I thought that now might be a good time to touch bases with my site - as it’s already half way past January and have not touched it since October.
A quick retrospect of 2009 finds me happy to leave behind a year that took away my father and gave me six months of unemployment where it’s easy to second guess your worth. On the other hand, I did meet some fantastic people and half way through I found a job that has kept me entertained and consistently learning.
That’s how these things go though. Amazing stellar years are rare as they are usually balanced out with somber occasions.
My biggest challenge was working with a larger team than I’m used to… 20+ people. The last studio I was at had five (seven at one point with interns) - far less room for game changing (pun intended) plans that have to be adjusted for on the fly.
I’ve really enjoyed the take-a-ways of working in a sports world. There are a lot of great things that can be done and I’d like to see this envelope pushed even more after the site re launches (hoping that people are inspired). After all, I don’t have a problem with competition. I think it’ll be good for the site and I like when people can improve my ideas.
As for what I want out of 2010, I want to continue down my path of learning incredible things and meeting incredible people. I hope to build stronger relationships and have more sympathy, empathy, and purpose in my designs. Perhaps I’ll take on some new projects that make use of this insane noggin attached to my neck. I fell out of drawing near the end of 2009 so I’d like to pick that up again.
I had “update personal site” on that list but I seem to have accomplished that tonight. I have a new template now. Credit for that is at the bottom of this page. The logo at the top, however, is mine. If you’ve received one of my business cards, you’ll notice it looks very familiar.
But on that note, my eyes are starting to feel like a bloodhound’s… so I sign off for now with a promise that the next update will come sooner than the last.
-Telka!
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
16.1.10
10.7.09
Post Posting Break
The break was not intentional... I just happened to have a lot of stuff going on and neglected to let the world know of it through this site.
To save everyone from the details and skip to the now, I've started up an online class on Game Design (focus on non-digital) with 1400 other people.
http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/
I came up with this idea for the first challenge and thought I would share it.
------------------------------
Title: Ambulance Dogs (Code name: Doggie Bowser M.D.)
Players: 2-4
Time: 20-30 minutes (longer if drunk)
What you need to play it now: Four different tokens of any type, three decks of playing cards
Little backstory to put behind the cards: Ambulance dogs were used to find wounded soldiers in the trenches during WWI. The most popular used were Rottweilers, German Shepards, Labradors, and Bloodhounds (the four tokens). Black cards are for soldiers that the dogs made it to in time. Red ones are soldiers that have already passed on and are therefore lost. On that note...
Objective: Find the most savable soldiers.
Win Condition: Have the most saved soldiers (black cards).
Game over: When you have run out of cards. (Right now I have played around with five rounds - thus the number of cards I have given. First time around I had four decks involved. One play through nipped that in the bud quickly.)
Set up: Open up two of the decks and remove the Jokers. With the third deck you'll need to remove the Kings, Queens, Jacks, Aces, and 10's. You'll want to keep one Joker. You'll want a total of 125 cards total. 62 black cards, 62 red cards, and one Joker. Go ahead and shuffle those bad boys together.
You are going to make a five X five grid with the shuffled cards placed face down.
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
Movement: Once a player is on the board, on their next turn they may move up, down, right, or left unless that space is blank or occupied by another player. When they move to a new spot that has a card, they flip it over and follow the card rules. If all players are unable to move, remaining cards on the table are moved to the discard pile and the "trenches" are rebuilt with fresh cards from the deck.
Let's break for specific card rules.
Originally I threw this together so that players would be moving their tokens flipping over cards and just collecting black and red. That was pretty boring when I sat down with it. So to spice it up, I added some variables.
Black 2-10 Cards - player keeps this card.
Red 2-10 Cards - players place it in the discard pile.
Red K,Q,J Face Card - in addition to the card you flipped, flip over the card to the South automatically. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Black K,Q,J Face Card - in addition to the card you flipped, flip over the card to the North automatically. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
(Feel free to just draw a random arrow if you'd like. Since I didn't want to write on my cards at the time, I just used an actual direction I could keep track of that made sense to all players around the board.)
Aces (any color) - in addition to the card you flipped, player chooses one card to flip that is either up, down, left, or right. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Joker - in addition to the card you flipped, all remaining cards up, down, left, and right are flipped over. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Playtime!
1 - Each player grabs a "dog" token. (Feel free to fight amongst yourselves who wants to be what dog.)
2 - Player who owns the largest dog goes first and from there go clockwise. If no one owns a dog, then who ever is the oldest goes first.
