Loads of inspiration

Miguel Tanco



Andrey Gordeev

Sam Weber


Jillian Tamaki


Dave Prosser

Flying Pizza Kitty

Crappy Cat


Mark Verhaagen

Kyle Reed


and.... the most beautiful animation

The Little Ninja

I have been a fan of Ninjai: The Little Ninja for a long time. I think that the beautiful graphics add to the storybook feel of the series.

Technical Stuff

I found this great little article on making indie games for those with less technical know how.

In an equally cool find, this chart on the wild web of gaming from Wired is pretty interesting. I like how there appear to be "gateway" games that lead you into totally different realms of thought. Sort of like how Lost has lead me to several other dorky sci fi adventures.

An Inspiring Game: Blueberry Garden

I recently discovered the game Blueberry Garden. The game is really beautiful and whimsical. It is an artful game that has a hand drawn style that I truly appreciate.

In terms of how this relates to my project- I think that I am interested in the kind of navigation that it employs as well as style. Conceptually, I don't want my game to something of pure whimsy, I want it to have a true social message.

Concept for thesis

I am in the initial stages of coming up with a concept for my thesis.
Domains: games, informal education, illustration, animation,and the environment
Design Questions: - How can I create a simple interactive experience to explore the topic of maintaining virgin lands?
- How can I use a fictional narrative to investigate the issues of land preservation?
- How can I incorporate a "choose your own adventure" theme into a simple narrative?

Concept: My current concept is to create a flash point and click game in which the user is asked to help a character navigate through a fictional world using Rube Goldberg type logic. Initially the world is full of lush lands filled with an assortment of creatures, however as the player navigates through the world, based on their choices it becomes increasingly more industrialized and so the story becomes a quest to save the virgin land from extinction. The industrialized world boxes the player in and ultimately gives them less choices to make in terms of using the natural resources and the land.

Questions:
1. How do I create a complex multi-leveled narrative?
2. How do I make this game dynamic?
3. Should I try to make this multi-player?
4. Should I try to incorporate real time data?
5. Do I stick to creating a multi-tiered narrative?
6. I don't even want to think about the action scripting involved.

Precedents:
- The Polyphonic Spree: Quest for the Rest

- Myst

- Interactive Fiction

- Tree Fiction (choose your own adventure)
-Dystopia: 1984, Farenheit 451, Brave New World
- Memento
- Zirk I



Resources to Investigate:

-Complexity in Narrative (Stephen Johnson)
-Cave of Time (Edward Packard)
-The Throne of Zeus
-The 39 Clues
-House of Leaves
-Rashoman
-The Game
-Paris, Je T'aime

Dance Test

For the final-- just imagine these guys being rabbi's ... with toupee's.


Dance Pencil Test from Jess Klein on Vimeo.

Inside the Wolf

Inside the Wolf from Jess Klein on Vimeo.

From the first day of shooting on the set of Little Red.

This is the scene when Red and the Grandma are eaten up by the wolf.

Yaks

Some work for a potential project- any interest?

Final Title Sequence

I can't remember if I posted this, but here is a little project that I did in Flash. It is a title sequence for my life. I still need to clean up the pacing, but I thought I'd just get this up here to remind myself where I came from on this project. The whole process for this piece was nice- illustrations, animatics, and this, which is actually more of an enhanced animatic, but if I had more time I would fix up little movements here and there.

Updated Storyboards

Notes on Sound from Film Art Reading

- elusiveness accounts for part of the power of sound effect
- strong effects yet unnoticeable

sound effects: speech, music, noise
pitch: high and low of sound vibrations

rhythm: the beat pulse, tempo or pace (includes speech)
Timbre: the colour or tone quality f sound

sound mixing: used to guide the viewers attention
ex. ping pong game

dialogue overlap masks edit

external diegetic sound: sound outside of the character
internal diegetic sound: only from the mind of character (music or dialogue)

mickey mousing

Crabs

Here are some crabs that I made for a potential client. They wanted to see two different styles so here is one that is more digital and another that was done in ink and gouache.

