The Five Beats of Successful Storytelling & How They Can Help You Land Your Next Job
Author Philip Pullman wrote, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” Whether we’re talking about life, business, or art, storytelling is an essential skill. Maybe even THE most essential skill. But that doesn’t mean it comes naturally. Whether it’s your own personal bio, a summary for your company’s “about” page, or a pitch to a major client, fitting everything important into a concise yet engaging narrative is a challenging task. For example, let’s say you’re a business major-turned-illustrator who’s jumped from finance to freelance and is now seeking an in-house position. Beat 1: The introduction Where you set the scene and tell your readers everything they need to know to understand why what you’re about to say is important. Example: Although my formal education is in business, I’ve always been infatuated with illustration. Beat 2: The inciting incident Beat 3: Raising the stakes Beat 4: The main event Beat 5: The resolution
Designing An Awesome Video Game
One of the most common questions we’re asked is: “How surprised were you at Velocity‘s success?” And the answer is: “Not surprised at all, but relieved.” That is to say that we knew Velocity was an awesome game, and we worked hard to get it noticed. Subsequently we were relieved when it received the attention we knew it deserved. You might ask how could we be so confident? It’s because we focused on all the aspects of game design that are essential to success, putting time in to make them as good as possible whilst spending little time on the aspects that don’t matter so much. In short, we stuck to an essential checklist. Essential Checklist This checklist is our special sauce. So why share our secrets with the world? We believe in sharing knowledge to make the world a better place. Yes there has been a democratisation of game development with free tools and new platforms with lower barriers to entry, but what is the use of having all the gear and no idea? Egg Suck Alert Essence Not Nuance 1. 1.1.
Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips « Aerogramme Writers' Studio
Film critic Catherine Bray interviewed Joss Whedon in 2006 for UK movie magazine Hotdog to find out his top ten screenwriting tips. Catherine has kindly given us permission to reproduce the article here. Photo: Joss Whedon at San Diego Comic Con - courtesy of Gage Skidmore. Joss Whedon is most famous for creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its spin-off Angel and the short-lived but much-loved Firefly series. But the writer and director has also worked unseen as a script doctor on movies ranging from Speed to Toy Story. Here, he shares his tips on the art of screenwriting. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
A programmer's guide to creating art for your game
One man game development studios are becoming more and more common these days and plenty of them are having success. That said, what do you do when that one man doesn't happen to be an artist? This post looks at some of the options the Indie game developer has for creating or acquiring art for their game. Pixel Art Big chunky pixels that look like they jumped out of the 1980s are becoming more and more common and there is a good reason for it. Pixel Art Example: Realm of the Mad God Realm of the Mad God is probably one of the most successful pixel art titles. If I am honest, far too many Indie titles are pixel art based… because it is probably the most accessible art style. Pixel Art Tools At the end of the day, any image manipulation tool that supports a "fat grid" can be used. Additionally a number of Pixel Art focused tools have been developed over the years as well. Pyxel Edit -- in beta, written in Air aseprite -- Allegro Sprite Editor. PD Pro -- commercial software. Tutorials Voxels Rez
A Brief History of Children's Picturebooks and the Art of Visual Storytelling
by Maria Popova From cave paintings to Maurice Sendak, or what modern ebooks can learn from mid-century design icons. Back in the fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci made the following remark about visual storytelling: And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. Finished artwork for Ajubel's Robinson Crusoe. From very early on, we both intuit and learn the language of pictorial representation, and most modern adults, the picturebook was our first dictionary of this visual vocabulary. Though pictorial storytelling dates back to the earliest cave wall paintings, the true picturebook harks back to a mere 130 years ago, when artist and illustrator Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) first began to elevate the image into a storytelling vehicle rather than mere decoration for text. Caldecott’s work heralds the beginning of the modern picture book. (Sound familiar?) So where is this ever-evolving medium headed? Share on Tumblr
How Android Tablets have Surpassed the Apple Legacy
Global branded tablet shipments reached 36.2 million units in Q2 2013 — that’s up by 47% from Q2 2012, according to the latest study by Strategy Analytics. Apple’s market shared dipped to its lower figure ever as it faced strong challenges from the Android ecosystem — and several vendors, like Asus, Google, Amazon and Samsung together with a thriving White-Box community, are starting to make steady progress. via Strategy Analytics Like this: Like Loading... Tags: android, apple, Google, mobile, tablet, trends About David H Deans Principal Consultant and Founder of GeoActive Group USA - - follow @dhdeans
DEVHRmx : Tutorial: Software para Game...
gdevnet : Open Source and the Gaming...
McFunkypants : A great listing of #html5...
Bob Marsh on Motivating Employees with Competition
How does Bob Marsh Motivate Sales Teams with Competition? The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every week. Join us and have all of your gamification questions answered by these experts. Be sure to catch our next episode this Thursday, August 1 at 1PM ET/1800 GMT, where we feature Naureen Meraj, Senior Global Director, Gamification & Strategic Engagement at NTT Data. Remember you can participate in the show if you sign-in and RSVP! In this week’s episode, Gabe and Bob discuss the theory behind motivating sales teams with gamification mechanics. Check out LevelEleven to learn more about their Salesforce offerings and be sure to follow Bob on Twitter at @BobMarsh5 Be sure to check out next week’s episode on Thursday at 1PM ET. Join us at GSummit 2014 in San Francisco this June 10-13 to learn how your company can "Recapture User Engagement." Save $150 on your ticket by using code GBLOG14 at checkout!
How video games teach us to escape failure
Failure is an integral and unpleasant part of playing video games, but "good" games give players a "fair chance" to succeed that they might not have in the real world, assistant professor at the New York University Game Center Jesper Juul argues in an essay printed in Salon. In an excerpt from "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games," Juul begins with anecdotes about frustration of failing in Patapon and succeeding too easily in Meteos. "I dislike failing in games, but I dislike not failing even more," Juul wrote. "There are numerous ways to explain this contradiction, and I will discuss many of them in this book. But let us first consider the strangeness of the situation: Every day, hundreds of millions of people around the world play video games, and most of them will experience failure while playing. He calls this process, in which we dislike failure but seek out video games where we're sure to fail, the "paradox of failure."
daverage : Cardboard Edison - Meaningful...
augustohp : Essential Math for Game...
