We settled on Movie Theaters almost immediately! Theaters have a lot of information that changes often: what shows are showing and when, what are the movies about, etc. We thought we could easily make that information more readily available with panels! Plus, Theaters are everywhere and it was pretty convenient for purposes of filming. I chose the Siff Cinema across the street from campus since there isn’t a theater near my home.
Building the Panels
We agreed on some basic info we wanted to include in the panels: The movie title, rating, genre, and showtimes on one panel. A few still shots, the basic plot, and the principle cast on the other. And in the middle, a trailer! The idea was that as you were watching by the theater you could see a movie poster and want to learn more, so you scan a QR code and instantly have everything you could want to know.
We connected over slack for the overall shape and composition of the panels, which I built in Illustrator. I picked a couple of colors from the poster of the movie I’d chosen, Poor Things; a subtle cream and a light blue for an understated look.
I had no trouble finding some incredible shots from the movie but cropping them to the same size was annoying.
For the trailer I found a short trailer on Youtube and used a Chrome extension to download it at the worst quality possible. The file was just barely too large so I cut the trailer down in Premiere to make it fit. Then I just assembled everything in Eyejack, et voila!
The video was too large for WordPress but I sent it in the Zip file.
Not all doors are wounds, but all wounds are doors.
Cultist Simulator is a video game developed and published by Weather Factory, that much at least I know is true. Any other facts about the game are difficult to pin down. Mechanically it is a resource management game about collecting and spending cards to stay alive and achieve your unearthly goals. The game is played almost entirely on a single screen and you can arrange your pieces however you wish. You must work to earn “funds” which the game automatically takes from you ever minute or so, representing your character’s need to spend money on food and shelter to survive.
Simple, keep working to earn funds, and you get to keep living. In order to work, however, you must spend other currencies: maybe you exhaust your Health on manual labor, or your Reason working in a legal office, or your Passion working as an artist. These refresh after a short time but if a desperate situation arises that requires one (falling ill and needing your Health to survive) you’ll be sorry if they’re on cooldown.
In this playthrough I was The Detective, giving me access to a unique job that used Reason to investigate and arrest my rivals.
At first you don’t have much to worry about. Your basic resources refresh quick enough that you’re never in danger of failing due to running out of money. You have a big open board with only a few ticking clocks. As you progress you unlock more and more cards that give you access to new opportunities as well as new dangers to keep track of. By combining cards with the square tiles you start a new timer. Combine your job with the work tile to work, combine Health with the Explore tile to take a brisk walk and see the city, etc.
As you may imagine, this starts to become complex.
From simple beginnings…
Eventually, you’re juggling a dozen spinning plates. They’re beautiful plates: the game uses simple icons and striking colors to keep everything distinct. With experience you can understand what each of these cards represents. And despite the simplicity of the design, you become immersed in the life of the scheming cult leader you aspire to be.
As you survive the early game rival seekers of knowledge arise to challenge you. You’ll recruit pawns to your cause and send them on investigations to uncover the hidden lore of the city. Studying improves your skills and unlocks scraps of forbidden lore. There’s a crazy amount of depth to this game and it does not tell youhow to do anything. Learning how to play is half the fun but boy they don’t make it easy. The game makes it clear that you should expect to fail runs constantly: starvation, disease, depression, madness, and even the police can bring your run to an end. I have never won.
I’m not even sure if I’ve gotten close. The goal is to “ascend” by collecting more and more powerful bits of eldritch knowledge and choosing a path to ascension.
“Dreaming” with the right resources sends you to this screen, where you can choose a path forward and hopefully unlock more useful cards. I’m pretty sure reaching “The Glory” is how you win.
This is a good time to talk about the writing. There is no direct narration or audible dialogue, just snippets of text gleamed in the descriptions on cards and the resolution of activities. But what they’ve written there is mysterious, evocative, and draws the curious player deeper into the lore of the game. Sometimes you’ll even be rewarded with a clue for how to proceed. I adore the semi-lovecraftian mythos they’ve built.
Who is this game for?
I am so close to loving this game. The art, the writing, and the music have pulled me back multiple times over the last few years. I’ll spend hours on a run, studying ancient tomes and savouring the flavor text, wondering what secrets I might uncover next. But eventually I run out of new things to read and I’m just staring at a board full of cards as time ticks down wondering if dreaming the path to “The Spider Door” with an “Invocation of the Ivory Dove” will somehow unlock the next step on the path to ascension. The game makes me feel like I’m losing my mind, which is thematic, but frustrating.
