12/01/11

I think it’s because I’m drawn to order, pattern, texture and organization. Downtown Chicago is full of those things. After the fire they rebuilt the city on a north/south east/west grid creating strong x/y axis and the skyscrapers create a strong z space. Within that space everything is divided up into smaller grids with glass, concrete and steel, formed, cut, sculpted and stacked into each space. Add to that the fact that the midwest is so flat and everything starts to turn into your own live lego set… in your head. You don’t really have that with the same scale in San Francisco and certainly not in Hawaii. I have my phone out most days on my walk to the bus snapping pictures, here are a few I especially like.

9/23/11

But as to not be a total downer. Here is a list of 12 games I’ve probably literally spent several days playing apiece and have enjoyed more than Angry Birds. In no particular order.

1. The Creeps. I love tower defense games. Anything that lets you upgrade and zap baddies is my kind of game. This is a set path tower game with oh so much charm. I made the mistake of introducing this gem to my nephews and now whenever I see them they ask if they can play it on my phone. I’ve gotten a perfect on every level on hard.

2. Solomon’s Keep. A dungeon crawler rpg. Really nice particle effects. Again anything that lets you level up a character and shoot fireballs or lightning bolts at zombies is gold in my book. Bonus for having items you can equip to affect your stats. I’ve beaten it several times on demigod.

3. Jangle. This is 5 round competitive words with friends/scrabble. It’s timed, always an even match and hard to cheat at.

4. Homerun Battle 3D. So much fun. There’s skill in hitting the ball just right, with combos, it’s competitive against real people across the globe and you can level up your character through different items and equipment. A lot of win right here.

5. GodFinger. I got hooked on this when borrowing work’s ipad for a week. Then I didn’t play for the longest time, then they came out with an iphone version and I picked it back up. So much charm, you have little worker dudes who earn gold for you that you can use to build stuff for your little worker dudes. It can be a bit of a grinder but it’s rewarding when you save up and can finally buy that ninja dojo, or pirate tavern, or dragon tower, or…

6. GeoDefense Swarm. Another tower defense game. With this one the baddies don’t have a set path and you can use your towers to build the path they take. Everything upgrades and there are some really tough levels. Nice particle effects and flashy line graphics. I like.

7. FieldRunners. This was the first tower defense game I got and when I realized the iphone was great for gaming. This genre was probably started by warcraft 3 and it’s online multiplayer, so influential. Really nice stylized cartoon graphics and is a lot of fun to play. Have beaten every level on every setting. I haven’t played it in a few years but can’t delete it.

8. Death Rally. A racer with different tracks and game challenges. Nice upgrades, nice 3d graphics, nice achievements and it can be quite challenging as well.

9. Crazy John. A dual stick shoot with fun upgrades and nicely done pixel graphics. You can get a mech to mow down the zombies, upgrade to a flamethrower, among a number of other great touches. Lots of pixel gore and creepy crawlies. The story can get a bit repetitive doing the same missions over and over again but I’m not playing it for the story.

10. Bubble Burst. This is basically snood but with nicer graphics and a few other twists. Nice touch controls.

11. Around the World in 80 Days. I thought this was just a bejeweled clone when I first started playing it. But it’s so much more. There is actually a point to making matches and strategy you have to employ to win each level. The story helps move it along too and didn’t seem too tacked on. A lot of nice touches.

12. 1945 Air Strike. I’ve played a number of these top down scrolling shooters and this was one of the better ones. The controls are just right, there’s upgrades, the graphics are nice, explosions, challenge and a story that moves it along.

That’s my list of twelve games I’ve enjoyed that happen to be on my phone right now that I’ve played through many a bus ride, plane trip or girlfriend department store shopping trip to pass the time. I think they’re all better than angry birds but you can disagree. Also honorable mentions to Yahtzee Adventures, Dungeon Hunter, Hero of Sparta and Inotia 2.

9/16/11

I think I’m a pretty good designer. I know about grid systems, I’m a master of photoshop layer effects and the illustrator pathfinder palette. I know type and layout. I took many classes about them in school. I have years of experience designing different stuff. Stickers, banners, billboards, collateral, interfaces… I’m one of the better designers I’ve met if I do say so myself. With great technical and unquantifiable skills. There. That’s enough puffery. But if you don’t talk yourself up a bit who else is going to do it? It’s a dog eat dog world my friend.

I was the art director on all my projects. That’s why they’re in my portfolio. Sometimes other art directors contributed work to the project, especially some of the larger sites, but I was involved all the way through from concept to completion of everything in my portfolio. I just didn’t tag everything “art director” because it seemed it should be a given. It’s right up there next to my name (a bit tiny though, some people have suggested I make it larger, but I think it’s fine.).

The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, whose first cast, of 1902, is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris; there are some twenty other original castings as well as various other versions, studies, and posthumous castings. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is often used to represent philosophy. source: wikipedia

Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955. He meets his future-parents in high school and accidentally attracts his future mother’s romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents-to-be to fall in love, and with the help of scientist Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, he must find a way to return to 1985.

The first hardware revision, the Lisa 2, released in January 1984 and was priced between $3,495 and $5,495 US. It was much less expensive than the original model and dropped the Twiggy floppy drives in favor of a single 400k Sony microfloppy. It was possible to purchase the Lisa 2 with as little as 512k RAM. source: wikipedia

The Rubik’s Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the “Magic Cube”, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold byIdeal Toy Corp. in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world’s top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world’s best-selling toy.
source: wikipedia

I’m working with the developer to get graphics loaded in the app now through xcode.

9/7/11