The premise of Nick Campbell’s five second projects is to make a quick animation thats no longer then 5 seconds.

As an exercise, I have made a few of these, some taking a week (to render) and some just taking an afternoon.

They can be found on my vimeo page.

cmyk as a theme:

A self portrait:

Straight lines as a theme:

It was done in illustrator completely with the blob brush and opacity masks. What could he be saying?

Jesse Schell discussed this in his game design class and related it to microwaving pasta. You don’t know exactly how much it will take to reheat a dish, but you know how long it will take to overheat that dish and make it explode. You put the food in and guess how long it will take to get a little hotter. Then you test it, and see if it is the desired temperature. If not, you guess again and tweak all over again. Each time making smaller and smaller adjustments until you get the desired effect.

This is my choice way of dealing with everything. I take in as much information as I can, digest it, and figure out what it means. Seemingly unrelated things could inform something I’m working on, and I will use it.

I have been redesigning lots of things recently, and learning more and more about graphic/story/character/programming design has helped. Looking at example codes, figuring out what has worked in the past, and augmenting it for my needs. Digesting current trends, figuring out why they are indeed trends, and relating it back into the design.

There will be a new comic coming soon.

So the comic is going to be about a kid, Jack, who dreams. Jack falls asleep one night and finds himself in a dream world, where his guide is his stuffed rabbit named Squishy. In the real world, Squishy can fit into his arms, but in the dream world, Squishy is a 9-foot-tall protector of Jack.

I would like to update this comic on a regular basis. Instead of having each page be self contained, I’m going to try and make complete story arcs with developing characters and ultimately an overarching story line about Jack growing up and securing the dream worlds. The idea is modular and meant to change over time, so it could morph into something else.

I haven’t written a comic since I was very small. Even then I had a different idea for each book, and they rarely had words.

Expect to see the first page sometime this week. I will have a new post every week to continue the story. Lots of cliff hangers, but the challenge will be to have each post be somewhat self contained. Episodic content, serial in nature, with an overarching story.

I have wanted to write about gratification versus frustration in entertainment, which I was inspired to write from playing Mirror’s Edge. I will go into more when I write the post, but I found myself extremely frustrated with lots of the game, but some how I was driven to keep playing it. I wanted to relate it to how other entertainment media also use that same principle to engage you in the story. But they could also fall flat and just become cheese; when the story hasn’t grabbed the user’s attention yet. Did I just use a semi colon properly?

I also wanted to write about how episodic content has become such a cultural phenomenon. Okay, maybe not a phenomenon, but it has been the way many TV shows have gathered such large followings, and it’s spreading to movie and video game franchises. I wanted to relay how episode content is how many media get their start, but lose it once they hit their “golden period,” for they have a grander vision.

Next week is GDC, and it will be the first time I don’t have access to the presentations. This means I will have lots of time on my hands when I’m not trying to get a job. I hope to write about these two ideas and maybe more. I still have the hopes that this will be an outlet for me to put down my ideas, put them out into the open.

More later

Heroes has not come back from its amazing 1st season, and has turned into something that resembles some sort of soup opera. Characters that were evil are becoming family, and family characters are looking to become evil. Trouble is, they solved the shows problem at the end of the first season, and had no real issue in the second season. The show now seems to be trying to get back to that issue but the characters have changed and things are different.

Heroes is not the only show to suffer from this. Shows that have survived this issue have had problems or enemies that are so big they seem like they are unattainable or unsolvable. Shows like Lost intentionally hide things from the viewer, so they are frustrated. But successful shows (successful as in they became popular) have those seeming unsolvable problems, and each episode, they take a little piece of that wall down. Shows like X-Files and Pushing Daisies have or had an issue that didn’t keep the main characters from their everyday activities, but seem to be watching those activities “intently.”

The success of shows like Lost that have used the intentional hiding method have spread and are showing signs of falling because their popularity relies so much on that story line. Fan base is a strange monster and they are still watching the shows that slipped and showed too much.

The procudural shows are a different thing as well. They have been popular since the creation of episodic story telling, not just in television. The popular ones are the ones with interesting characters with interesting motives.

As far as movies and other entertainment venues there has been nothing amazing that has driven me to write here. Not many new movies that have peaked my interest. Just lots of watching of old movies while building levels in valve’s hammer for my portfolio.

More later.

One thing I have been wanting to do is really dissect everything entertaining that I have been experiencing recently. It started when I sat down to watch Babel, because I know so many other people liked the movie. I thought it was just okay. Most of the characters were well played, but the story lacked a through line that so many of my teachers drilled me on having. The general pacing of the editing made me feel like something bad was always about to happen, so I felt anxious the whole time. Not the good kind of suspense you want in a movie, but the kind that made you want to stop watching it because it made me uncomfortable. Maybe if I talked with the makers, they could explain it better, but I was also taught that a piece has to stand on it’s own, without explanation.

I am also making an effort to get back into programming. I was once very good at it, so much so that I would write programs for fun to learn different languages. I know how the syntax works, but I just need to pick a language and get back into it. So I have chosen actionscript 3. I am testing an online video tutorial site called lynda.com. It is pretty basic so far, things I already figured out myself making the prototype for the ETC bridge, but some is relevant and useful. I’m thinking I need to sketch some interface for something, and build a working flash prototype of it.

Hopefully something will come from each post. Maybe in the form of some revelation for me, but it may turn out to be just a small little rant of my opinions of something I just read, watched, played, experienced, enjoyed, hated, etc…