YAY FOR PYGMY!

AHHHH! Pygmy is compleeeeete. Im so happy.

And now i can sleep...

And its the fi-nal countdooooown (if only you could hear the way that sounds in my head...)

Whew. Almost 24 hrs till Oh! Possum is due.

CHECK LIST:

1. fix kerning in font lab (check --what a relief that was...)

2. make compostional changes to instructions and add in original typeface (check)

3. print out cards (check {minus blue A})

4. marvel over Ellen's amazing sewing skills (check)

5. finish packaging 

6. sleep

we are making such good timing. i think we've really managed our time well throughout this whole project. we might even get to sleep thursday night!  :D

here are the final instructions! it will be all folded up in RL. it may be confusing in this format when its not folded. read from the talking possum down then go back up to the top right hand corner and go down. 

Revisions, Revisions, Revisions...

Ah another crit...

Ok so we got some good feedback from the crit yesterday. And here are the changes we have made/are making since the last time I posted. (hopefully I will remember them all)

1.) the background to our cards are now white instead of pale yellow, which makes the cards much lighter and less saturated- very nice.
2.) we changed some of the letters on the cards to make them more readable. (i cant remember all the ones we changed but some of them were e, k, I, u, v, U, V and some others)
3.) we added two new tiles to our instructions (an opening tile, and a tile discussing the use of wildcards). We are also going to suggest in the instructions that you arrange your cards alphabetically before playing.
4.) we are in the process of revamping the compositions (as in the image/text relationships) of our instructions and retyping and resizing the text with our font
5.) we are now using the pixel version of our cards typeface for the instructions because a. fontlab hates us, and b. we agreed it is more readable than the modular typeface.
6.) we also created a gradation in color (light to dark) of the letters on our cards, so it is easier to arrange the cars in your hand
7.) we changed the "Oh! Possum" on the back of the cards from pale yellow to white, which again made it lighter and less saturated. much nicer.

we also got all our materials for the packaging (brown fur, pink felt, a perfect sized container and beads for his eyes) and have begun sewing it up. its going to be spectacular.


here are our final cards!!!

see the gradation???


our first group shot. (ahem... that is a mock-up packaging. just you wait till you see the real thing...)

Crit

These are the notes I took after our game was played by our studio-mates for the first time. They brought up a lot of good points, a few of which we already had in mind. We will be taking these criticisms and reworking some of our project such as:

- adding two new tiles to the instructions. 1) an opening tile introducing Pygmy, stating the ojective of the game, and how many players can play. 2) a tile to explain the wild cards

- there was some confusion over a few of the letters in gameplay, meaning that b's were being played as p's, etc. so instead of going with the baseline idea, we decided to add a circle in the upper right hand corner of the card with a smaller version of the letter inside the circle, so you know which way is up. After printing out the cards today we decided to move the
circles to the upper left hand side so that when you fan out the cards you can see the small letters.

- There were also concerns about cheating. People asked questions such as can you play multiples (like lay down 3 A's) and that is allowed, so we will be adding that in the instructions. Another person asked if you could slip cards into the pile unknowingly. For example, if you said "2 A's" but you really put down 4 cards. This is cheating- and I think obviously so. There is no possible way we can list all of the things you cannot do. Our instructions would be 30 tiles long. So we have left what is considered cheating or not up to the players, just like many other games do.

- We also need to clarify in the instructions that the first person to play the blue "A" may also lay down any other A's they have. There was some confusion here with the players.
- We also finalized our wildcard idea. We had been bouncing around the idea but hadnt quite figured out how to implement it. This is now the rule: the player may play a wildcard at any time, after laying down the wildcard the player can choose which part of the alphabet they wish to continue the game in. For example, if its your turn and you are supposed to put down a "C" but you dont have one, you can put down a wildcard, and look at what letters you have and if you had a lot of letters in the last half of the alphabet you could choose to
set down the letter of your choosing, say... a "P". Then the next player has to continue
laying down a "Q" and so on.

