Girls In Gaming

Dec 20 Miles Mac

2011-12-20T13:13:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Miles Mac for hosting us!

Erica Glasier was our feature career speaker. She has a fine arts degree and does graphic arts, game art, children's book illustrations and social media campaigns,

She talked to us about her development as an artist: as a child, at TCI and at university. She also gave us a look at the kinds of work she has done - and she has a rich background of experience.

Erica also gave us some good advice: draw lots, start a web presence, be confident, draw lots of what you like, get your education early and more ....

After the pizza, Robin and Sandy Debreuil introduced us to some programming interfaces and languages. Then Sandy had us load a Flash graphic file and led us through using the various tools and layers he used to create the art work for a fortune teller game.

The link to today's survey is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QW79BTF

Nov 18, 2011 Daniel Mac

2011-11-03T14:36:00.002-05:00

Next session is at Daniel Mac on Friday, Nov 18. 9:30 - 3:00 Lunch is included.

March 21 at Miles Mac

2011-03-22T13:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Miles Mac for hosting us!!
Noah Decter-Jackson (Complex Games) came to talk to us about game design.

He started by talking about the various types of jobs in the gaming industry- on both the production side and the creation side. There are lots of different roles available for different types of people with different interests.

Noah also talked about game design - what the critical elements are and how they fit together. He let us try a number of different examples of games like Tetrix, Pacman and Flow and the ways they are successful without being the same.

Finally he pointed out that for a while it has been necessary for large teams to develop successful games, but now it is now possible for small groups to create and launch games - especiually for the iPod and Android platforms.

In the afternoon, Robin and Sandy Debreuil showed us how to create games in Kodu, creating the environment and adding action.

Survey link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5HS9DHZ

GIG February 16 - RRC and Daniel Mac

2011-02-16T13:32:00.004-06:00

Survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cncmzll
Your teacher has to send in your names to be entered into the draw.

Morning
We were at the Red River Exchange campus to listen to Robert J. Sawyer. who is Canada's best sci-fi writer, and whose lattest series Wake, Watch and Wonder are about a 15 year old blind girls who helps the interenet become conscious.
Robert gave us some background about his career and writing and then answered many great questions fomr the group. He was willing to answer all our questions and gave us great insights into the writing and publishing process and into what happens when your book turns into a TV series and you lose some control.
He also told us thename of his new book, Triggers, which is about post-traumatic stress disorder and an assasination attempt.
His web site has lots of good info - http://www.sfwriter.com/+

We then went to Daniel Mac for pizza.

At DMCI we also learned about Kodu, the 3D game development platform from Microsoft. Sandy and Robin Debreuil showed us many of the features and actions of the program.

GIG January 21, 2001 West Kildonan

2011-01-21T13:48:00.001-06:00

Here we are at West Kildonan Collegiate - great hosts for us as we have used three different rooms as our needs changed! Thanks!!!

First thing in the morning we heard from Anita Lubosch - a digital music magician. Well, actually she is a performer, mentor, producer, and does post-production. She has also done the tough jobs like holding the boom mic on movie sets. Anita gave us some of her background and work experience.

Anita then showed us how to use Garageband to create sounds and songs/scores. The girls and Anita then produced some amazing 'music' as they worked on many of the features of Garageband adding multiple tracks, instruments and varying sound levels and effects.

Lunch was a great lasagne from the WK cafe

In the afternoon, Robin Debreuil showed us some more Flash design and programming. We created a face where we could control each part of the face - eyes, nose and mouth by clicking on the next and back buttons we created - fun and comical. Of coursse the artists can't just draw a 'happy face', they have to draw a portrait first!!!!

Thasnk to everyone for coming and to West K for hosting. Pictures will be coming soo.

Next event is Feb 16.