3 - The player then places their token down anywhere on a card on the grid then flips that card over. If it is a black card, then the player keeps it. If it is one of the special cards, then do as instructed above. The token stays on that spot until their next turn.
4 - The next player places their dog down on the spot of their choice and follows number three.
5 - All players will continue until no one can move because of the constraints of the movement rules.
6 - Then it's time to pick up the remaining cards - if there are any - and move them to the discard pile. When the trenches (card grid) needs to be rebuilt, all tokens will stay in the spot they are at.
7 - The player next to go will automatically flip over the card they ended with the last round since the board had been reset.
8 - Lather, rinse, repeat.
9 - When all the cards have been used up out of the deck (there should be five rounds with enough cards for five full grids), the game is over.
10 - The player with the most saved soldiers (black cards in this case) wins.
Goal of what I would like to see accomplished (besides having a good time):
I want to see players being able to not just leave it to chance cards but also use some strategy with their movement to block off other players from collecting soldiers. However, if they really don't want to think about it, they should have just as good of a time.
----------------------------
I'll have more later. Art pieces I had done during my quiet spell on here - and more news at 11.
To save everyone from the details and skip to the now, I've started up an online class on Game Design (focus on non-digital) with 1400 other people.
http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/
I came up with this idea for the first challenge and thought I would share it.
------------------------------
Title: Ambulance Dogs (Code name: Doggie Bowser M.D.)
Players: 2-4
Time: 20-30 minutes (longer if drunk)
What you need to play it now: Four different tokens of any type, three decks of playing cards
Little backstory to put behind the cards: Ambulance dogs were used to find wounded soldiers in the trenches during WWI. The most popular used were Rottweilers, German Shepards, Labradors, and Bloodhounds (the four tokens). Black cards are for soldiers that the dogs made it to in time. Red ones are soldiers that have already passed on and are therefore lost. On that note...
Objective: Find the most savable soldiers.
Win Condition: Have the most saved soldiers (black cards).
Game over: When you have run out of cards. (Right now I have played around with five rounds - thus the number of cards I have given. First time around I had four decks involved. One play through nipped that in the bud quickly.)
Set up: Open up two of the decks and remove the Jokers. With the third deck you'll need to remove the Kings, Queens, Jacks, Aces, and 10's. You'll want to keep one Joker. You'll want a total of 125 cards total. 62 black cards, 62 red cards, and one Joker. Go ahead and shuffle those bad boys together.
You are going to make a five X five grid with the shuffled cards placed face down.
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X
Movement: Once a player is on the board, on their next turn they may move up, down, right, or left unless that space is blank or occupied by another player. When they move to a new spot that has a card, they flip it over and follow the card rules. If all players are unable to move, remaining cards on the table are moved to the discard pile and the "trenches" are rebuilt with fresh cards from the deck.
Let's break for specific card rules.
Originally I threw this together so that players would be moving their tokens flipping over cards and just collecting black and red. That was pretty boring when I sat down with it. So to spice it up, I added some variables.
Black 2-10 Cards - player keeps this card.
Red 2-10 Cards - players place it in the discard pile.
Red K,Q,J Face Card - in addition to the card you flipped, flip over the card to the South automatically. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Black K,Q,J Face Card - in addition to the card you flipped, flip over the card to the North automatically. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
(Feel free to just draw a random arrow if you'd like. Since I didn't want to write on my cards at the time, I just used an actual direction I could keep track of that made sense to all players around the board.)
Aces (any color) - in addition to the card you flipped, player chooses one card to flip that is either up, down, left, or right. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Joker - in addition to the card you flipped, all remaining cards up, down, left, and right are flipped over. Keep any black cards turned over, including face cards.
Playtime!
1 - Each player grabs a "dog" token. (Feel free to fight amongst yourselves who wants to be what dog.)
2 - Player who owns the largest dog goes first and from there go clockwise. If no one owns a dog, then who ever is the oldest goes first.
3 - The player then places their token down anywhere on a card on the grid then flips that card over. If it is a black card, then the player keeps it. If it is one of the special cards, then do as instructed above. The token stays on that spot until their next turn.
4 - The next player places their dog down on the spot of their choice and follows number three.
5 - All players will continue until no one can move because of the constraints of the movement rules.
6 - Then it's time to pick up the remaining cards - if there are any - and move them to the discard pile. When the trenches (card grid) needs to be rebuilt, all tokens will stay in the spot they are at.
7 - The player next to go will automatically flip over the card they ended with the last round since the board had been reset.
