Underwater Tomato Ninja: Beginning Game Development

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One thing I know for certain: this workshop will invove the Underwater Tomato Ninja.

What workshop you say? I’ve been making a game development workshop. Or perhaps it’s a series of workshops. Or then again perhaps it’s a game based workshop to make a game.

Along the way I’ve played with many ideas as to the workshop’s form and flow. As I’ve been coding, writing, and designing away these last few months I’ve followed my muse and love for the subject a bit too much. On one hand it’s great to have generated a bunch of material, on the other I need to keep the live presentation version of this thing to an hour. 

The workshop is for beginners to intermediates, looks at both design and development, and uses HTML 5 + JavaScript as the game platform.

Whatever shape it finally takes, I’m excited to be presenting it at Kids Read Comics in July and at Lean Into Art in a different form with a date to be announced!

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The Big Web Show’s archive is impressive. Take this interview with Andy Rutledge for example.

The Big Web Show’s archive is impressive. Take this interview with Andy Rutledge for example.

Polytechnicast - Juggling Part 2, De facto Hiatuses

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In this mostly “art journal” style episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on how I’ve been applying something I learned via juggling to my creative projects. I also share how that relates to which projects are getting my time and attention.

Links Mentioned and Related

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

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Polytechnicast - Juggling Metaphor and Actual Juggling

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I share a few observations about why juggling interests me and a basic overview of how to juggle a three ball cascade.

Links Mentioned and Related

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

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Game Workshop Card Prototypes

On Episode 30 of the Lean Into Art Cast, I mention my upcoming game development workshop. Here’s a sneak peek at the prototype card deck. Nope, not a “slide deck”.

The workshop itself is a game - a multiplayer card game to be precise. Everyone starts with a basic working game engine and over the course of 90 minutes, everyone plays, designs, and develops new features and assets for their game.

I’ll be performing this workshop in-person (and online at Lean Into Art) later this year. More details to come! Meanwhile here’s a preview of 12 of the 300 cards.

Game-dev-class-cards-sample

 

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Creature Design, The Wormbug Completed

I spent about an hour playing in Photoshop to finish the Wormbug’s linework and coloring.

The flatting stage went faster than normal as I already had the silhouette. I played around with a cool color palette for the creature. Instead of my normal flat shading with tones of black and white I chose to shade and with warm colors, something I’ve been working on since taking Kevin Cross’s color theory class

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Polytechnicast - Comic UI with guest Krishna Sadasivam

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In this episode of the Polytechnicast I have special guest, cartoonist and art instructor, Krishna Sadasivam of PCWeenies.com.

I’ve always found Krishna’s continuous refinement of the PC Weenies comic user interface very informative. Krishna and I talk about some of his recent UI updates and what constraints and goals he had in mind when revising the site.

Links Mentioned and Related Links

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

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Creature Design, Work in Progress

Bug creature design, work in progress. Started it as a rough-sketch iPad painting and I found the creature looked too blocky/brick-wallish to communicate clearly in silhouette (that stage isn’t depicted in the screencap). I refined the silhouette in Inkpad (image on the left) then started fleshing out details in the desktop version of SketchBook Pro (image on the right).

Bugman_-_wip

 

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Polytechnicast - Interactive Empathy

Interactive_empathy_as_a_design_concern_-_blog_of_an_interactive_storyteller

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I share some thoughts on using empathy as a way to guide design choices in interactive projects.

Links Mentioned and Related Links

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

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Polytechnicast - A One-Off Solution

Polytechnicast_-_a_one-off_solution_cover_art

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I share an overiew of the technical details of my move from Google App Engine to Squarespace. It’s a bit about RSS, XML, why text formats rock and how web browsers are a fantastic place to build a little one-use data transformation.

Links Mentioned and Related Links

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

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