Sisler - Dec 15 2010

2010-12-17T13:25:00.004-06:00

Wow! Over 40 girls at Sisler High. Thanks for coming and thanks to Sisler for hosting us!! And thanks to Alexa Lachuta for taking the pictures!!
	First off we were treated to some demos of games and design done by some of the Sisler students in their IT courses. Amazing stuff - we were even able to race cars around the hallways (well, virtually anyway).
Then after cookies and juice, we go to hear Erica Glasier (tactica.ca or erica@tactica.ca) talk about her career and show us some of her amazzzzing art! http://girlsingaming.blogspot.com/ and http://gigrural.blogspot.com/
	Then we split into two groups. Some stayed with Erica so she could look at their art . They also got to play with some new PS features - like making Mr. Redekopp Egyptian dance. The other group went to another lab and started working with Kim Lazaruk on Unity, a game development platform.
	After a lot of pizza and drinks we the whole group got an overview of Unity and then some more time and instruction on using it.
	Don't forget to do the survey and give your teacher your name once you are done. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DXSW6X3
	Next GIG session is January 21 at West Kildonan and we plan to do some sound/music creation and Flash programming. And yes - there is proof of the dance.

River East Nov 18, 2010

2010-11-18T14:25:00.002-06:00

Yeah - we're back!!

We had 35 girls and a bunch of teachers today at River East Collegiate!

First, Coree Francisco (girloneinteractive) talked to us about the gaming industry, and her career path - varied and up and down, but great! She talked about how you are constantly learning new things and that it is not always a steady ride.

After the break Robin and Sandy Debreuil (debreuildigitalworks) started us on Flash games. They showed us how to do some basic editing of graphics and get them into the game. We created some cool obstacle games.

After lunch (pizza!!!) we did some more customization of the obstacle course games and then moved on to action games where we created weird objects to click on.

Join the Facebook Girls in Gaming group before it gets locked down.

April 16 - Balmoral Hall

2010-04-16T13:38:00.006-05:00

Thanks to Balmoral Hall for letting us use their lab again!!

First we showed some of the game adaptations that the girls made since our last session.

Robin and Sandy came with three new games for us to play and modify. There is a maze, a matching game and a moving game (and the very fun WhackABush game). We spent the morning trying each of the game and adding things to them or changing different features or graphics. One immediate effective thing we did was to add a BOOM sound to the maze game.

Chinese for lunch and it was great!!!

In the afternoon, Lasha Orzechowski came and looked at some of the games we have created. She also talked to us about her career path from her fine arts degree to being a graphic artist and designer to her own company which evolved into a 'branding' company (Velocity Design)which offered total solution to clients. She sold the company last year and is starting her family.

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;ss</p>

GIG March 8 Balmoral Hall

2010-03-08T17:09:00.002-06:00

We started the day with Robin Debreuil of Debreuil Digital Works telling us about aspects of developing a game as well as some of the experiences he has had as a developer working out of Miami, Manitoba. He mentioned having worked and lived in China, Japan and LA.
After the cookie break Robin introduced us to Flash by giving us a bare bones game template with falling squares and circles and a paddle to catch them. We then modded the game by looking at the script and changing some of the variables.
Lunch was from Subway

After lunch we continued making adaptations to the games - choosing an ice cream theme for a while. We made a mouth that opened and closed to catch the falling objects which by then ranged from food items to cars and added backgrounds.

We decided our next meeting would be April 16 at Balmoral Hall again - a huge thank-you to Balmoral Hall for hosting us!! In this session we will heat from a woman in the industry and possibly from Red River College about further education opportunities. We will also show off our games and go around and try out all the different variations. We may also have a 'quick-mod' contest to see who can come up with the best variations on a new template. Hmmm - we'll need good prizes!!!

GIG at St. John's - March 23

2009-03-24T01:22:00.001-05:00

Katie de Sousa was more than her usual excellent self! The girls were all amazed asking a number of questions as well--how much does she make? who does she work for? how many hours does she work? how did she learn to be an artist? and more. Katie showed us some of her portfolio pieces, played her Paper Moon game for us, explained how to make custom brushes and then went on to create another beautiful drawing using her tablet and Photoshop. Stunning indeed!

And there was lots of pizza!

Feb 21 - Art

2009-02-23T22:35:00.002-06:00

Katie de Sousa showed us several of her pieces of artwork explaining how and why she created the various features in each of her pieces. She illustrated the Paper Moon game that she created (this can be found on her website at www.infiniteammo.com ). Katie demonstrated how a tablet is used to create art in Photoshop. She also explained how to create brushes and gradients in Photoshop. Katie created another portrait masterpeice for us in Photoshop explaining each step of her drawing.

