Give Her a Name!

She has proven genealogic link with Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Vampirella. In fact, she's a vampire, but she's still the owner of a quite innocent yet spicy personality. She surely has a name, but is up to the community to discover it! The first five names proposed (and one name else proposed by me) will be listed for voting. Just leave a comment with the proposed name and stay in touch! New renderings of her will be posted. ;)

thank you

It has been almost four years where I have learned a LOT from a big bunch of VERY talented people. I've served in the lines of Three Melons as concept artist, and making visual art for 2D flash vector graphics, pre-rendered 3D, and real-time 3D web games. I worked as Lead Artist on several projects and I took my first steps as game designer and scrum master, being helped and guided by real pros.

Three Melons is a great company and most of all, a wonderful human group, a real team, almost a like family, and I owe very much to them. We know our paths are going to run parallel and will cross very often.

Now I'm taking a different challenge in Sabarasa Entertainment. It has not been an easy decision, but chasing dreams often means to make some sacrifices. Anyway, as Pato Jutard told me,  this is a chance to collaborate better on making the Argentinian Game Development Community still more united. There's a lot off work to be done here and the world is expecting as much from us.

Thank you guys.

Hello guys!

 

higher learning

I have not had time still to make a balance of all things learned at the GDC at San Francisco. Some of these things may sound like obvious, but sometimes it's not the same if youur hear this ideas from people around the world.

There's no absolutes. What you may think as an infalible law of development may have been chalenged by rogue devs around the world. Methodologies are tools, they may be useful for you, and become a death march and a burden for others. Books and so-called "bibles" of methodologies say that you may not modify the methods, but in martial arts you have plenty of different schools and approachs; every one of them may work or not for you. Find your own discipline.

Tools and TechArt. There have always been a gap between Visual Artists and Developers. This gap means communication flaws and a Chinese Whispers effect between the two specialies, and then you get graphic assets not properly integrated to the game or artists misunderstanding the game technical requirements. The solution came almost by itself, with artists with coding knowledge and developers with good eye, both becoming Technical Artists, and filling this gap. They write tools for themselves and artists to use. The goal is to have both artists and developers not worrying for fixing integration issues and doing what they do best. You can get contact with TechArtists on tech-artists.org and to learn how to become one (maybe you already are).

You may find allies there. This worths a whole post on the topic and I'm writing a draft on it, but personally, I felt a little alone when everyone in the Art Director/Lead Artists Roundtable was talking about Outsourcing, how to work with big outsourcing studios in India, Singapore or China. They were concerned how to make this obtuse people from other countries work for you, how to avoid problems caused by cultural differences. I raised my hand and asked, with my clumsy use of english, what's happening with this industry that is flattening cultural peculiarities, moving production to cheaper locations instead of giving job to the locals AND making profit of the cultural richness that places like India, China (and SouthAmerica!) have to offer. I found a better reaction than I've expected, many of them accepted gladly the topic shift. What surprised me the most was two or three guys that came after the meeting to say "I'm with you, dude". ... I thnk that was one of the strongest moments in the GDC and mybe in my life. Senior professionals giving their hands to ME! Ufff..

Stronger Storytelling. Games are starting to reach maturuty, and this is no news for anyone. They are becoming a mayor form of art, but a lot of work must be done yet. Games like Braid and my friend Daniel Benmergui's I wish I were the Moon are excellent examples of this exploration, making game mechanic part of the story rather than just the medium.

...and of Course, there's a lot to say about how the GDC changed my view of the industry. A lot about Kojima and Satoru Iwata's pace and rithm to give their respective keynotes, like the Tai Chi of Lectures. Overall, the GDC has refreshed my love for making games.