8 - Lather, rinse, repeat.
9 - When all the cards have been used up out of the deck (there should be five rounds with enough cards for five full grids), the game is over.
10 - The player with the most saved soldiers (black cards in this case) wins.
Goal of what I would like to see accomplished (besides having a good time):
I want to see players being able to not just leave it to chance cards but also use some strategy with their movement to block off other players from collecting soldiers. However, if they really don't want to think about it, they should have just as good of a time.
----------------------------
I'll have more later. Art pieces I had done during my quiet spell on here - and more news at 11.
15.5.09
Playing Games & Doodling
Right now I’m playing Plants vs. Zombies, Musiac Box, The Path, and a bit of WoW here and there. Considering there have been cricket noises coming from my guild lately, I’m going to check into Free Realms this weekend. They’ve gotten a million players in less than a month and that’s pretty impressive. I’m curious to check out what they are doing right.
And in the meantime I’m drafting my own mini-campaign and back to doing wallpapers and doodles. It’s been a rough start to May for me so far and I’m hoping to harness that and turn it into something other than focusing on the loss in my heart.
11.5.09
Testing Out Shirts
UPDATE 5/20: After reviewing one of the shirts via ordering one, I'm not as happy as I could be with it and I am in the process of simplfying and sending a vector image to be approved. I will keep this area posted on the process.
So I thought I’d try throwing out a shirt or two and see if anyone likes them/wants them. I don’t quite know how this Spreadshirt thing will work, it seems odd that the basic charge is 12.90$ for the shirt but yet they charge you another 4.50$ to use your own design. Then they ask you how much you want to make off each shirt. I capped it off at 7.59$ to bring the total to 24.99$.
I just thought I’d share the math for those who like that kind of thing.
If you are interested in buying one, please go to http://telka.spreadshirt.com/
If there’s a different type of shirt/bag/smock you’d like, let me know and I’ll throw something together for you. I’ll consider art suggestions too.
10.3.09
Little Pieces of Paper Meaning So Much
A lot of thought goes into business cards.
Now, it’s an odd format for a reason. I was 95% positive I wanted to go the Moo Mini Card route. Link for those unfamiliar: http://www.moo.com/products/minicards.php
When I joined the paid version of Flickr, they offered me a free sample of the mini cards. What they sent back were these awesomely fun little cards that I had put my name and email address on. I fell in love. Cute, wonderful color, matte, and they felt great. They really did win me over in the quality department. So much so that a year later I was still convinced (mostly), that these little guys were it.
So I decided to start designing around the widescreen format.
Fast forward endless mutterings to myself later, when I had it up on the site and I was adjusting the position, a little voice in my head said no. I argued that I had put all this work in and I like the bird tree and I thought it was clever - but that other part of me made a better argument.
Of all the people I hand the card to, I’m going to be the one most impressed with the cleverness and that doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? And this was what I was dedicating an entire side of the card to.
So a deep sigh later, it was back to the drawing tablet.
Now, I COULD post the new design up here – but I will not. If anyone actually reads this, you will need to find me at either GDC (or Beer Wednesdays) and request one. I will gladly exchange cards and you can tell me whether I was right or wrong. My email address is not too hard to find *cough*profile*cough* and if you want to meet up, let me know.
Couple of things I will share…
1) I still went with Moo.
2) I picked the recycled ones.
3) I finally figured out a good way to display my signature initials.
I liked my old one… the goats.
However, after receiving some cards lately have come to three conclusions:
1) It’s rare to find 3D modelers with attractive business cards. Well, except those who are using professionally designed company cards. Even the programmer’s fear of touching the design aspect of things keeps it classic – for the most part.
2) I really should tweak mine. In fact, I should just retire it.
3) I need to pick words like the way you pair wine with cheese.
This process has plagued my brain for a bit and probably took me two weeks to come up with something I was happy with. I had several designs I came up with, one that came to 99% completion before I gave it “the mouth wiggle” and decided I liked it but I should change the path that I am going. Oddly enough it was not until today (when I knew I needed to get the order out or I was not going to see it in time for GDC) that something “cardppropriate” came to my brain.
Because I want to start in the middle, let me introduce the one rejected as a card design.
Now, it’s an odd format for a reason. I was 95% positive I wanted to go the Moo Mini Card route. Link for those unfamiliar: http://www.moo.com/products/minicards.php
When I joined the paid version of Flickr, they offered me a free sample of the mini cards. What they sent back were these awesomely fun little cards that I had put my name and email address on. I fell in love. Cute, wonderful color, matte, and they felt great. They really did win me over in the quality department. So much so that a year later I was still convinced (mostly), that these little guys were it.