Thanks again to Katie for sharing her talent and skills with GIG!

Art Janury 21

2009-01-21T18:07:00.005-06:00

Wow - Katie De Sousa showed us some of the art work she is doing at infinite ammo. Check out Paper Moon game on their web site. She talked about when she uses paper and when she uses a tablet.

She also mentioned cgsociety, conceptart.org, and cghub

She went to school in Atlantic Canada , the Centre for Arts and Technology (graphics and animation). Expensive, but very good.

December 5 - Daniel McIntyre

2008-12-05T13:01:00.009-06:00

Coree Francisco (girlone.com) talked to us about her career steps and how she got started and stays in Manitoba. She also led us through an activity of creating a game idea on diabetes with a young girl going to a clinic to get info from a Dr. Spider.

Lunch - pizza!!

Noah Decter-Jackson (Complex Games) came and worked with us on "What A Game Is" is (and we got to play some games)

Start with Actions!

Is cloud http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/ really a game?

Finally we started editing a diabetes game. We had to create a meter ujust a short horizontal line with an instance name of meter1), three circle buttons (instance names are potato1, juice1 and salmon1) and two text objects (instance names are careful1 and warning1)

The code is:

potato1.onPress = function() {
_root.meter1._y += 10;
if (_root.meter1._y>200) {
_root.careful1._x = 250;
}
if (_root.meter1._y>300) {
_root.warning1._x = 250;
}
};
juice1.onPress = function() {
_root.meter1._y += 10;
if (_root.meter1._y>200) {
_root.carefu11._x = 250;
}
if (_root.meter1._y>300) {
_root.warning1._x = 250;
}
};
salmon1.onPress = function() {
_root.meter1._y -= 10;
if (_root.meter1._y<200) _x =" -250;" _x =" -250;">

GIG October 3 and 4

2008-10-04T09:56:00.007-05:00

Welcome to GIG 2008 - 2009 !!!

Friday

Ryan FitzGerald from nihilonaut.com started us off (ofter some projector issues) with an overview of Game Design. He reminded us of the different types of games (board, card, field, digital), and types within digital games.

Ryan reminded us that there has to be game play and it has to be FUN! We then did a group exercise on creating a game and worked through the process of conceptualization, development and production using the odd objects (game pieces) that Ryan provided.

The more you involve player skill in a game the more likely it is they will want ot play again to improve their skill.

IGDA - International Game Developers Association now has a Winnipeg chapter.

Next, Laurie Cutrone from Red River cam and talked to us about education opportunities at RRC. She also talked about some of the statistics of women in information technology jobs. Her presentation is here and all the links she talked about are in the last slide:

Lunch - Pizza

After lunch Robin and Sandy Debreuil (debreuil.com or frolicmedia.com) took us through a storyboarding exercise and we came up with some good storyboards.

Then they showed us some of the basics of using Flash.

Saturday

Very few girls today. ????

Robin started us on programming in Flash (actionscript). We learned to name and move symbols, and added a health meter that changed when we clicked on or rolled over one of our buttons.

Summary of 2007-2008

2008-05-22T17:25:00.002-05:00

Your comments please on:

What was good?

What worked for you?

What didn't work for you?

How should we do GIG differently?

What other speakers should we have?

How would you rate GIG?

Would you recommend GIG to someone else?

April 24 - Game Design

2008-04-24T17:35:00.010-05:00

We started with an overview of the presentation we did in Toronto at FITC. We showed pictures, the video and the powerpoint that we used. We got a lot of positive feedback from people at the conference, and learned some new things at the sessions.

We then shared updates of our games. There is some progress and are some problems - like lost storyboards and a laptop in for repairs.

Noah Decter-Jackson was our session speaker - he is president and lead desgner of Complex Games, Inc. He talked about careers in gaming and the progress that is being made to treat game workers fairly.

