Sunday 14 November 2010

Nerdgasm . . . Burlesque Star Wars

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this.

burlesque version of star wars.



It goes without saying that if boba fett had been a woman who took off her clothes instead of just falling into the Sarlacc, all of our childhoods would have gone in a completely different direction . . .

Thursday 11 November 2010

Jet Set Radio Future

Of all the games I've played over the years, there's one that always pops up in my memory as being one of the best I've ever played. It was a not so well known game based on semi-futuristic Japanese roller blading graffiti gangs.

Yeah, it's a crazy theme, but it's pretty awesome. It was a franchise on the Dreamcast and the Xbox and one of the earliest cel shaded games. The art style in the game is awesome, it's a stylized rendition of a near future Tokyo where your aim is to spray paint tag over other gangs' graffiti and take down evil corporations through the power of physics defying grinds and stunts coupled with defeating armed soliders using only spraypaint.


The movement was slick and fun . . . the soundtrack included Mike D from the Beastie Boys along with a whole bunch of J-Hip Hop inspired tracks. The suburbs and themed gangs look ultra stylized and cool and I always remember it with such fondness . . .

I think it might be time to brush the dust off the old Xbox and see if this game still runs . . . I can see myself buying an Xbox 360 just to play this one game in backwards compatibility mode . . .

Monday 8 November 2010

Trailer from Freshly Squeezed

A little while back I worked on a production called Freshly Squeezed, a theatrical project involving multiple up and coming artists and a collaborative artistic process.

Along with the workshops and the show itself, we had a team of media students following us around and basically documenting the entire process. They've been hard at work compiling and editing that footage and have released a first trailer.

Check it out . . .

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Counter Intuitive Strategies that win

Someone recently brought up an article about strategies in Starcraft 2, mainly using AI algorithms to determine optimum build orders for efficient production of units . . . and it was interesting because one of the best strategies the algorithms (they used Genetic Algorithms) came up with was something that was counter intuitive to the conventions that most players agree are the best ways to build efficiently in early game.

Here's the link:

http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-find-starcraft-2-build-orders/

The discussion lead on to an awesome article about using unconventional strategies in David vs Goliath situations. It was a really interesting and inspiring article, if you have any interest in strategies in gaming or sport etc, you should definitely check this out:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all