Author Archive
Hair Platin
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010The 529 in 1 Klik and Play Pirate Kart Part II: Klik Harder
Friday, August 6th, 2010Much earlier in the year I took part in a 48 hour game making event over at Glorious Trainwrecks. The aim was to make as many videogames as possible, the result being 529 games created by 102 people. That’s sort of amazing.
Every month Glorious Trainwrecks hosts a ‘Klik of the Month Klub‘, where, in the space of 2 hours, participants try make a game. Generally people use very simple tools—most commonly Klik and Play—and work from simple ideas. It’s very accessible to people, like myself, who have no idea, or want, to learn how to program. The results are often messy, goofy, and not always so good; but it’s a lot of fun!
I made 5 games:
Authentic Celestial Shiv
This was an experiment in making a horizontal shooting game; particularly the part that seemed the most daunting to me: designing the enemy patterns. I think it turned out quite nicely. The player’s avatar is based on a shiv I found in a bin in a hostel. The title is a riff on a Dirty Three song.
Bullet Hell Bulldog
A game for two people, based on a game I used to be quite good at: British Bulldog. Players alternate between trying to get from one side to the other, and trying to stop the other doing so. It’s a bit too fast, so relies on chance too much. I hadn’t played it with another person till recently.
It’s an idea I had a long time ago, but never had the drive to put the whole thing together. That’s one of the interesting things about these events; you have so little time you just have to cobble the thing together, somehow.
Castlevania 10
Inspired by the videogame series Castlevania, somewhat loosely. It’s the game most like a real videogame: players must complete screens of enemies, and boss enemies. The trick to the game is that you can ‘shoot’ a hell of a lot of swords at once. This is an accidental feature, because I couldn’t figure out how to make a character swing a sword, so I made them shoot, then I accidentally made them not disappear. Being an artist is about knowing which mistakes to keep, and which to discard; right?
It’s the most popular game of mine on the website.
Collecting
This one’s a joke/comment on videogames that are more about collecting baubles than being enjoyable in and of themselves. People don’t seem to like the end, but I do. And I think think the title screen is quite clever!
Colour2
Colour2 is my favourite. It makes images by generating shapes in a somewhat randomised manner. I wanted to recreate another, similar, thing I made many years ago. It would ‘shoot’ coloured squares in the direction of the mouse cursor. That was made in The Games Factory (a later program by the makers of Klik & Play), which allowed the shot squares to mark the screen with their colour. So the player could draw, in a way. Klick & Play doesn’t allow for this, so the game changed a bit. It also has sometimes-troublesome mouse support, that I wanted to avoid.
You can use the number keys to change levels. Number three’s my favourite.
You can download the compilation from here.
I may append some recommendations when/if I play through them all.
Television
Monday, July 26th, 2010Five photos from my camera
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Installation, take 4
Monday, June 14th, 2010A poor photo of a new painting
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Installation
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010I finished this installation a few weeks back now. It’s been difficult to document; the video above is my best attempt.
It relates to the collage project I did at the beginning of the year. I had the thought as I was making them that I would like to walk round in these spaces. They worked much better as held objects: I think they are interesting from all angles, and have some nice surprises made-in.
I also connect it to the multimedia course I did when I first left school. I was quickly off-put by the lack of animation involved in computer animation, but fascinated by the building blocks. For those unaware, 3D models are made of polygons, of generally four or three sides. Typically nicely put together to give the illusion of rounded surfaces. More interesting to me were the effects you would get from clipping polygons through each other, the unreal effects from single-sided polygons, all sorts of glitchy, dirty, messy stuff, that reminded me of the beautiful, crude 3D we used to see in videogames.
I’m happy with it. I realised near the end that it was going to be dark (though not quite as dark as in the video) inside, which I hadn’t thought about. I spent most of my time carefully choosing the colour, grain, and texture of the pieces in there, all for little result! But, the effect of the light coming in between the cardboard is a wonderful surprise. I always felt I was working out problems in the same way I would for a drawing, and these lines become something like that. To think I spent so much time trying to fill those gaps! This use of the space between things reminds me of what I was doing with my painting, when the installating wasn’t taking up my painting time.
I’ve been drawing, and am about to start painting, from the structure. (Actually, I’ve been working from the collages too). I want to position people inside, and use the space as an illustration of an internal state. That’s the starting point, anyway.
Mostly seagulls
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010The best Saturday
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Last Saturday the Supreme Court of Victoria had its annual open day. I was a shade disappointed to see a line to enter the building, and frustrated to not be able to get through the metal detectors without beeping. The security may have been in dress-up, like the visitor welcoming judge out the front, because I eventually got through with my camera and my knife.
Inside was fascinating. It was surprising to find many rooms open, and no one round to keep us behaved. My biggest regret of the day is not opening the bar-fridge you see early in the videos above.
After a while we headed to the library. The books make beautiful patterns, and I thought between that, oil paintings of Santa, and a dungeon tour, I’d have plenty to use up the battery of my camera. I was occupied playing with compositions using all the ladders and books on the mezzanine floor, when Erin found me with news of a staircase she found behind a bookshelf. This staircase led to an office, with piles of books, a book binding machine, and a modest wee door. Behind that door was a narrow, stone, spiral staircase.
The video at this point is mostly me being very excited. The further up I went the more excited I got. The staircase provides access to the beautiful dome. Outside, and inside.
(This image was loaned from the Walking Melbourne forum, which is a wonderful place for researching Melbourne’s architecture. This thread has some information on the building.)
The battery gave up as I was trying to open a hatch at the very top—the final inserted photo shows it. I couldn’t get it open, and was too full of excited feelings that I would explode if successful, to try enough. The battery woke back up after we went back down, and you can here me commenting in the video regarding going back up to keep filming. Next year!
There was also a dungeon tour, that we missed. But I think our time was well spent.
Oh, and we also saw the Dachshund UN. It’s better as a comment on the audience, than it is on the UN, and a bit mean, really. But I got some great footage behind the setup. I seem to be anchoring a lot of my compositions to the top of the frame recently.
Outside studio
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010This is old-ish. I probably had a good reason for not uploading it to Youtube.
It’s worth mentioning that my Lost Discarded Abandoned blog is going. In short it’s a repository for things I’ve found, and bought, that seem to have another life attached to them. Most of that comes from a box of family photos I bought from Ebay.