He also talked abot the various roles that are involved in game development. There are a bunch of roles - producers, designers, programmers, visual artists, and game testers. More specialized roles include - sound, music, writers, motion capture, karate, and dialogue, etc

The game designer has to make sure that all the elements of the game work and are interesting. This means being involved at all levels. It can involve math, story, programming, art, etc. He mentioned the Unity Engine as a development platform.

Pizza again for supper - let me know if you are tired of it.

Noah talked about game design and mentioned "Rules of Play" and "Homo Luden" - books about games and game design. He told us about the Magic Circle idea - the circle that defines the game and game play. The game designer has to be an advocate for the player!

Game Design might include:

Players
Objective
Procedures
Rules
Resources
Outcomes

Noah walked us through these aspects of game design and each group got to talk about their game in each aspect.

Flash In The Can - Toronto

2008-04-21T09:35:00.004-05:00

Regina, Samaire, Ms. Jajam and Rennie are at FITC in Toronto showing off the GIG project for Flash users. There are over 1000 people here and we have a display table showing our GIG video (you can see it here), a powerpoint about GIG, some art and storyboards, and some games that girls have made.

We have met a lot of people and are bringing back a bunch of resources (especially about college programs), and some new Flash ideas.

Catherine Warren, a management consultant to the media industry, is coming to speak at RRC (Princess) at noon on Friday if you can make. It will be in the theater across from Tim's.

Also you can find bunch of resources at PHUG - an open source users group.

Some very cool particle generating Flash stuff ccan be found at Seb Lee Delisle (download the example files and play with them) or Plug In Media (a very cool web site with lots to play with - explore)

April 12 Flash

2008-04-12T13:28:00.003-05:00

Sandy and Robin Debreuil came back for a repeat performance on using Flash.

Robin started by showing us his new computer - a OLPC (one laptop per child). This is a project computer that came out of MIT. It is supposed to be a $100 laptop for students in developing countries. The design is quite amazing and the interface is quite different. He passed it around for us to try.

We split into two groups - programmers and artists to maximize our use of their time. the programmers got a chance to start building their games and getting Robin or help with code issues or show a better way of doing the code.

The artist group worked on getting their art into Flash and practiced with the drawing tablet.

Hopefully we can share some parts of our games on April 24 (a Thursday evening)

March 26

2008-03-17T10:43:00.001-05:00

The March 20 session was changed to Wednesday March 26 ( 5 - 8 at Red River - Princess as usual)

We had updates from the three schools who were able to make it (sorry to the others for messing up the dates). We are making some progress, but probably need to make some decisions and move forward.

We looked a bit at Fireworks - a vector based graphics program and then had some group-work time. Also during this time, Rennie was videotaping comments form all the girls about GIG. We want to put this all together for a presentation at Flash in the Can in Toronto (April 19 - 22).

We hope to collect some art work storyboards and initial games for this trip.

Pictures from March 8.

Saturday, March 8

2008-03-03T15:43:00.000-06:00

Game updates – good updates on the games with each group having a presenter, recorder and question/comment person.

Robin and Sandy Debreuil (www.frolicmedia.com and http://www.debreuil.com/)– Flash intro

Showed us a Sesame Street game that they are working on. Not difficult programming, but have to keep track of the assets (graphics and sounds) and the different combinations of how they are used.

Adobe Flex – heavy duty coding program for Flash. You still do the graphics in Flash. Regular coding can still be done in Flash.

Robin taught us how to build a menu system to get to various parts of the game. We built a 3 door menu to link us to three other pages and back again.

Lunch – Pizza, but no dessert L

Game – www.mediawisesolutions.com/ARG2

The prize was the cookies we should have had for dessert

Sandy taught us how to animate a face. You can get a sample character pack to download from his site. Then you can create a symbol with the mouth in various positions. When you try to sych it with a voice over, you can stop the symbol to stop on a single frame instead of loop. Use this for start stop, p, m and o. Don't worry to much about precision for the the other sounds.

Game updates (for each school - one person presents, one takes notes and one has to ask at least one question or make a comment about other presentations):

Name
Story
Description of level one
Game play / goal / obstacles / points or lives ort health or ammo or ???????
Any art work to show?
What do you need to do next?

ARG2

February 21 Session

2008-02-21T18:59:00.000-06:00

Sharing Game Ideas - thanks for sharing your preliminary plans!!!

