Emulator Art and Kondoot Games

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I’ve had a pretty full plate.

Recently I started working for Kondoot – A Brisbane-based social video organisation.  And it’s been pretty awesome.  After a few weeks hard work, we’ve released the first batch of games made specifically for the site.  We have released three games so far.  Brainpunch! – A braintwistery colour game, Conducted – A Matching electrically game, and Earth Must Pay – A Space-travelling frustration fueled game.  You should all head on over, create a Kondoot account and give them a try.  ( while you’re at it, feel free to add me and try to beat my scores! )

In other news, I’ve got some art being displayed at Emulator from September 19th to 30th at Bleeding Heart gallery.  It’s a classic gaming inspired event.  I’ve submitted art based around Maniac Mansion.

I actually drew two pieces, but was only allowed to submit one, and so I present to you my alternate illustration (to get you all in the mood) : “Bubble Bobble Cocktail Party”

I’ll be at Emulator on Friday the 23rd for Opening Night.  Come along and say hi! And don’t forget to check out the Kondoot Games!

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Longest Illustration and Space Party

Recently I took part in the ‘Longest Illustration’ Project over at redbubble ( http://www.damienmason.com/files/Longest/index.html ).  Essentially it’s a continued drawing.  Someone starts, then the next person takes the last 150 pixels of the previous image, and uses that as the start of their drawing.  This continues for ever! ( or until people stop posting – theoretically ).

This got me thinking, wouldn’t it be great that instead of the image only moving left to right, it could move up and down ? Or even diagonally ? Unfortunately it would be super confusing for each artist to figure out what they should use as their template, and where they should be drawing.  Then I figured, hey, I’m a programmer, I could write something to manage that!

And so I have!

Check out the AUTOMAGIC LONGEST ILLUSTRATION.

I’ve started it off with a new illustration which I call “Space Party”.  Hopefully people will be able to figure out something great to go around it.

 

Rad.

 

If you’re an artist, or artistic, or think you can contribute in some way shape or form to this growing project, then by all means – head on over and check it out! I’ll be updating the software and fixing bugs as we go – but fingers crossed I’ve squashed most, if not all of them!

Enjoy.

-A.

Copic Markers

Hello,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  A fair bit has happened! I’ve done a new blog entry over at http://iwanttobeapirate.wordpress.com (My gaming blog), I’ve also finished the website design for my games company : http://www.thunderfacegames.com/.  As for illustration work, I’ve done some top secret stuff.  It’s looking pretty good so far, I’m just going to wait until the whole collection is done before releasing them for purchase.

Colours!

I’m really writing this blog entry to show you a neato little app I wrote for myself.  I’ve started using my Copic Markers a little more often now, and It’s sometimes hard to keep track of what I own, what I want to own, and then where they f it within the colour spectrum.  So using a simple little database of colours, I created my little Copic Marker Tool.  Items that are Green I own, Blue I want to own, and Black I don’t own.  Just click on the ‘GUEST’ button.  If you were lucky enough to have the admin password you can change a marker from ‘not owned’ to ‘owned’ in a simple click.  But I don’t want you people going and messing up my system! Get out of it!

Hope you’re all well.  Have a great Australia Day

– A.

One Word Story

I was helping a friend with a universty assignment late last week (constructing Word At A Time stories) when we wondered what it would be like if such a story was crafted online.  So Saturday morning, I sat down and in three hours knocked up my ‘Word At A Time Story‘ website

Sense seems to be absent from this story.

It’s been running since Saturday (bar a little downtime on Sunday), and the story is … interesting to say the least.  You can mouse over a word to see who added it, and all other words attributed to this user (Alternatively, you can mouse over the user to see the same effect).  Feel free to join and add your own words to the story!

If you’d just like to read the story ( Or you’re on a fruity mobile device that can’t view flash ), then you can have a look at this site, which just spits out the story thus far, as well as the Contributing Authors.

Lord Theodore Arachnis III & Prognosis Death

I was recently approached by some of the lovely fellows over at Impromafia to make an interactive internet “thingy” for their wonderful improvised medical comedy “Prognosis: Death!”.  Essentially what they wanted was an interactive music and sound spectacular.  The idea would be that you would have one character in a scene; clicking on this character would cause them to speak a generic line of dialog.  Adding another character would cause the dialog tree to change and the two characters then speak lines of dialog about each other, resulting in a sort of back and forth ‘conversation’.  As well as this character interaction, there was also a ‘musician’ character, who would play the musical themes for the various characters within the scene.