So I decided to start designing around the widescreen format.
Fast forward endless mutterings to myself later, when I had it up on the site and I was adjusting the position, a little voice in my head said no. I argued that I had put all this work in and I like the bird tree and I thought it was clever - but that other part of me made a better argument.
Of all the people I hand the card to, I’m going to be the one most impressed with the cleverness and that doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? And this was what I was dedicating an entire side of the card to.
So a deep sigh later, it was back to the drawing tablet.
Now, I COULD post the new design up here – but I will not. If anyone actually reads this, you will need to find me at either GDC (or Beer Wednesdays) and request one. I will gladly exchange cards and you can tell me whether I was right or wrong. My email address is not too hard to find *cough*profile*cough* and if you want to meet up, let me know.
Couple of things I will share…
1) I still went with Moo.
2) I picked the recycled ones.
3) I finally figured out a good way to display my signature initials.
27.2.09
Mint chocolate is my favorite.
It is easy to get lost sometimes and forget about updating these things.
It’s been a while and I bounce between either being too busy or not in the right frame of mind to ramble on about things on here. Since December I’ve had trips back home and to New York, headaches and smiles, on and off projects (none of which are full time status changers but they keep me busy), and other domestic chores that sometimes I think lose weight in terms of being productive.
I’ve also been taken with playing games, reading books, and keeping up with the news. Film watching has been on the lighter side but I make it a point to hit something up every once in a while. Coraline was my last outing and I loved it, but since I liked the book, it was a given.
I’ve discovered some new webcomics out there – something I’ve tried opening my mind to a tad more lately. For a while there, there were some gems but most were rubbish (much like podcasts). Well, some seeds have started to grow and I like what they are turning into.
http://www.tinykittenteeth.com/
&
http://www.theblackbloodalliance.com/
Two entirely different styles but I dig them both.
Otherwise, I’ll update more later with a proper subject to carry on about. Till then…
It’s been a while and I bounce between either being too busy or not in the right frame of mind to ramble on about things on here. Since December I’ve had trips back home and to New York, headaches and smiles, on and off projects (none of which are full time status changers but they keep me busy), and other domestic chores that sometimes I think lose weight in terms of being productive.
I’ve also been taken with playing games, reading books, and keeping up with the news. Film watching has been on the lighter side but I make it a point to hit something up every once in a while. Coraline was my last outing and I loved it, but since I liked the book, it was a given.
I’ve discovered some new webcomics out there – something I’ve tried opening my mind to a tad more lately. For a while there, there were some gems but most were rubbish (much like podcasts). Well, some seeds have started to grow and I like what they are turning into.
http://www.tinykittenteeth.com/
&
http://www.theblackbloodalliance.com/
Two entirely different styles but I dig them both.
Otherwise, I’ll update more later with a proper subject to carry on about. Till then…
6.12.08
Been busy catching up, getting further, and looking forward.
Created in Illustrator.
A snippet of a work in progress - Nerd Pickle lamenting his salty watery prison when there is other "more nerdy" things to be done. It’s missing a lot of details at the moment but I’ll move back onto him as soon as I finish a few other items.
There has not been too much to report lately as I have transitioned out of one job and have found myself working on little things for the time being. I’m back to playing World of Warcraft and I am revisiting Chrono Trigger on the DS. I’m also cooking more thanks to an absence of a commute time in the evening.
I am furthering my skills in Illustrator though - which is helping fuel some more research into putting things into Flash. It was something I tinkered with at my last job but never really sat down and pushed at because I was usually too busy doing things related to my job title(s).
10.11.08
Currently under construction...
... more to come. Fiddling with the new format first!
Edit: Alright, think I fixed some bugs in the template. Speaking of, I'd like to mention that I grabbed this layout from http://gosublogger.com/. They did a wonderful job!
Now that I have this sorted, more posts when it is not after Midnight and I have to work in the morning. *chuckles*
Edit #2: I guess construction is now over for the most part. Enjoy!
Edit: Alright, think I fixed some bugs in the template. Speaking of, I'd like to mention that I grabbed this layout from http://gosublogger.com/. They did a wonderful job!
Now that I have this sorted, more posts when it is not after Midnight and I have to work in the morning. *chuckles*
Edit #2: I guess construction is now over for the most part. Enjoy!
