Posted: February 23rd, 2010 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Personal Projects | Tags: Art In America, Depero Futuristi, ETC, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Performa 09 | No Comments »
Balli Plastici will be presented in Washington DC at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura this coming Friday, February 26th, as part of the Fortunato Depero 50 exhibit.
The project was originally presented at the Museum of Art and Design in New York as part of the Performa 09 festival and has since obtained positive reviews from New York Magazine and the Art in America magazine.
You can learn more about the software we created and used to craft the performance here. You can learn more about the semester-long project here.
Be sure to check it out if you’re in the DC area!
Posted: February 18th, 2010 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Personal Projects | Tags: Art In America, Depero Futuristi, ETC, Performa 09 | No Comments »
My project from last semester, Depero Futuristi, got featured in the Art In America magazine. The review is very positive and highlights our demonstration of the software we developed as the high point of our presentation in New York. Check it out!
Article Scan
Posted: February 8th, 2010 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Design Notes, Game Design | Tags: app store, apple, iphone, mobivery | No Comments »
Today I attended the introduction class to a week-long seminar on iPhone development (one year and half too late, probably) which will be in charge of several representatives of Mobivery, a Barcelona-based mobile content development company which currently has 190 applications in the Apple App Store.
Besides from a very informative fly-through of the whole process of getting an app into the App Store - starting with “you need a Mac” and going all the way to “you can choose from different pricing tiers” - the representative presented us with some data from different case studies taken directly from the apps they have developed and put up for sale or download. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 22nd, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Personal Projects, Uncategorized | Tags: Blaine Gibson, Bob Gurr, Disney, Disney Legends, Harrison Price, IAAPA, Marty Sklar, Rischard Sherman, Walt Disney | No Comments »
The Disney Legends
The IAAPA Attractions Expo held many surprises for me, but none as gratifying and mind-bogglingly amazing as a panel session very aptly titled “Disney Legends: working with Walt”.
The Disney Legends themselves were Marty Sklar (story man), Blaine Gibson (artist), Bob Gurr (mechanical wizard), Richard Sherman (composer) and Harrison “Buzz” Price (numbers man), all sitting side by side and brilliantly moderated by Bob Rogers.
The whole point of the session was for them to share their stories about working with Walt Disney (as in the man, not the company), though of course we were all hoping for them to deviate a little bit into sideplots in order to get the best stories that these men could tell. All of them having helped build what Disney is today, it wasn’t surprising to find them all to be brilliant storytellers and effortless entertainers. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 14th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Design Notes | Tags: Daniel Nelson, thumb sticks | No Comments »
Daniel Nelson, programmer at Neversoft Entertainment, has this to say about the thumb sticks on console controllers:
Few controllers report zero magnitude at their rest position. Each controller reports a different magnitude at rest, and the same controller will report different magnitudes each time it returns to rest. Additionally, different controllers report different maximum magnitudes when pressed fully in a direction, and the same controller will report different maximum magnitudes when pressed in different directions.
He goes on mentioning how you can mitigate this issue by implementing dead zones, but I find it extremely interesting because it’s exactly the sort of problem that we never think about until we encounter it in our designs. Every time we pick up a console controller, we take reliable thumb stick response for granted, but that does not mean that it does not pose a challenge to developers.
Posted: November 24th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Personal Projects | Tags: Depero Futuristi, ETC, Performa 09 | 2 Comments »
The project I’m currently working on, Depero Futuristi, just got featured as one of the best performances of the Performa 09 festival. We presented a digital reimagining of Balli Plastici, a 1918 puppet ballet, followed by a live demo of the software we developed in order to create the video performance. We had close to a hundred people show up and got a very positive reaction.
Read about the project here and here.
Check out the Performa website.
Posted: October 9th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Lee Sheldon, Story | No Comments »
Lee Sheldon stopped by the ETC today and he told us:
Some stories are fit for a Haiku and some for an epic novel
Posted: September 16th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Game Design | Tags: Facebook, Mafia Wars, Microtransactions | No Comments »
- Mafia Wars
People all over were talking about it and, to boot, I was in the process of applying to Zynga for a summer internship so the only logical choice at the moment seemed to be to just go to my Facebook profile and enroll in Mafia Wars. Four months later, with a slightly nostalgic look in my eye, I clicked my last Mafia Wars button. I felt, above all, relieved.
Mafia Wars is defined all over as a glorified spreadsheet. An evil glorified spreadsheet, if I may say so. There’s not much more to it than a messy UI, heavy on the black and yellow, and a lot of stats. Which is, of course, enough to hook me for eternity.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 30th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Game Design | Tags: EA, ETC, Henry Hatsworth, Kyle Gray | No Comments »
I had been wanting to play Henry Hatsworth for a while before I finally got the chance, and so when I did I realized that I had a lot of things to say about it. First I talked a bit about the flow of the game and then I posted a note about its starting screen. After the latter got featured in Gamasutra, I received a surprise email from none other than Kyle Gray himself.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 7th, 2009 | Author: fsouki | Filed under: Design Notes, Game Design | Tags: Game mechanics, Henry Hatsworth, Rhythm Heaven | No Comments »
I have been playing Henry Hatsworth for a while now, and have been somewhat enjoying it, though it definitely has its ups and downs. Something I cannot stand, however, is the starting screen.
Don’t put anything in your game that goes against the player’s wish to play. That’s a good rule to design by. And the very first thing you encounter when you turn Henry Hatsworth on seems to go against that.
It’s a very simple flaw: the start menu is located in the bottom DS screen, the one we are accustomed to interact with using the stylus. But for some reason the screen won’t take stylus input, so you must use the D-pad and buttons no navigate it. It looks like a minor detail, but the game definitely sends some mixed messages by not letting players interact with it in the most intuitive way.
The complete antithesis of this is Rhythm Heaven. That game is all about using the stylus to touch and flick, touch and flick. And the starting screen won’t even let you play them game unless you prove you can flick with the stylus. After you turn it on a little icon appears, prompting you to flick it. Want to play this game? You better learn how to flick!
I find it hard to believe that Henry Hatsworth’s starting screen was playtested much, if at all. True, it’s just a starting screen. But it’s precisely the first thing your players will interact with, so you better take good care of it.