And once I’ve sunk multiple hours into a run only for the secret mystical police to break down my door and send me right back to the start… I have to put the game away for a while.
This game fits a very unique niche: strategy gamers who like resource management and solving puzzles with an occult theme. I consider myself in that demographic but I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to finish a run. For fun I looked up what an endgame screenshot looks like:
Maybe ascension isn’t for me.
When the Forge is cold and the Glory is dark and the Wood is dust, perhaps the Wolf Divided will rest, but only until it can devour itself.
It takes a lot succeed in your career and pay off your student loans! And like a swiss army knife you need a lot of tools on hand to reach that goal. Here I’m gonna make like some ikea furniture and break down… some of the tools in my tool belt.
To know what tools I need, first I need to know what I want to do. I spent the first quarter just happy to be here, unsure of what my goals really are. It’s starting to set in that I need to think ahead if I want to actually end up with the right tools. I’d hate to end up with nothing but a hammer when my dream is sawing, for example.
My passion in life is telling stories that entertain people. One way or another I want to get involved in an industry that indulges that passion. Movies, animation, game design, book covers: these are where I’ve set my sights.
So, what tools do I have?
A big ol’ creative brain. I may not have flexed this skill professionally but I’ve been making shit up all my life. I love Dungeons and Dragons (and other better-but-lesser-known rpgs) and I’ve been running games for my friends for years. I’ve spent hours painting world maps that only 4 or 5 people will see, dreaming up obscure lore for gods and goblins, detailing the intracies of ork culture, and writing twists to shake my players to their core.
Improvisation. I yes-and with the best of them. Inevitably, despite careful planning, my players will zig where I expected them to zag and I need to come up with the culture of the obscure world they crash-landed on and bring a character to life that didn’t exist two seconds ago. Outside of games, this skill makes me quick on my feet and capable of winging-it when I need to.
Theater?? I’ve been acting in shows since I was 10 years old and I’ve been in dozens of shows. How does this apply? I’m figuring that out, but it’s in my belt. I’ve also done multiple voice acting jobs which are at least tangentially related to some of the fields I’m interested in. Theater does teach you: teamwork, memorization, communication, listening, research, vocal control, and how to use your body. Some of those are definitely useful skills.
What am I working on?
These are the skills that I have that need work.
Illustrator. Thanks Jason. I’ve started down this path but there’s a plenty of work ahead. I had dabbled in Illustrator before this program but it turns out I didn’t know the pen from brushes.
Illustrator. Thanks Jason. I’ve started down this path but there’s a plenty of work ahead. I had dabbled in Illustrator before this program but it turns out I didn’t know the pen from brushes.
Photoshop. I’ve used Photoshop in the past for painting so I have a general understanding of the layout. I know how to import custom brushes use multiple layers to built up a character illustration. I know Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool that I’ve barely scratched the surface of and I’m looking forward to learning more.
Elements of Character Design. This is more of a pet project but it’s definitely something I’m keen on learning more. I’ve got the basics of building a recognizable silhouette, using a strong color palette, shape language, etc. A lot of this is theoretical knowledge that I need to learn to put to practice.
Illustration/Art. I have vastly overestimated my skills in the past, but I’ve also created some stuff I’m pretty damn proud of. I’ve got a lot of love for traditional art and illustration and I’ve claimed to be an illustrator in the past but I need to put in the mileage and turn into an actual tool in my belt.
What do I need?
I don’t know! But here are some things I think would be useful or I just really want to learn!
Animation I recently tried my hand at animation and it was excrutiating and made me want to throw my laptop across the room. But then I finished and hit the play button and it was like magic. Whether this I use this for motion graphics or character animation I really want to learn this skill.
3D modeling/bone rigging. Plenty of the fields I’m interested in use 3D modeling software and bone rigging to create moving characters. This one is intimidating, to say the least, but looks so rewarding. I have thought about making this one of my special topics for next year.
So much I don’t even know yet. Sometimes I feel so ignorant when I try and talk about what I want to do after the program. This is just a case of not knowing what I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe the elements of design that I’m missing. I’m excited to find out.