DM - Rune Guardian - RPG
Arg - Under Class Heroes - RPG/ARG
RE - Apocalypse Then - Quest/Mystery
WK - Scubadventer - Arcade
SH - Aeronautical - Arcade

We played a simple ARG game in the RRC building using clues from web pages to sticky notes and back again. Lane.htm, Tim.htm, Common.htm

Pictures

Feb 9 Session Cancelled

2008-02-07T15:46:00.001-06:00

The Saturday Feb. 9 session is cancelled. We will meet again on Thursday Feb 21 from 5 - 8.

PLEASE COME TO THE NEXT MEETING WITH the following info about your game:

Working title

Story line

Artistic style (eg anime, Disney cartoon, etc) and main character concept

Type of game (arcade, FPS, ARG - alternate reality, etc)
Resources that you will need to gather
Team member tasks - who is doing what

How is your game going to be FUN?

Thursday, January 31 from 5 - 8

2008-01-29T21:30:00.000-06:00

Wendy Bailey is going to be working with us on digital drawing and building characters this Thursday, Jan 31.

We will meet in room A309 at 5:00. We will break for a quick supper around 6:00 and then go until 8:00

Pictures

Some notes Pam took:
http://lindabaileybooks.com/home.html
http://lindabaileybooks.com/picturebooks.html - she illustrated When Addie was Scared

- have background information about Characters
- GET AS MUCH INFORMATON ABOUT THE CHARACTERS as you can.
- fish - research about the character -
+ colours
+ terrain
+ gills?
+ shapes
+ vegetations
+ depth of water = fish change as well as colour of water getting darker

option of making character going from good to bad, change colour of character, have things start growing out of them

---------------------------------------------
add characters & their movement to a background.
------------------------------------------------

game - samorost - floating world in space - he looks out of a tunnel - he must get his little of planet out of the way of the other planet.
http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1/
this is an award winning game
-------------------------------------------------------------
idea= question the fish characters why I can't go any deeper - they could respond with you much check the pressure.... must regulate..must regulate...
----------------------------------------
when they start to have emotions = ears down and druppy - sad ; ears up and perky = happy; colour can fluxuate according to emotions
--------------------------
think about target market - age group? knowledge group?
must consider if it becomes too scary then it is no good for younger kids
--------------------------
what things is your character going to interact with. Once they have contact - how will they change
-----------------------------------------
colour is very important - depicts mood, style, disposition
-----------------------------------------
what kind of environment will the character feel most comfortable
who are the friends
who are the enemies
--------------------------------------
you want to evoke an immediate reaction
- ooh
- aww
- yuk
------------------------------------
there could be different stages/levels of a game.

GIG - January 12, 2008

2008-01-11T22:57:00.000-06:00

0) Get your comments onto the blog!
1) Get your email address to Reyn!
2) Ryan - session 1 Pictures

Ryan talked about Vladimor Propp, SWAT (Interactive storytelling), and Facade in the morning. These websites may be useful/and of interest.

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/gen.html

http://www.storytron.com/swat/index.htm

http://interactivestory.net/

Preparing the Story

3) Get your game on (for prizes)!
4) Lunch - Pizza from Dominos and carrots and drinks. We are open to suggestions.
5) Ryan - part 2

ARG (alternate reality games)

Examples - the game to promote AI the movie

http://anotherversionofthetruth.com/

ilovebees.com - an entry point to an ARG

http://exhibit24.net/ and http://redhorsevector.net/

http://ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com/ (do a CTRL-A. copy it and paste it into a word porocessor. Replace "page not found" with nothing, then Space with nothing, then h with nothing and a with nothing)

http://anotherversionofthetruth.com/

http://www.argn.com/ - an ARG forum

6) Group game planning - starting to think about your school's game

GIG - Dec. 8

2007-12-04T21:52:00.000-06:00

Red River (Princess St) 9:00 - 3:00 Room A106

Sandy and/or Robin Debreuil (Debreuil.com) introduced us to storyboarding and C# Express - Microsoft's lamguage suited to game development.

We drew storyboards about a farmer being kidnapped by aliens and one about the revenge of the pet rocks.

