Status report

Whats up?
It's been a while. Just saw that I haven't updated this ever since the summergamedev. Of course I have a lot to share over the past few months.

Buitenkunst:
Explained extensively in my ISA(the summergamedev was already 2 Isa points) report I went to an art camping that offers different 1 week or day workshops in all kinds of arts. You can draw, paint, play in theatre, photograph, dance etc over there. I mostly went there for fun but also to spend time taking Photographs and building stuff the old fashioned way ( with screw drivers, hammers and wood etc).
Especially the photography workshop was a lot of fun but also very educational. It enhanced my grasp of composition and story telling through images. But there's also a ton of stuff that I just can't describe that you learn. Heck I even discovered people think I'm good in front of a camera and that I take good portret pictures.

What inspired me the most was that you can't really take a wrong picture. But it can be wrong for the goal you set out for yourself. If it's unsharp it can still work but it depends on the kind of picture your going for.

I also found that I like to play around more with reflections and motions then really clean looking pictures. I tend to try to trick the viewer in thinking they see something different then I actually captured. I guess I have the same interest to do that with games.

Planning to upload my pictures to flickr.com soon.

The start of Year 2
So year 2 has started and I still have to do 3 assignments:

1. The animation assignment of the fun period
2. The poster assignment of the cooldown period
3. The flux reading reports

Working on that everymonday now. It's going alright but I do bump into problems like having to big of a goal etc.

Sell it project:
The first assignment of the year was dubbed Sell-It. The instructions were like this:

• design and pitch a game for a real client
• no real money involved
• A platform game for the iPhone
• For 30+
• with a unique art style that reminds of the old age

We had 2,5 weeks for it and weren't given any real classes ( apart from a reminder class "research"). My team existed of 3 people and we purposely didn't build a real prototype. Instead we went with a flash presentation and concept artwork.

my role:
I was the projectlead this project. I'm not that great at drawing but with some help of Tom we got enough to show the look of the game. I used a lot of moodboards and made a fancy border design.

the presentation:
In the end the presentation didn't go aswell as we hoped. We weren't selling the idea enough and the flow and structure of the presentation just wasn't right. I guess the pecha kucha format was harder then we expected and we spend to much time on the technical side of the presentation.

sollution:
The idea of the game seemed very confusing to the client. They didn't think it was suited for a iPhone game and the story would give problems with the level design.
I didn't share all views but I did understand the core of the problem. We hadn't been clear enough.
So we were given the task of making a proof of gameplay. We made it in the form of a simple flash movie that we build the same evening.

new view:
We haven't gotten very thorough feedback yet. However we did get to hear that the client liked it and was even slightly impressed. If only we had done this sooner we might have even sold the idea ( for free :P)

We tracked our progress with a blog: http://sellitpb.blogspot.com/

That's about it about the last few projects and my vacation. I'll discuss the new project in upcoming blog posts.