I took the prompt of “Stone-Age Home Entertainment” and attempted to get Bing’s AI (powered by Dall-E 3) to generate the image. The scene I wanted to see was this: A couple of Neanderthals are watching a big stone television perched on the tusks of an unamused Wooly Mammoth. I avoided specifics in my description because I’ve used this generator before and I know that it gets finnicky.
Each prompt generates 4 images which I’ll include because they’re fun. The first prompt I gave the AI:
Two neanderthals watch a stone-age tv perched on the tusks of a wooly mammoth. The wooly mammoth is not amused.
I love that the mammoth on TV is getting an award.
I think it took “perched” and just added a bird on his tusk.
Why is there a dead capybara in the background?
So the idea of having the TV on the tusks was just being missed entirely. I assumed it was because of my word choice: “perched” is a weirdly specific word that apparently brought birds to mind. I also wanted to make the results more cartoony and less realistic so I added my favorite Neanderthal-cartoonist to the prompt.
In the style of a farside cartoon. Two neanderthals watch a stone-age tv. The TV is sitting on the tusks of a wooly mammoth. The wooly mammoth is not amused.
What the fuck?
This is clearly a form of high art that I’m just too dumb to understand.
Stylistically closer to what I wanted, but definitely not Farside. Though I should probably be glad they aren’t stealing from Gary Larson. The TV is still not on the ground. I have at this point fully given up on the idea that it would somehow show the Mammoth’s face through the frame. I decided to add a perspective to the prompt to try and get that over-the-shoulder shot I wanted from the beginning. I also changed “not amused” to “annoyed” to try and get a more intense expression on the mammoth.
In the style of a farside cartoon. A stone-age television is being held up by the tusks of a wooly mammoth. The wooly mammoth is annoyed. The camera is looking at this over the shoulders of two neanderthals.
Okay well that thing is kind of a mammoth, and it is holding the TV. The over-the-shoulder shot was surprisingly successful although throwing the word “camera” in the mix added some freaky hallucinations in the first image.
Overall I’ve found in the past that Bing (or Dall-E) does best with open-ended prompts that don’t get too specific. If you come to the generator with a specific image in mind you’re going to be disappointed. As a little experiment I just fed them “Stone-Age Home Entertainment” and got this frustratingly nice image:
She has three arms but otherwise this is a pretty cool image. I love the ethereal looking cave-painting and subtle body paint. I’m sure whatever artists they stole from were very talented and creative.
Clearly this technology has a ways to go and I have to work on the prompts I feed it. Too often a bit of language I used (perched, camera) became an unintended element of the cartoon. However, as a way of quickly iterating on ideas and generating inspiration it’s a very useful tool.
Also, I know Midjourney and some of the more powerful paid image generators can create some pretty impressive stuff. I can imagine those tools would be incredibly useful for generating textures and images for designers to manipulate further. I just wish corporations weren’t jumping at the chance to replace real people with AI.
I had the idea for the Timeloop Wizard pretty quick. I’ve been wanting to dabble in animating for ages and just needed a deadline to force myself to do it. As for the Wiz himself, there was no doubt I’d animate some sort of fantasy malarky (I’ve been inspired by these shorts especially) and as soon as I thought about the looping nature of the video it just clicked.
I struggled with learning how to animate from scratch. The tutorials I found were really complicated and most assumed some base level of knowledge I just didn’t have. Finally I found Adobe’s tutorials for animating in Photoshop and ran with that even though the instructions were frustratingly vague. I ended up making the animation as simple as possible, building the wizard (Zyrtec, the Magnanimous) in a series of layers. His body didn’t need to move so that was all one layer with his head and hat. His moustache, eyes, and eyebrows all went on separate layers so I could move them independantly.
I recorded his voice in Audacity and threw it into the timeline and tried to sync up the bobbing of the moustache but it’s pretty awkward. The Timeline works much faster and more intuitively than the frame-by-frame animation but everything moves with this odd smoothness by default and I just didn’t have the time to work out how to fix it. The eyes were a weird challenge. I wanted them to grow wider when he was freaking out at the end but I had to stretch and squish them to get them to fit on his face.
The whole project was a ton of frustration, fun, and a huge learning experience. For a first attempt at character animation I’m pretty happy with the result. Once it was done, exporting it and using Eyejack was a breeze.
Maybe someday he’ll be free of Melatonin’s timeloop. We shall never know.
