“Standing on The Shoulders of Giants” was a term I had not heard before and refers to the groundwork laid for us by various open source platforms, and how we are not alone in achieving ideas or solutions.

Look outward and use the tools that already exist, and if possible write bridges or send messages between them.

If you can’t predict something it’s interesting.

Humor in your projects will always evoke a good sense from your user and win the crowd over.

Get paid for your creative ideas, not for reselling 1’s and 0’s or open-source.

Contribute to open-source as a means to learn and engage with other developers.

Perfection or achievement can be in the failure of something.

For new interactions: user feedback, especially sound, will make or break your product.

Art && Code was inspirational in so many ways  and I know that it will influence my personal work and my projects at Helios for a long time to come. Thank you CMU, Golan Levin, and Microsoft for sponsoring such a great , rare event.

While our time alocated for sound was very slim I was able to get some great sounds together for a background track and some key sound effects for our piece. For all the sound I used Audacity with GarageBand, mostly because it’s what I am most familiar with and I knew that I would have to use some MIDI instrument tracks. Audacity was used to reverse certain loops and then to re import those back into Garageband. The cool thing about XNA + Sound is that I was able to throw in the angle of where the sound was originated in-game to give is a more immersive and realistic feel.

The background track was the most crucial. One: how do I create something that wouldn’t drive us or our users insane? Two: how did we want to convey our game? All of  our reference had been on RTS pc games which used a very industrial sound to convey urgency and science fiction. Our game was more light-hearted and would be displayed to all age groups. For inspiration I mainly pulled from Command + Conquer II sound track and Katamari Damacy. The happiness of Katamari proved a good counterpoint to the harshness or Command + Conquer II. I also listened to some of the DJ’s I admire for their music tracks mainly: Deadmau5.

Have a listen: Background Music Track

For sound effects these were slightly more fun having only a few seconds to play with to really convey something that didn’t sound like a garageband preset.

The user’s character had an electrical attack that was triggered in game, I wanted to include a surging, the aftershock, and also the cry of the enemy in relation to the shock.

Have a listen: Avatar Attack

Avatar Die

When the user’s character dies it does this sort of unravel and then explosion of parts. I tried to combine as many bone-breaks, body hits, and other shatters I could along the build up before it resolves with a nice low concussion blow.

Have a listen: Avatar Die

Shield Powerup!

The user’s avatar was able to temporarily gain special power in-game. In addition to changing the avatars physical appearence sound was of great help. In this sound I wanted a build-up that was somewhat dissonant with a sharp resolution and echo to follow.

Have a listen: Shield Powerup

Speed Boost!

The user’s avatar could also gain a short temporary speed boost. I wanted something similar to the Doppler effect when a car drives by: quick abrupt build and a sudden resolution accompanied with an echo.

Have a listen: Speed Powerup

I am by no means an expert, but I did have some fun making these together for our installation and the feedback was good from both other presenters and the team as a whole.

Visualizing Ideas

Photo Montage

For this picture I combined cubism with photography. I extruded the cubes of each of their portraits based on their relative distance to the camera: accentuating the z-depth. The subjects of this photo were my two band mates Roger Lane and Seppi and we had a blast shooting all sorts of ridiculous poses before coming up with some usable shots.

Panoramas

Every Year New Media Club has an annual apple picking event at a local apple orchard. The owner let me come onto the grounds before opening so I could get some nice unobstructed shots. Shooting at around 5:30AM also gave some great effects with light rays breaking on branches and the dew-drops still on the leaves.

This road panorama was also taken at the orchard. In retrospect the scene was in the shade and a bit darker than I would have wanted. Taking the panorama in the sun and positioning myself so that they entire road across the image would have made this more successful.

I am by no means a photographer, but after playing with it a little more I think I’ll invest in a camera in the near future hopefully something that records HD video too.