Train Ride as Exploration of Character in times of Uncertainty

Lightness

Social Documentary Project

Bladerunner- response paper

At first glance I was interested in how this movie was an exploration on how the world is dealing with the humanizing of technology and that particular topic was very intriguing to me because it made me consider all of these abstract thoughts about how far will technology be allowed to venture in terms of emotional and intellectual cloning, artificial intelligence, abnormal psychology, interconnectivity and reproductive rights. All of these topics are extremely interesting and the film creates such a unique backdrop for all of these social concepts by having at its core, a compelling story about a bounty hunter who becomes empathetic for his targets and in turn lives in an isolated ‘outsider’ world where he casually interacts with every party involved. Slowly I became really mesmerized by how the film’s stylistic elements played into the thematic messages and narrative. While the film is clearly set in the future, the world that we see is a dark, densely textured, overpopulated and dirty place. I felt that the world that we are presented evoked feelings of nostalgia despite the fact that this is the future- modernity and so that contradiction informed my entire viewing of the film in that I felt like the problem of identifying and
“retiring” genetically engineered humans was an ongoing concern. Every scene was oversaturated with people, text, and sound. This juxtaposition of elements that are extremely contrasting allowed the viewer to realize that the entire film was about contradictions and sorting out who is the “other” by the deductive process of comparison. I found myself question what makes someone human because in the film every character looked, acted and bled like a human. The film suggested that emotions and feelings is what makes someone a human. So then, if emotional capacity is what makes someone a human, and throughout the movie the bounty hunter is killing these “replicants”- these computers with evolving emotions, what is really being said? Is this a conversation about cloning? Or about corporate corruption? Mortality? (this was beautifully suggested in the scene where a replicant plays a human in chess). I’m not so sure, maybe it is a conversation about everything. I feel like the central theme of this film is to question humanity via empathy. That theme is then underscored by all of these micro-themes that build this tapestry of interesting and complicated characters. The characters visually look like they came right out of a 1940 pulp fiction novel. The women are delicate but vixens, the men are physical yet softspoken. But again, we are in the future! So why was that choice made? Was it made because the viewer would recognize these tropes and empathize with every character and then in turn see that the line between what is initially presented as the truth in the film is blurred? I believe so, I think that in the same way that some characters are the makers of “puppets,” “toys” and “replicants”, other characters are the puppets, toys and replicants and if anything, the film allows the viewer to ask questions about the world around them that is created for them and in turn, what role, abilities and power they have to influence that world. On a personal note, I love how the style of the film took the narrative to a completely higher level. I really would like to be able to play with unexpected style choices in my work. So often I feel like my work deals with getting a specific message across that I lose my focus on how it’s done. I know that at the core, a strong concept is important, but I am really becoming more interested in how I communicate my message. Bladerunner was surprisingly beautiful and I think those elements of the movie moved me to question the larger social issues that much more.

It's really snowing out here in Queens!

This is a really nicely done grafitti area that you can only see coming on the A train to/ from Rock Park to Ozone Park area. It's right by that Bowling Alley (high above in the sky). My window had tons of ice on it today. There were MTA people cleaning off the ice. I've never seen so many MTA people on the Rockaway commute.



some scenic photos
when the train stopped at the Rockaway Park station- they wouldn't open the doors for 25 minutes. I sat alone looking at the wet floors and listening to the whistling of the window. It was beautiful and sort of lonesome all at once.




The station. Covered in 3ft of snow today. (at 8am)!

at the bus stop- waiting with a group of 20 something people for about 25 minutes.

Making My Puppet

Some NY Street Art

I saw these a few months back but forgot to take them off the camera. I like the juxtaposition of color, type and naughty image.

Expression and Movement

Characters:

a)age young-adult/young-adult
b)sex male/female
c)type of movement to mimic: penguin/snake/penguin/snake
d)adjective adventurous/timid
e)backstory:
1. whats going on in the characters mind? life is boring/ life is great
2. whats going on while they are interacting with the ball? this is awesome/we are gonna die
3. whats going on after they interacting with the ball? well that was fun/ thank god its gone.