Ollie Clarke's Journal: First post! (its going to be a long one)

Welcome to my blog! I've had a lot of ideas to do with games development clanging around in my head lately and I will be using this blog as a way of documenting them into a workable order.

First off, a warning, this blog will be full of way out ideas that may come across as pretentious, meandering and, to be honest, a bit arty farty.

But you know what? Screw it, I really want to do this, I feel I have to do this. So please humour me as I go through some pretty odd ball posts trying to get these ideas into focus.

There will be ideas expressed that refer to film makers, the use of sound and music in games, stealing ideas from different art styles, management methods and lots and lots of predev. Its going to be broad, reach far and reach wide with the constant aim of working out how to make better games. First up:

Invincible Tiger is complete!

Im so so pleased to be able to say Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao has been completed and available to download on 360 and PSN (US only as of writing, EU coming soon). It was a very long journey and Im so proud of the team :

360:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410982/

PSN:

http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Store/20254

A great many lessons we learned and these lessons should be remembered and I'm in the process of writing a blog post to document some of them.

The next project

So! With many of these lessons fresh in my mind, what to do next?

Start a new project of course! One of the lessons learned is to make projects smaller. This way I can try ideas out and get feedback more quickly. I've already got an idea for a project:

The working Title of this new project is colourfully entitled :

Abstract No.1 (told you this was going to be odd)

I've been reading a bit of “understanding comics” by Scott McCloud again. The section on images creating feelings through images has caught my imagination.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X

With this in mind I've been looking at a bit of Abstract art on the web and trying to work out how they make me feel. What places do they take me too. It raised a couple of questions in my mind.

1 What if images like these were tied to music and the game progressed in time with the music? Almost as if the game were edited to music. Would it work? I want to find out.

2 What if an avatar were exploring the images almost as if they were becoming an extension of the players self? The players mind may become transferred to the image. Again, I'm referring to chapter 2 – the vocabulary section in the book Understanding Comics. The part that shows how when driving the car becomes an extension of us. I want to find out.

2001

To go off on a slight tangent for a moment. Do you remember that famous scene in 2001 where the spaceship is docking with the space station? The part where Kubrick used Johan Strauss II' On the Blue Danube.

Here's a Spotify link:

http://open.spotify.com/track/4EInsYD17L0w7jXY9PMSUS

One of the main reasons the scene is all the more powerful is because he edited the sequence to the music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_(film)#Music

Here's what the man himself had to say:

"I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to „explain"

Have a look at the sequence here (starting with one of the greatest cuts of all time;):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAWszeZtNg

I want to try something similar and see what the effect is like in a game context. The first thing to do is pick the music, more in the next post.

Abstract Art

In the meantime here's some links to some abstract art that's got me wondering :

Kenneth Noland

http://www.kennethnoland.com/

Check out the weird jazz, normally I hate music on websites but this kinda gets me

Clyfford Still

http://www.albrightknox.org/ArtStart/Still_t.html

I love the education idea at the bottom and will try this out, might make a good blog post

Hans Hofmann

http://www.hanshofmann.net/art/art.html

Amongst many things he explored how some colours appear to be closer, some appear to be further away, he also said "the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

Ad Reinhardt

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=12353&searchid=13455&tabview=image

Check the image linked above out. See nothing right? The subtleties in this painting are lost in this reproduction, that was his plan all along.

he said “Art is too serious to be taken seriously. “ I like that.

Hans Hartung

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=Fx7&resnum=0&q=hans%20hartung&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1251&page=1

I like the feeling of movement in this guys pictures. To me it feels like natural movement without looking at all natural.

Morris Louis

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1527&page=1

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=morris%20louis&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

I love colour, therefore I love Morris Louis