We also drew a quick outline or flowchart of a possible game - a variation of Pong or Tetris.

Robin showed us how to start programming in C# Express. IT took some getting used to but most of us got to the point where we could draw something on the screen and change the color of the pen.

Lunch was pizza!

More C# - usinf for loops!

Finally we worked some more in GameMaker - something to experiment over the break when you need something to do.

To get on the email list send your name and school to rredekopp@retsd.mb.ca

A Winnipeg game developer launched a game on Friday - Aquaria.

Future Dates (subject ot some change)

Jan 12 - Saturday (9 - 3)
Jan 31 - Thurs Evening (5 - 8)

Feb 9 - Saturday
Feb 21 - Thursday Evening

Mar 8 - Saturday
Mar 20 - Thursday Evening

April 12 - Saturday
April 24 - Thursday Evening

May 10 - Saturday
May 22 - Thursday Evening

GIG - Nov 24

2007-11-24T23:16:00.000-06:00

Great presentation by Coree!

Intro to Gamemaker went OK until we couldn't actually run our games!!

Next session - Dec. 8

links from Coree's presentation (thanks Pam):

demo.icgroupinc.com/demofiles/girlspace-hub/virtualmodel/default.htm

demo.icgroupinc.com/demofiles/AOL-target/default.htm

demo.icgroupinc.com/demofiles/AOL-ortholo/main.htm

demo.icgroupinc.com/demofiles/AOL-beerfest/default.html

demo.icgroupinc.com/demofiles/AOL-slurpee/phase3/default.html

Pictures from the Nov. 24 session

GIG Nov 24 - First Meeting of 2007-08

2007-11-23T20:18:00.001-06:00

RRC - P303 from 9:00 to 3:00

What we'll do:

Morning

Introduce everyone
Welcome to new schools and outline the plan for this year. Basically it is one Saturday a month and one Thursday evening. We hope each school can produce at least one game this year!
Demo of some of the game creation work done last year

Coree Francisco of girlone.com

Lunch - Subway platters in the caf

Afternoon

Introduction to Gamemaker (download)
Tutorial pages
Learn some controls

Group project

Create an idea
make some graphics
put them together

Starting GIG 2007-2008

2007-11-12T18:36:00.000-06:00

Well - here we go again. We will be starting GIG on Nov. 24, at Red River (Princess) in room P303 at 9:00.

We have some returning schools and a couple of new schools. It should be a great start. Coree Francisco is going to speak to us.

Preparing for Next Year

2007-06-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

When we are planning for the next GIG (starting next January??), what should we keep and what should we change?

Who were the best speakers?
Should we spend more time on programming?
Should we introduce GameMaker early on?
Should we use Flash?
Should we mix girls from different schools or keep school groups together?
Should we let girls repeat the course?
Should we spend more time on art work or storytelling or storyboarding?
Are there too many or too few Saturdays?
How do we try and make sure we actually get some games?

Other ideas????

June 16 Margaret Meijers

2007-06-16T14:00:00.001-05:00

Margaret Meijers, a technology coordinator from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia showed us how to use GameMaker at a much higher level, like editing sprites and adding effective keyboard controls.

Pictures

She brought along a bunch of good sample games that her students had created. We played them and then learned to modify them and make our own versions. We also had a chance to build a game aimed at saving the Tasmanian Devil, which is being threatened by a cancer like virus.

June 15 Heather Kelley

2007-06-16T13:51:00.000-05:00

Heather Kelley from Artificial Mind and Movement (Montreal) visited Miami, River East (with Sindhu) and Argyle schools to talk to the girls and review their games for them. She gave some really good constructive criticism to the groups about what was heading in the right direction and what could be re-thought to make the games better.

Pictures

It was good to hear some ideas from someone who is directly involved in the gaming industry and knows where to invest time and energy to make a game work.

No Session Saturday June 2 !!

2007-05-31T15:16:00.000-05:00

No Session Saturday June 2 !! We have had to cancel this session,

We will have sessions on June 15 (evening) and June 16.