We recorded the dialog, took photos of all the characters, and I set to work building the project in Flash ( actionscript 3 ).  Each character had a bank of ‘generic’ dialog, and then a set of lines they could speak to each of the other characters.  All in all each character had approximately 60 or so individual audio files.  These lines were then chosen at random, and played along with a silly little ‘paper doll’ style animation.  Those who attended the show could then buy the ‘thingy’ on a CD, which also contained music mp3s, medleys, and a video composition; All compliments of the impro music master Kris Anderson.

If you ask nicely, I might show it to you sometime.

All in all it was a fun project to work on, and I already have plans for future Prognosis Death Interactive Thingies should the folks at Impromafia decide to do a 4th series.

In other news, I have finished a new illustration and placed it on RedBubble for those who may wish to take a closer look-see, as well as this, I also took a bit of a leap of faith earlier in the week, and submitted a selection of my art to a gallery I quite respect who are looking for artists’ prints to sell.  I havn’t heard back from them yet, but hopefully I will in the near future.

– A.

Twitbirds : A Simple Twitter Search Visualiser

Those of you who follow me on twitter might have noticed I’ve been showing some pictures of weird fish-bird things lately.  So I thought I might let you all have a look at the early version of my Twitter Search Visualiser.

Twitbirds
(http://tenfiftyfour.com/twitbirds/twitbirds_v1.swf)

‘Twitbirds’ is a very simple twitter search visualiser, originally designed for twitter-centric events (possibly projected onto a wall to encourage users to tweet about hashtagged events).  It searches twitter for a keyword, finds the user that submitted it and creates a bird representing that user.  Birds flock around the screen and symbolise a sort of ‘hive’ of activity revolving around the topic.

In the bottom left corner of the screen you’ll find three boxes.  The first is the progress bar, which tells you how long until the next search refresh.  The second is the search box (fairly self explanatory), and finally the status bar – which merely updates you on how many tweeters have been downloaded.

Progress, Search and Status Bars.

Currently, the program is set to refresh every 30 seconds, and will only return results that have been tweeted since the program was opened.

Twitbirds searches for the keyword entered, find the user who submitted the tweet, then creates a bird-avatar for them.  Birds will flock around the mouse cursor, and happily fly about the screen.

The more they tweet, the larger their bird gets.  If a user doesn’t tweet within 3 minutes of their last tweet, their bird is removed in a puff of feathers.

Currently the app isn’t that optomised, and there is a variety of security sandbox issues ( files being hosted on different URLS cause issues with flash sometimes ) still to be resolved.  However the version that is up now is fairly stable and should be fine for most of you to test! ( if you get an error, just ‘continue’ or ‘dismiss’ it, and see what happens…

Currently, the program is set to refresh every 30 seconds, and will only return results that have been tweeted since the program was opened.  Twitbirds searches for the keyword entered, find the user who submitted the tweet, then creates a bird-avatar for them.  Birds will flock around the mouse cursor, and happily fly about the screen.

A Default Avatar Bird

The more they tweet, the larger their bird gets.  If a user doesn’t tweet within 3 minutes of their last tweet, their bird is removed in a puff of feathers.

Oh, the horror.

Currently the app isn’t that optomised, and there is a variety of security sandbox issues ( files being hosted on different URLS cause issues with flash sometimes ) still to be resolved.  However the version that is up now is fairly stable and should be fine for most of you to test! ( if you get an error, just ‘continue’ or ‘dismiss’ it, and see what happens…

Feel free to post comments or suggestions.  Enjoy.

– a.

Flash Experiments

I often make little flash toys and experiments and they always end up just lying around on my hard drive.  I figured I could make a repository to store all of these little timewasters, and so I have!

The axperiment website is a dumping ground for all my flash experiments.  You can view all the items at : http://www.tenfiftyfour.com/axperiment/ or you can view individual items via their own urls ( ie : http://tenfiftyfour.com/axperiment/experiments/02_mouseshooter/ ).

I’ve also added a cool little timewaster game, which I think I might extend in the near future.  Something to keep me occupied while I’m not working on my rad new upcoming entertainer project ( more on this within a week or so – after I’ve got some work done ).