of creativity and passion that fans put into the creation of their costumes.  I also get super charged after spending a day browsing artist's alley and meeting fellow creative's working in the medium of TV, comics and feature animation.  It's a nice reminder of how much common ground we all have, even though the mediums may seem so different.

I didn't take a lot of photos so I've appropriated some from various sources (attributed) to help illustrate my time there.

Pascal Campion: photo from parkablogs

My friend Pascal was doing a brisk trade on Artist's Alley.  Check out his work and you can order prints here.

Next up, Brandon Ragnar Johnson, creator of one of my favorite books, Big City.

Eponymonstrous: check his blog

As a huge Ragnar fan, it was great to meet and chat with the man himself.  I purchased his new book Eponymonstrous, which I recommend and you can purchase it here.

Darth Javi

Had a great meetup with Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the amazing creator of The Middleman comic and TV series, who very graciously gave me some supportive advice about my own writing goals.

Went sneaker shopping with my old buddy Jesse Alexander, who as always was on point about where transmedia and entertainment is headed.  Jesse is one of the rare people working in TV and film that knows videogames intuitively, not just as a fan but as someone that is able to deconstruct what does and doesn't work for the medium.  I hope one day to see him contribute to the field!

I had the good fortune to work with both Javi and Jesse on a secret project a couple of years ago, in which we emulated a writers room as a way to break story for a videogame I was working on.  This was a fantastic experience and I highly recommend the collaborative writers room approach to anyone creating a narrative structure for a videogame.

l-r: Haden Blackman, Me, Dave Filoni

I also got to reunite with good friends from LucasArts, including Haden Blackman, he of The Force Unleashed fame, and Dave Filoni, director of the Clone Wars animated series, I remain inspired by the work they are doing and excited to see what there future work will be.  Two of the nicest and most creative people I had the good fortune to know during my time there, I learned a lot from just being around these guys.

Finally, shout out to one of my old Lead Designers, Aidan Scanlan, who I ran into and is now back at Bioware working on a very cool looking project he was demoing called Dragon Age 2!



See you next year!

Buy this game - LIMBO

Limbo was released today. I picked it up for XBLA for 1200 points. The game is a true masterpiece. Elegant in its design simplicity and a masterclass in how to deliver graphics, audio and game flow as an integrated experience to convey storytelling.



If you are a fan of artistic games you owe it to yourself to support this game. The commercial success of games like this, along with games like Heavy Rain, show there is room in our industry for a broader range of emotional journeys than the traditional 'summer blockbuster' fare.

More evidence, if any is needed, that our industry is really evolving as an art form. What a great time to be creating games!

Check the PlayDead website for more details.

Puppy Games - Revenge of the Titans

This game looks amazing

Go to the Puppy Games website to download the beta.

Love the pixel art!

Ed Catmull pt 2

I've covered Ed Catmull before but as a student of Pixar you can never stop learning.

Voice Synthesis for Added Realism

Impossible Mission came out in 1983.  The moment I saw this running in my local computer store was a watershed moment in my life, akin to seeing Star Wars for the first time.

The fluidity of the main character animation was amazing.  It was the first time rotoscoping had been used to give the character realistic movement (Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia came out 5 years later).  Before that most games I had played had 2-3 frames of animation.

Another great aspect of the game was the storytelling.  The game had an evil protagonist and you were working against time to infiltrate the computers in his base, piece together puzzles and confront the evil scientist at the end.  It was a simple but effective construct that was an example of character driven storytelling that worked.

Another huge innovation was the use of speech in the game.  Who could forget the evil genius challenge at the beginning of the game.

"Stay awhile...Stay forever!!!"



[UPDATE] cool interview with Dennis Caswell on the making of the game.

Drive - Dan Pink gets animated

I've covered Dan Pink and his talk on Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose before but had to post this as it's awesome. An animated version of his talk.