“I recognize the value of building an established discipline, and of crafting a shared set of principles that define game design as a profession. But, I also think that in our efforts to define and legitimize our practice as a professional discipline we sometimes forget the history we inherit, the legacy of games made by communities of players, games made by amateurs, by dilettantes, by mathematicians, mothers, scientists, gym teachers, shepherds, inventors, philosophers, eccentrics and cranks.
And in honor of this tradition I would like to suggest other verbs for us to describe where games come from, alternatives to the overconfident precision of the word “design”. Words like invent, discover, compose, write, find, grow, perform, build, support, identify, copy, re-assemble, excavate and preserve.”
realtime
Space sounds and meandering digression.
One of the perks of doing this often is that it takes away the stigma of it being a big deal. So with this being the first for a while, let’s get on with it
It’s very difficult to ignore the news at the moment, it’s on my mind a lot, as I am sure with many others. There are terrible things happening to many innocent people. Just so you know this rambling meaninglessness has the days events weaved into its substance, if it’s not overt.
Molly Crabapple wrote some journalism (with illustrations of course) on the people Caught between Isis and Assad.
I used to have these (I am that old):
Still playing with Photoblender, all though it does seem more late at night when watching YouTubes:
Loom bands are seemingly every where, even on my pencil. I also have a bracelet, which I wear with pride.
Making stop motion with an iPhone would appear to be living the dream, although I wouldn’t know because I live in Android. Would like to check out all those arty iPad apps though.
“Making films is all about—as soon as you’re finished—continually regretting what you’ve done. When we look at films we’ve made, all we can see are the flaws; we can’t even watch them in a normal way. I never feel like watching my own films again. So unless I start working on a new one, I’ll never be free from the curse of the last one. I’m serious. Unless I start working on the next film, the last one will be a drag on me for another two or three years.” — Hayo Miyazaki
This quote is completely robbed from a beautiful, beautiful picture essay by Victoria Ying On Sketchbooks, read it NOW.
Legendary animator who gave me life changing advice when I was a student continues to dish out the sermons when I find her on the Twitter many many years later.
Gove got the chop, which is mildly cheering, because he wantonly ground the education system into the ground. But you can still slap him for free, if you wish.
A stop motion trailer by Jim Batt for the supernatural thriller The String Diaries.
Been having a terrible time with the render farm and Maya, had the last PC die loudly in my face and decided to upgrade to Mavericks and Maya 2015, (with one of those new Mac Pro vase things supplied by my company). Anyways things are moving forward but still having a touch of trouble with hanging renders on the network. Getting a man to look at it, etc.
Friend and former colleague Jonathan Doe has, bold as brass, starting uploading his “sketches” to the twitter. Follow him.
Japanese childrens books that feature cut out shapes for the reader to cast as shadows to help tell the story:
Source here.
Fell in love with this when I heard it on the radio the other day:
Lord Josh Homme (above), made a lovley program for the First Time on 6Music, and perfectly so ended the show with this tune:
(I kind of occasionally co-curate a Rockabilly tumblr over there, btw).
Finally(ish). Andy Serkis being generally awesome on a podcast with the Nerdist people. I think a lot of what he has said about Mocap and animation and acting has been taken out of context in the past (particularly by me), the man is an artist and a visionary and any talk, inspired by work he has done, of either animation, or actors not being needed in the future, is largely conducted by idiots. Anyways enjoy.
Okey doke. That’s it. Children begin the (not as long as I remember) school holidays today, hopefully it will bring bigs things for us all. In a good way obvs.
Perhaps you could see your way to doing this.
Independent Immersive Cardboard
So I look at the date on the last post like this and just wade through my social media posts to put down anything of any particular note here, like a searchable back up, similar to what Scobletrousers talks about here.
The idea of an independent web is becoming increasingly vital I think, it takes effort, and does not come naturally to most. This blog is not currently self-hosted, but should be and I plan on making it so as soon as I can justify the cost. I chose WordPress for this because I get the impression it is portable as and when one is ready.
The recent controversy over the experiments Facebook was doing with peoples streams is a great example of why indieweb is so important. I have always found Facebook to be emotionally manipulative, like a bad Spielberg film. It’s taken some time, self-confidence building and some shedding of giving a **** for me to start using it in a way that is useful and constructive, and I use it because so many people I know do and I would lose contact with them if I didn’t. This does sound bizarre when you write it down, but it’s as true for many other people as it is for me.
It was always a platform designed for young students to show off, that is what it is based on.
Here’s some Robert Breer.
It goes Areer, Breer, Creer, Dreer, Ereer, Freer, then me, Greer.
Mr Breer came to do a talk at my college when I was a student it’s not difficult to see the influence of his thinking on things like the Animated Journal.
It’s a beautiful summer (so far), we bought a new tent and spent a night in the garden. Adventures soon hopefully.
I’m still loving Photo Blender.
Eli Wallach died. Remembering this as cinema.
My friend Hugh Cowling (awesome), who worked on the forthcoming Poets of the Sommes animations, told me about this beautiful little piece of stop frame.
I share a lot of stuff like this on my Tumblr, it is the form of social media internet I feel most comfortable with, most unselfconscious, if you like, I’ve been on there since early 2008, and I don’t think there’s been many days since I haven’t reblogged something.
This is taking a lot longer than I expected, I should do these more often so they’re not so rambly.