May 26 RRC

2007-05-26T14:31:00.001-05:00

We have a new design that will be sent to Norm so he can get the clothing done. We also agreed that we should have a GIGaming web site which Robin said they could host on their server. Also we are thinking of having an evening activity (movie or something) on June 16 after our session. IDEAS!!

Finally, we will be making a GIG promo video using pictures form the sessions and some video clips of girls working on their games and some short interviews.

We will try to have a video camera at the June 2 session for some interviews.

If you do NOT want your picture in the video please let Norm or Reyn know SOON!

We spent most of the morning working on our games. What we have do far looks good, but they will need some extra time to finish.

After the pizza for lunch, we downloaded GameMaker (www.yoyogames.com) and Reyn walked us through the tutorial "First Game" which we called "Catch the Clown". The program is easy to use and we go tour games working and many had good adaptations to the original. Download the program and try the tutorials. It's free and we'll be working with it on June 16.

We finished the day working on our games again.

Norm would like your ideas for the Digitized Conference that will be held next Sept. The conference is all about students and technology. What would you like to see there? Which speakers that we had so far should present there? What else would you like to see or hear about?

Remaining Dates

2007-05-16T22:56:00.000-05:00

May 26 - Promoting Your Game
June 2 - Women in Information Technology Careers
June 15 (evening) & June 16 - Introduction to GameMaker (Margaret Meijers, Hobart. AU) and Heather Kelley will offer you critiques of your games.

May 12 - Games Developer Show Highlights

2007-05-12T15:45:00.000-05:00

Kevin Hnatiuk (New Media Manitoba) gave a presentation of the video interviews he did at the International Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March. They included:

Mind Control for Games (something Sky - help me out here)
Best new Indi game
The 'music' match game (opera) developed by college students in Florida
Development software from the very expensive ("Price depends on the user needs") to Torque for $100
Vests that fight back (or at least give you "feedback")
Remind me of others!!!!

After lunch we "DEMO"ed Sindhu's 3d world created in Blitz 3D, and then had time to work on our games.

We asked Kayla to make the text more visible on the logo. She will work on this right away and get it to Norm so that he can get our clothing!

Norm also announced that we can premiere our games at the Flash conference in the fall! WOW!

Reyn gave some details of the conference call that he and Mel had with three reps from EA Games. They would like to be mentors, but so far only in a general way because of potential copyright issues.

OK - I should have taken notes - help me out with some of the details!

April 26 - Miami

2007-04-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

New Logo Vote

Please indicate which logo you want to use if we can't use the one we picked the first time (along with your comments).

Remaining Dates

May 12 Planning artwork and scripting
May 26 Promoting Your Game
June 2 Women in Information Technology Careers
June 16 Introduction to GameMaker (Margaret Meijers, Hobart. AU)

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Road trip to Miami

Miami is a great place to visit. Great hosts and facilities.

We spent the morning working on our games with Sandy and Robin helping. The games are starting to come along nicely, with tons of work yet to do. There is some focus however and we're moving in the right direction. We also had one "DEMO" moment - when Mel got something working well enough to show the whole group. Robin says that you have to yell "Demo" at moments like this.

Lunch was a fantastic BBQ - burgers, chips, veggies, fruit and drinks. Thanks Wanda!!!

After lunch we went to see the 'wind farm'. There are about 40 huge wind turbines near St. Leon and we went to see (and hear) them and take pictures.

More group work in the afternoon.

So - what are the big challenges for your group for the next two weeks????

NY Times Article about CS

2007-04-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to an article in the NY Times about women in computer science.

GIG - April 14 - Session 6

2007-04-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

We started by looking at the shirt and hoodie samples and choosing a style. Then there was time for groups to work on their games.

Donna Vincent - CNC Global
Donna came back to Red River College to take programming and upgrade her skills. She is still in touch with her 'sisterhood' from that time.

Winnipeg is a great market to be in because it is growing in this industry, but there will be opportunites everywhere. How do you get there? Education - college, university or on the job? Talk to people who are involved in the industry and find out how they made it, and what their current needs are. The ROI is not much different between college and university. Not going to school can work, but you will eventually have to return to school.
There will be lots of jobs - both software and hardware.
Roles in IT: architect, business/systems/programmer analyst, programmer. quality assurance, network/systems admin, database admin, operator, support staff.

