I’m going to try to do more little blog posts. Here’s a couple posters I found interesting:
http://www.gigposters.com/poster/121368_Vitamins_For_You.html
http://www.gigposters.com/poster/121340_Black_Lips.html
http://www.gigposters.com/poster/121335_Drums_Of_Death.html
Posters
Tagged graphic design, illustration, posters
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Card Game Graphic Design
So when I was at the comic-con this weekend, I discovered a local company that produces a board game called Galactic Empire.
I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, so I can’t comment on the quality of gameplay. But I am put off a little by the visuals of the game, so I thought I’d try an exercise to see what I would change.
First of all, it’s a space-themed game, and rather than create a bunch of illustrations against starry backgrounds, they use basic iconic graphics. That’s an odd choice, and probably the cheaper choice, but I won’t contradict that.
But if you’re going to do minimalism, you’ve got to do it right. Here’s an example card from the game:
The first thing that jumps out at me is all the borders. Are they really necessary?
In Edward Tufte’s book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information he brings up the idea of a data ink ratio. It’s basically a way to make you brutally evaluate each element of your data graphic and eliminate all those that don’t provide any data. Those borders around the text don’t provide any data about the nature of the card, so they should all be erased. I would even erase the ones around the icons. You might try to argue that they help you know which icons line up with which, but it’s a 3×2 grid, there’s not enough distance between any two icons to get confused.
Second of all, I’d move the title of the card to be left-justified, rather than centred. You could still use a centred title if you made the body text fully-justified. I’ll bet the card’s creator also felt something was wrong with combining a centred title with ragged body text, and those borders I erased were added in a misguided attempt to address that.
And having the title text be the same weight as the body text is weak. I’d make the title text bold, maybe even black. It’s still just Arial, so it doesn’t require any new font sets.
So this is what I end up with:
I’m not really a graphic designer, so I made only simple changes, but every change I made is a small improvement. And you’ll spend an hour staring at these cards each time you play the game, so small improvements still have a chance to make a big difference to your experience with the game.
Tagged board games, game design, games, graphic design
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48 hour animation
I kind of forgot to mention, I helped make a 48 hour movie. It was animated.
It’s based on a true story from Manitoba’s history.
Tagged animation, collaboration, I made this, movies
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Colour Schemes
I discovered a cool page that pulls colour schemes out of photos. So I threw a few movie pictures in there to see what it comes up with.
My Blueberry Nights (Yes, two Wong Kar Wai movies. He does interesting stuff with colour.)
Tagged movies
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Time limits and player punishment
So I came across a Flash adventure game called Broken Bone’s Complaint. The art is nice, the animation is good. It has higher production value than most Flash games out there. The basic story is you’re some kid having a nightmare where he’s in some kind of monster world with skeletons and stuff.
The gameplay consists of you clicking on things to pick them up, and then trying to use those items somewhere else to get more things or gain people’s favour, or open a blocked path. If you’ve ever played an adventure game like Monkey Island or something, you’ve got the rough idea.
Also if you’ve played such a game before, you’ve tried to pick up things that weren’t pick-up-able. You’ve tried solutions to problems you thought might work, but didn’t. Now imagine what playing that game would be like if you were punished every time that happened. That’s what someone decided to do in Broken Bone’s Complaint.
Every time you try to do something that doesn’t work, you are not only mildly disappointed, but you lose a life. They don’t show it as losing a life, but they play a sequence of animations of a devil or something sneaking up behind you. Every time try something that doesn’t work, the sequence progresses, and when it reaches the end of the sequence, you lose the game.
The only way I can see this happening is some guy with clout who didn’t play adventure games was all, “But if they can’t die, they’ll just keep exploring until they figure everything out. There’s no challenge, then.” And so he forced them to make a change that essentially punishes the player for exploring.
And since everything else in this game is very well done, this one boneheaded design decision stands out that much more. And for me, this one decision makes the game nearly unplayable.
Tagged games
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Reflections
So, a post on Photoshop Distasters struck me. Not the photo itself, but the responses.
Sandwiched between people valiantly defending home-schooling, I was surprised how many people were commenting, “Oh, you wouldn’t want a distorted and foreshortened reflection of here, it wouldn’t be as good,” or “you wouldn’t be able to see her face if they put a realistic reflection in the puddle.” When it seems quite obvious to me that a realistic reflection in a puddle wouldn’t show her at all.
And similar things have come up before; when shooting a movie, I was getting some glare off a window from a light, so I ask someone to move a light to the left. “Oh, you mean to the right.” I point the direction I want. “But if I move the light to the left, the glare will move to the right.”
Or another Photoshop Disasters example, where I showed the blog to someone, and they were like, “Yeah?” I tell them to look at the shadow. They shake their head. They don’t see it. I point out that stencil of “Wall-E” and the reflection of that stencil are not parallel. “So that’s wrong?” they say.
So I guess I have an above average sense for how reflections work. Sometimes it’s easy to assume that what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to everybody and it takes things like this to wake you up to that.
But back to the puddle reflection. I’m willing to bet the Photoshop guy did know how reflections work, but there was a division of labour thing going on. Let’s say there’s two guys working at this company. Frank meets with the client, and George produces the final work.
Frank and the client meet, Frank pitches his idea:
“Yeah, so there’s this chick in a trench coat flashing these two guys on a bench, and her back’s to the camera, so it’s just like she’d flashing them, right? All you can see is the trench coat and she’s got it pulled wide open, and the two guys look all surprised. But there’s a puddle on the ground, and you can see her reflection in the puddle, and she’s not naked under the trench coat, she’s wearing your product.”
The client says that’s great, signs off on it.
Frank then goes to George, and explains the idea. George goes, “You won’t be able to see her reflection in the puddle. If she’s standing, she’ll be vertical. A puddle will be horizontal. If her back is to the camera, you aren’t going to see her front in the reflection from a horizontal surface.”
So Frank says, “Look, the client already signed off on the idea. The idea-generating stage of our process is over. Now we are in the production stage, and you’re trying to get me to do the first stage all over again because you can’t produce? Just do it. Who cares if it’s realistic or not?”
So George thinks Frank doesn’t consider the implications of what he promises the client, and Frank thinks George is a prima donna. The End.
Tagged photoshop, uncategorized
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Stratacut
Man, this stuff is crazy cool and weird:
http://www.artofthetitle.com/2009/06/01/freaked/
This guy creates animations in clay and then slices the clay open and photographs them. Like, since he just needs to produce a 2D image, he then replicated time through the extra dimension of space. So it’s a kind of unusual way of approaching animation or moving pictures.
I had seen things before where people make images in sculpy or fimo and roll them out tiny so they can make beads out of them. And that’s kind of a similar principle, except they expect all the beads to have roughly the same picture, while this guy comes up with ways to make the picture move as it goes.
And of course, the guy has worked on Sesame Street and movie title sequences, since that’s where all experimental animation ends up.
World champion ball eater
Another animation test for myself. I just wanted to try out different ways of moving this guy’s arms.
Mr. Nervous
So I did a short animation test, with one of those Mr. Mans. I know by normal standards, they’d never hire me to work on their show, and there’s no point in me submitting it. But it was a fun thing to try out. here.
Some of the motions I quite like, except you can barely see them, since I didn’t take the time to put in more tweening frames. Like the bit where his tongue stretches out and then springs into his mouth.
Tagged animation
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Baking bread
Just a quick note. If you are using the Regal Breadmaker, my current hypothesis is that the water goes in first, then you add the flour. Confirmation will have to wait until next time I make bread.
Tagged food, memory aid
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