Mirth Alia
21 December 2011 @ 11:33 am
In other news: TELL ME STUFF?  
Man, I have been so boring lately.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MORE INTERESTING LIVES, FRIENDS. I probably won't have anything interesting to talk about until I finish my George Clutesi books. WHAT HAVE YOU ALL BEEN UP TO.
 
 
Current Mood: thoughtful
 
 
Mirth Alia
07 November 2011 @ 04:33 pm
Semi-reminders for myself. Cultural appropriation is Not Cool.  
"Although neighbouring peoples such as the Salish nations also traditionally produced art which shares some of the characteristics of Northwest Coast art, these styles of art are not usually included in the term, since the patterns and artifacts produced are rather different. For example, Salish peoples traditionally created standing welcome figures not created by other Northwest Coast peoples, did not traditionally create totem poles, and did not traditionally use the form lines and shapes of other Northwest Coast peoples.[4] One corollary of this fact is that — contrary to popular belief — other than some of the peoples of the Olympic Peninsula, no Native American nations of Washington and Oregon states produced totem poles and other characteristic, formline, Northwest Coast-style art objects before European contact.[5]

Traditionally, within a given community, some patterns and motifs could be used only by certain families and lineages, or with the agreement of those families and lineages. Today in British Columbia it is generally acknowledged that only First Nations artists of the appropriate nation have the moral right to produce art of given types and using given motifs. Some non-Native artists, such as John Livingston, have been adopted into First Nations and have thus formally acquired the right to produce such art.[1] In some Nations such as the Haida adoptions are simply seen as gestures and claims to produce work are viewed as economic and cultural appropriation."


Gotta be careful about this stuff.
 
 
Current Mood: thoughtful
 
 
Mirth Alia
03 November 2011 @ 03:19 pm
I live! Kinda.  
So those [community profile] aather and [insanejournal.com profile] sabra_la_tau games that I mentioned I needed distraction from?

I kind of joined them.

SEE WHAT YOU DID, INTERNET.

So that's what I've been doing lately, along with reading Diana Wynne Jones' Enchanted Glass and tearing through all of Kimi ni Todoke in one weekend. I've been trying to push more art practice and writing progress out of me, but it's still really tough for reasons I have yet to figure out. I swear I didn't have this much trouble a few years back. Maybe it's because I'm tired all the time now?

I have made some progress in the character development for the Mahou Shounen thing, so that's encouraging. Research for the game idea, however, is at a standstill, partly because I keep checking out awesome books and then... don't get around to reading them for whatever reason. Stuff for [personal profile] after_nightfall has been progressing in bits and tiny pieces, and I need to keep telling myself that I don't have the time to try and join Dreamwidth's development team, much as I would love to and everyone on there is awesome. (I guess I'll have to keep throwing my money at them instead.)

I did head down to Geek Girl Con last month (which was amazing), and that on top of Halloween on top of friends leaving for Spain on top of concerts a few weeks before might have just been too much. I've been having trouble at work, too. November and December are looking to be much quieter, so we'll see if that changes things.

In other news, I've been hearing very mixed reviews about Wacom's new Inkling. Does anyone actually own one who'd be willing to give an opinion?
 
 
 
 
Mirth Alia
01 September 2011 @ 09:30 am
Guys guys  
Guys give me something to talk about other than incoherent fangirling over all the awesome players and threading at [insanejournal.com profile] sabra_la_tau. It's just making me want to play like crazy or at [community profile] aather's parallel awesomeness but I've done this too many times before not to know how it'll end up. Saaaave meeeee.

On the upside, I'm doing more drawing! Kind of? Hopefully this will continue to be a trend.

There is nothing else interesting going on in my life. Still coming up with ridiculous transformation items and convoluted world rules for everyone-is-a-magical-girl verse. Still researching for the Mystery video game of Mystery (I'm doing it ass-backwards so the plot is coming first, then mechanics, then the actual learning of the programming). I'm loving First Nations culture more and more the deeper I get into it. I've always loved the art and mythology, ever since I discovered the Museum of Civilization back in Ottawa, and the societal structures and ways of living are fascinating. Plus there's been a lot of awesome related specials on TV lately, leading to my discovery of stuff like this and this, which excites me to no end. I hope I can do the culture justice. ahh so much research ahhh
 
 
Current Music: All I Do . Cleptomaniacs
Current Mood: cold
 
 
Mirth Alia
23 June 2011 @ 03:48 pm
-insert dramatic music (or the theme to Rocky) *here*-  
I'm going to be posting this here primarily because this journal doesn't get that many views, and I don't think I want this to be commonly known yet. This is a big, ambitious project I'm embarking on, and I know it, and I'm tentative about whether I'll have the grit and knowledge necessary to see it through to its finishing phase. I'm even more nervous about what the gaming community could do to me - I realize there's the potential there for great partnership and the kind of support I could direly need, but there's also the risk of entering into deals with people who would want to sabotage a project like this or steal my ideas, and I don't believe I have the experience in the industry (or in intellectual property law) to tell the difference and properly defend myself.

I am well aware that this is almost definitely not something I can do on my own (in the short run, anyway - it definitely definitely isn't something I can do on my own in the long run). I'm also well aware that games live or die by their audiences, and this is a game that I really, really want to see living. So I'll do my best to be careful, work hard, have passion, and talk about what I can.

Granted, there isn't a whole lot to talk about at this stage anyway since it's all baby steps and conceptualization. That said...

The goals of this [mysteeeerious~] video game currently stand as follows:

  • To provide some basic-to-elementary education about First Nation mythology and ways of life to those unfamiliar with them.
  • To create a world and characters intriguing enough to make people want to learn more about these things on their own initiative.
  • To be, at the same time, respectful of historical and mythological figures within the First Nations communities.
  • To develop a simple-to-use, attractive [secret!] system and use it to its full potential within both plot and gameplay.
  • To make copious use of the native regions and fauna of Canada (and possibly upper United States).
  • To devise a fun, sly, manipulative main character who is relatable despite not being a traditionally accepted (western) form of hero or good guy.
  • To create enemies and events that provide comprehensive gameplay, but aren't presented as morally black/white or good/evil.
  • To achieve a balance between being easy to share, being easy to play (requirements-wise), and being within my capabilities as a programmer, while still adhering to my artistic vision as a designer who wants to make really cool stuff.
  • To be primarily self-funded/low in monetary cost, so that profits can be forwarded to various associated charities.
  • To create a kickass RPG that's just as fun to make as it is to play, bitch.

All I can say for sure about the programming platform is that it won't be a Flash game. I don't have the means or the training to create something like that, and using Flash products leaves a rather sour taste in my mouth that can take a while to fade. Blegh.

C++ is likely, though I admit to being abnormally fond of Python. I don't know much about its UI capabilities, though, and first I need to research my options as far as Linux-compatible rendering engines go.

That's all for now. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
 
 
Current Music: There's A Fire . OK Go
Current Mood: nervous