Aaron Hoffmann Principal UX Product Designerok, i’m not posting these to tout my skills, because when push comes to shove, i can really crank out some top-notch shit. so in that spirit, here are a few really quick sketches that were meant as tests of a digital painting program. if you haven’t checked out ArtRage, you must… it’s bloody amazing! now on with the show…
listening to:
Everything to Everyone
Barenaked Ladies
so the other day i was ranting about the state of fradulent information posted by minors. well here’s another nitpick on the photos people post.
first is the ‘bedhead’ photo. you know the ones… where it looks like the person was caught unexpectedly while enroute to the bathroom in the morning; all pale-faced and sick-looking. it’s fine that photos like this occur, but please folks, there is nothing flattering about them, so why post them to the world as the (sometimes only) image to be THE image most representing of yourself?
second is the ‘foreign/strange child’ photo. in these, we often see the person share the spotlight with a child, usually one that isn’t their progeny, but rather a godchild, niece/nephew, friend’s kid, etc. i find two issues with this. first, kids are supposed to be cute…that’s how nature makes them, so we don’t pitch their whiny asses out the door when they get annoying. by posing with a child, unless the kid is really ugly or you’re far above average in the looks department, you’re going to look worse by comparison. second, because the focus is split, people often feel the need to disclaim the child isn’t theirs, perhaps to eliminate the thought we all probably have anyway upon seeing someone with a young child: that you might be a whore or some other equally negative connotation. this disclaimer usually manifests itself in one of two ways: a byline which appears in text near the photo (“not my kid!”), or a disturbingly messy scribble over the photo from MS Paint’s airbrush tool, usually in pink or black, and always with such sloppy craftsmanship that with even rudimentary skills of handwriting anaylsis, your opinion is overshadowed by the discontent that the person may be mentally incapacitated to some extent. i mean, if you’re going to ‘retouch’ a photo, let’s put a little more effort into it so it doesn’t look like the work of Big Bird on an LSD binge while being autoerotically asphyxiated by snuffleuppagus’ fuzzy proboscis.
heaven knows hell
will fall into the fog
the angels in the vortex
were really devils all along
–an impromptu song lyric
of 2005. happy new year everyone!! 😀
listening to:
Before the Robots
Better Than Ezra
something hit me the other day. not physically, but rather like an epiphany: hardcore gaming isn’t what it used to be. in fact it’s not even what it was before that. i see myself for who i am today of course, but also from a hilltop where I can see who i used to be, and after twenty years of evolution, have seen trends come and go. like many other things in life, gaming has its cycles, and it appears as though we’re all poised on the edge of the next age in its history. so what is hardcore 3.0, and what happened to one and two?
as i see it, fundamental shifts in culture have popularised different game genres at different points in time, much like the latin explosion of ‘99-00 in music, or the grunge era of the early to mid 90s. take 2d platformers for example back in the late 80s, or street fighters in the mid 90s, or the ubiquity of FPSs of today. for better or worse, gaming has already hit two milestones; two generations of hardcore gamers, and the third is just around the corner.
when i was a kid (a real kid mind you, not this ‘big kid’ business i try to pass off today), the term ‘hardcore gamer’ had the connotation of someone who either had access to a sizeable fortune and had amassed a library of dozens upon dozens of games and could play each of them for a brief while and was the envy of every kid in the neighbourhood, or someone who with modest gaming expenditures had a few games, but played the hell out of them: early morning, any time during the day, late into the night. even neglecting one’s health, all for achieving the highest score or purely for the love of hoisting their favourite sprite-based character to that out-of-the-reach ledge. it was truly the romantic era of gaming.
the first generation of gaming was all about diversion, and had little to do with replicating real-life experience, and focused on using the limited (by today’s standards, but it was cutting edge at the time) technology to squeeze every ounce of well-thought, straightforward fun out of a system, and into the hands and hearts of anyone who wanted to play. it didn’t exclude or intimidate users with steep learning curves or complicated, arthritis-inducing controllers that even an eight-fingered life form would take issue with. these were games you could pick up and play as easily as you could read a comic strip, and escape into for however long you wished; even shorter games whose beginning-to-end might be a half hour often had great replay value. but then, like any good art, the steeper the limitations given, the better the end product as the creation requires extra time and thought to realise the goal by ingenuity rather than indolence or indulgence.