The Bookmarks Bar : Day Three

Sorry that I didn't post this weekend. I got distracted with homework and this horrible, horrible website. Although despite the fact that it's horrible, it's gotten me thinking about doing storyboarding dissections with video and/or streaming animation and pulling apart some of the acting/timing, but we'll see what happens. I'm fairly certain that Twitch doesn't allow you to stream anything other than games, but it's definitely gotten me thinking about how I can use that kind of format to my advantage. Apparently there's an audience for people watching other people mindlessly playing video games (...hey, sorry, but it's true!), but it'll be a hard sell to get people to discuss story and composition and animation. We can only try and find out.

Anyway, let's make this installment of my bookmarks bar short and sweet.

Hark! A Vagrant!

No doubt that if you've been on the internet for a while, you've come across some of Kate Beaton's historical comics. There's really not much to say about it otherwise except that she's a fantastic illustrator with a sharp sense of humor.

Veer

I keep forgetting that I want to submit stuff to Veer. It's been tough to juggle doing graphic design and illustration (I'm doing more graphic design even though animation and illustration is what I studied and what I'd rather be doing, oy), but I think I'm going to go ahead and submit some stuff later for their site. You can get all sorts of illustrations for projects on this website, and it serves as a great source of artistic inspiration as well.

Digg

I clearly haven't been on Digg in the longest time, because I had to double check that I was on the right website when I clicked the link in my bar. Their layout's changed drastically, but they're still a great source for finding what's popular on the internet.

Well, that's three links for now! Three more are on the way for tomorrow. Still have to do the Cinema Paradiso stuff, actually. I'll probably be uploading that later tonight if I'm not distracted by games and/or sleep and/or animation. Speaking of which, my second AM class ends this week, so I'll be posting my progress reel very, very soon to my other blog.

Also! If you're one of the two people who read this blog (or if you're on Facebook and see this link and read this) why not tell more people about Reinventing The Wheel? At least, please spread the word if you've enjoyed this or let me know what you'd like to see in terms of discussing animation or narrative.

The Art Game Master List

There'll definitely be some discrepancy between what is an art game and what isn't.  I've chosen games that have had interesting and different game mechanics, stories, and that haven't necessarily been created by a large game developer (some have, though). You could, in theory, say that almost all games could be elevated to the status of art. However, these are mostly games that urge a player to think cognitively, and that don't necessarily require the strength of excellent hand-eye coordination to complete (in summary, mostly narrative based or experimental in gaming mechanics).

If you have suggestions of games to add, please list them in the comments. Thanks, and happy art gaming!

• Portal
• LSD Dream Emulator
• This Is The Only Level
• Braid
• You Have To Burn The Rope
• Passage
• The Majesty of Colors
• Every Day The Same Dream
• The Company of Myself
• The Great Gatsby The Game
• I Can Hold My Breath Forever
• ImmorTall
• Yume Nikki
• Gray
• Gravitation
• Digital: A Love Story
• Journey
• Covetous (slightly nightmare fuel-y, play with caution)
• Flower
• flOw
• Rez
• I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

The Bookmarks Bar : Day Two

Let's see... today there are a lot of unnecessary links that I don't use anymore. My laundry webpage, CTA trip planner (so I could figure out which buses I needed to take), the take-out service I used to get food from when I was working long nights in the studio, Pandora for when I needed new music to listen to while in the studio, American Airlines so I could schedule plans to fly home (maybe while I was in the studio)... and, of course:

CG Textures

Everyone pretty much knows about this website. I think it's one of the first things that pops up when you actually google for textures to use on projects. It's not so bad, though, although nowadays I have a huge depository of textures from billions of other websites at my disposal. Nevertheless, it's a good starting point.

SymbolAssist

I think this is just a post talking about SymbolAssist, but it's a bookmark that I still use when I want to use a cute little symbol in my writing. ❀

MouseBits

Following up from posting about Widen Your World yesterday, here's MouseBits. While I said I like Disney World park history, there are hundreds of other people out there who really love Disney World/Land park history, and this whole website collects torrents of things from the park. Songs, videos, photos, 3D mock-ups of rides, narrations, you name it. Whatever you want, you can download here. I'm sure some of it shouldn't actually be downloaded, but there are a lot of nifty documentaries people have created about old attractions, plus lots of other rare Disney things that you could never find anywhere else.

Tomorrow: day three of my bookmarks bar. Plus! More storyboarding/framing dissections! This time I'm gonna be using Cinema Paradiso and talking about the themes in the movie. After that, I may take the time to post my work from Animation Mentor and do a little bit of studying on that as well.

The Bookmarks Bar : Day One

So I'm been lazy. And complacent. And I haven't been writing about anything that has to do with animation or design or anything. Woe is me. Lackadaisical am I. It's been a mixture of a lack of sleep and a full plate of school projects and work things that have kept me from writing on a regular basis... something that I desperately have to do. I really do have to do it. I have to. Argh.

I figured something that might be interesting for me to do in the meantime to kind of get me off to a running start with writing more often would be to take the time to write about the things that seem important to me. In terms of what I do on the Internet, most of the things that are important to me are stowed away in a special, dare I say revered and holy place, on the bookmarks bar of my browser. ...at least I THINK they're important to me. A quick look to see whether or not they are is probably going to help me figure out just what it is I should focus on, and in the process probably enable the three people who actually ever read this stuff to find some cool new things to bookmark for themselves.

Let's start off at the bottom of my list today.

The first five or so bookmarks are for this blog, LJ, and DA, along with my old school e-mails, which... actually, shouldn't be there anymore. I used to write every single day on LJ, and DA I actually barely ever use, so I think those are going to get deleted once I finish writing this. My old school e-mail login page? Seriously? Why do I even have that on there? I had the link memorized. I haven't used it for years. This just goes to show how many things I actually have on the bar, and at least at ONE time, they were important enough to have on there. Anyway, I digress. Gotta find three things I can actually share.

Widen Your World

 

This website is great. I don't know about the people who read my stuff, but I for one am a huge fan of Disney World history. This is a great website about the old attractions that used to be at Disney World. I've written about how I like futurism before, and some of these old rides had good examples of the style, especially stuff like Horizons. Look at me, using this technical jargon. "Stuff." I'm incredible.

ACM SIGGRAPH

I'm gonna cry. The only reason I had this up here was because I wanted to go to a conference, and look where I am now: cold, alone, and SIGGRAPHless. We'll have to change this, clearly because this was obviously a very important thing that I wanted to do.

PIXLR

I actually use Pixlr at work for getting screencaps (since I don't want to keep hitting Print Screen all of the time). It used to just be Photoshop for your browser, but now they've changed it up and added some new features and things (along with a lot of terrible Instagram-y photo filters).

That's three for today. If I'm good, you'll be seeing at least three more links tomorrow. If I'm not, see you in 2015!