GIG - April 7 - Session 5

2007-04-07T13:24:00.000-05:00

Next session - April 14

Miami, MB road trip - April 28 (start thinking about ride arrangements)

We started the morning by talking about team t-shirts or polo shirts or hoodies. Norm will bring some samples for us to look at.

We decided by a series of votes that we want to work with logo 7 and had some ideas for modifications.

The rest of the morning was spent in our groups trying to get a good start on how our games are going to work.

After lunch we handed out the door prizes.

Robin then showed some animation examples and talked about how to decide what is realistic in terms of getting a game actually finished. He talked about the strengths and weaknesses of 3D and Flash, and how to 'comprimise' your visuals and movement so that you can actually finish a game in a reasonable amount of time.

Session 4 - Storyboards, Planning and Flash

2007-03-10T13:35:00.000-06:00

HOMEWORK - journals and GET YOUR GROUP PLANNING STARTED! Start narrowing it down and assign some roles.

Carmen

Sandy and Robin shared some of their storyboards with us. Sandy kept saying that they were 'rough' sketches. How many of you thought they were rough? The storyboard is supposed to give you a rough idea of how the story/game will go. It also gives you a quick overview of your camera angles, movements and distances so that you can see if there is enough variety.

Some of your storyboards about kids and school buses had some neat features - a school bus sign to create a context at the beginning, different views of the bus, looking over people's shoulders (hair, backpacks, jackets, etc), etc.

Before lunch (at Subway and Niakwa Pizza) we split into our groups and started to brainstorm ideas for our games. During the rest of the day we tried to refine our ideas and start assigning roles and responsibilities.

Robin showed us how to create rollover buttons in Flash, and then we started building a 'house' floor plan where each room was a button that linked to another frame that showed that room. We also added a 'home' button to get back to the floor plan.

We also added a bunch of silly things in our rooms to make them more interesting!

The door prizes were great!

Next session is probably April 7 (the first Saturday after spring break) Check your email and let us know if you are not getting the messages.

March 3 - Drawing Characters and Storytelling

2007-03-03T13:48:00.000-06:00

Wendy Bailey – graphic design

Her company is www.prizzim3.com

She suggested a look at Broken Saints - www.brokensaints.com

Wendy talked about developing the characters for her game and showed us examples of the different characters at different stages of their development.

We got out the drawing supplies and started sketching out characters. Wendy kept giving suggestions about things to consider – animate and inanimate characters, hair, number of arms and legs, eyes – size colour, shape, good vs bad characters, etc.

Ryan Fitzgerald came back to talk about story writing.

Theme is crucial.

He also demonstrated character, plot, time, pace, premise, dialogue, subplot. Check the handout for more

We tried some ‘surrealist writing’ – randomly generating sentences on a strip of paper that gets passed to a different person each time.

Vladimir Propp - search for proppian fairy tales. Propp anaylzed fairy tales and lists their basic elements.

Ryan suggested going to www.interactivestory.net to try it out for a story generator.

Next time we are at Carmen Collegiate in Carmen. Hopefully you can car pool with someone from you school. If you can’t arrange a ride, please contact Mr. Redekopp (Reyn) at rredekopp@rec.retsd.mb.ca as soon as possible. Please include your phone number and address.

Feb. 17

2007-02-17T16:35:00.000-06:00

Today we went over our homework that we had from last weekend. Any other comments?

Mrs. Baldaro talked with us about how women are portrayed in games. Is this true? Does it need to change? Can it change?

We had lunch and then went up to the lab to learn some flash animation and some actionscripting from Sandy and Robin Debreuil. Who enjoyed this more - artists or programmers?

We will probably travel to Miami (Manitoba) for the March 10 session. We have to make some car pool arrangements. so start thinking about this.

Feb. 10 Session 1

2007-02-10T15:12:00.000-06:00

Coree Francisco presented the group with an overview of the insdustry with a lot of great examples from her own experience at iC Group and Girlone

Ryan Fitzgerald talked about types of games and gaming in Manitoba. He also led us through a couple of games of Werewolves.

What were your highlights for the day? What was missing from today?