I previously mentioned my disappointment at the recent Godzilla 2014, so I recently caught up with Pacific Rim, which, although not exactly Citizen Kane, is great fun, it’s pitched perfectly, has a very valid message for the kids, is inclusive and has international characters working together. I found myself laughing and clapping my hands several times. That someone loves those kaiju and the rest of humanity so much, they would make such a film for the rest of us is heart warming.
Here is a quote from the director Guillermo Del Toro (culled from Wikipedia so it must be completely accurate) which illustrates just one simple reason why it’s a superior product to G14.
I don’t want people being crushed. I want the joy that I used to get seeing Godzilla toss a tank without having to think there are guys in the tank… What I think is you could do nothing but echo the moment you’re in. There is a global anxiety about how fragile the status quo is and the safety of citizens, but in my mind—honestly—this film is in another realm. There is no correlation to the real world. There is no fear of a copycat kaiju attack because a kaiju saw it on the news and said, ‘I’m going to destroy Seattle.’ In my case, I’m picking up a tradition. One that started right after World War II and was a coping mechanism, in a way, for Japan to heal the wounds of that war. And it’s integral for a kaiju to rampage in the city.
I think they got the go ahead to make some more, which is great news. Apparently this is unusual because it didn’t do so well in the States but did well elsewhere, and they don’t usually commission a sequel in such circumstances.
Had a go on this thing.
Was lucky to see some immersive theater last week. It was very intense, unlike anything I have experienced. Get into that if you’re wondering what to do with yourself, it’s actually ground breaking. Not sure there can be a lot of money in it though.
OK, I’ve spent twice as long on this as I was expecting. If you actually read this and liked it do something to let me know what you liked. If you didn’t like it, I don’t care, I’m going to keep doing it anyway.
Hit send.
General Items of Interest.
Yes, so I’m still working out what this thing is, I make and think a lot of things and it occurred to me that most of it was either spread out all over the internet on social media sites or scribbled in notebooks never to be see.
I generally won’t be writing about what I am working on at BDH as we have a general policy of not speaking of such things until they are done, for reasons which should be obvious.
I subscribe to several TinyLetters which are lovely because they come across like personal correspondence, so I am going to treat this like that, a letter to an old friend (that’s you by the way), keeping them up to date. But I will keep plugging at this even though I am probably 10 years too late. ( a really good Tiny Letter, by the way is Pocket Lint by the aforementionerd Mary Hamilton, it’s a collection of interesting stuff she finds on t’internet).
I also should point out that these “daybook” posts will probably be a compilation of things stumbled across, written about or mentioned already elsewhere, but the writing things down seems to be suiting me, it’s making cogs turn upstairs, so I will endeovour to press ahead. Having a phone that I can type quite quickly on makes this a lot more feasable, as my time is usually limited.
Twitter started accepting GIF’s although they don’t seem to trigger automatically at the moment. like they would on Tumblr, a lot of the attraction of them for me wat it was a potential short film with no play button, the viwer had watched it as soon as they had looked at it, the play button turns it back into a request thing, but it still good I think. Surprising how old peices of tech just seem to hang in there and gain whole new realms of life in their own way.
There’s this clip of Phil Tippets Stop Motion pre-vis for the kitchen sequence for Jurassic Park (via mappeal). Some of it much more compelling than the final result methinks, but I am old fashioned.
An old animation friend suggested it was better than Harryhausen but I am not sure I am willing to accept that.
(The acting is better though)
Molly Broxton is starting a small press called We Are Hermits. I am working on a little something for the first edition (I can tell you about that because it’s art not work, see?). You can sign up for occasional email updates here.
Did you see the Supermoon?
There were a couple of game announcements at E3 that really caught my attention. One was something called No Man’s Sky, its was made by a small company called, and they made a game that generates procedural worlds for you to explore. Here’s a presentation movie:
And then animation supremo David O’Reilly announced his game Mountain.
“Mountain is a mountain simulator, You play as a mountain, and you get to do all of the things that a mountain does. I’m sure that fulfills all of your darkest and most disgusting fantasies.”
And watch this trailer for Mari Naomi’s book Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories, it’s simple, but awesome:
Ok, that’s it. I could keep going but I need to wash potatoes.
Lisiecki: From Every Angle
This week saw the very first Bristol Proms get underway and on Monday night BDH collaborated with the Bristol Old Vic, the Watershed and a fantastic team of technicians to showcase the extraordinary Jan Lisieki playing Chopin’s Etudes.
Lisieki performed on the stage of the Old Vic surrounded by cameras and scanning equipment, whilst a team of film makers technicians and artists weaved a live visual interpretation of the event, including CGI (by me), scanned versions of Jan and multiple camera angles, which was beamed over to the Watershed as a unique live experience to be enjoyed by a clapping and cheering crowd.
It was a great experience working on a live event with such a great crew, many lessons were learned and hopefully we can do more in the future, there is so much to explore with the live generation of 3D animation and it’s interaction with a real time event.
Here’s some grabs from the days leading up to the concert:
An edited and finessed version of the Watershed feed will be shown on Saturday night on More4 as part of their Piano Night.
Week Off Ramblings
I just ended a week off, coinciding with the half term break. I assembled a basketball hoop, learnt some more Max and generally took it easy.
I took a lot of pictures and made a few image sequences which I posted on G+, they only work on there so I can’t embed.
(One day there’ll be Vine for Android then I can take over the world.)
I have also made some progress on the very slow burning stereoscopic project I’ve been working on for too long.
Rise of the Continents hits BBC2 next weekend, so I might have to put something on here about that.
I just started Remains of the Day, the phrase “mistaking the superficialities for the essence” really stuck with me.
Paul Greer 