- We are also thinking about putting a color gradation of the cards somehow, either on the circle or on the letter itself to make it easier to see which letters you have, but knowing what parts of the alphabet you have. Like the beginning of the alphabet would be a lighter value, and the end would be darker.

oh! I almost forgot- the most important change. Our game is now called "Oh! Possum". We thought this fit the style of the game better, and made the connection to the Pygmy character much more pronounced. We also have many other plans for our friend Pygmy. :)

meep meep-- instructions!

Today and part of yesterday, Ellen and I designed and created the instructions for our game, Whippersnapper, using the photos from the photo shoot. I created rules #1, 3,4,5,7 and Ellen did #2,6,8,9,10. We used photoshop to create most of them, although the possum was made in illustrator using a pen tablet. Im going to go in to #9 and add a possum illustration there also. We had also created a modular version of my pixel typeface, but could not get Fontlab to work, so we used Myriad, but the final instructions will be using our original typeface.

 We emphasized the rule being acted out by making the background people blue, and putting light halo around the emphasized person. We also made the text shoot out in various angles to go with our playful theme. There are still a few details that need to be worked out... but im very happy with it so far. 

I think I was in the computer lab for 9 hours today. And I dont think we'll be sleeping much this/next week. :)

Photo Shoot!

On Monday, Ellen and I held our photo shoot in the lighting room. We got Kendal, Jordan, and Matt to be our models, and took various pictures of them playing the game.

Brainstorming With Pygmy

So here are out first brainstorming pages for the card game project. As partners, Ellen and I decided to go with a game similar to BS. This page has our first drafts of rules, the original brainstorming of gameplay, packaging ideas, character ideas, and fun words to shout.


This is our first storyboard of the directions. It also has a quick diagram of the accordian style, and a second draft of the rules. We will be putting this storyboard to life tommorow with the green screen in studio, but it will most likely not be in our final product.


And then finally we have Pygmy. Our character of the game is a possom (you know, because possoms always pretend to be asleep--and so goes the saying "quit playing possom"). And this is what the packaging of the game will look like. Cute, isn't he?

Typeface numero dos

So I learned two important things from this weekends homework.
1. InDesign is awesome
2. The computer lab in Brooks is not open 24 hours a day

I think this typeface turned out pretty good. I tried to do something completely different than my last one. I like the huge height difference between the majuscules and the minuscules, and the style makes me think of the 20's.

2008 Graphic Design Fundamentals

edit: I had this thing beautifully laid out in the original posting box, but the posted space is smaller than the space you write it in, so it messed everything up. jerk.


Ok, so this is the project I did with Martha Scotford in the first section of second semester.

First, we were assigned a letter by random, and we had to carve the letter out of a linoleum block. Then, we did that a second time, and had to create a pattern on the letter.





Then we printed the letters with Speedball ink, and brayers. We had to have 3 perfect letter onlys, 3 pattern onlys, and 5 combinations. But the process to get those good prints created many many more prints.














Then we had to take everyones letters and form a phrase out of them and post them somewhere around the design school. The phrase we came up with was "I eats children". We thought it would be interesting to show it in perspective where you had to look at it from one spot to see it all, so we posted it on these columns outside of Kamphoeffner.




We also learned how to use the letterpress and printed a phrase that we were to find. At the time we didnt know we would have to connect our phrase to our letter prints. My phrase was "it's hard to fight in a gazebo." The typeface I used was 36 pt. Grandby lite. I thought it fit the silliness of the phrase, and i also didnt capitalize the first letter to go with that theme.Next we had to make 4 collages. They each had to include our phrase and images, our letter and images, or all three.


My first collage was about my phrase. It has images from a book I found in a bookstore from the 50s. The images are of a happy family, and the one at the bottom is of a father reading the bible to his family.






The text in the circle says:
tommy: "thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
dad: thats good tommy, billy which bible verse is your favorite?
billy: "i can do all things through christ who stengthens me."
dad: great one billy. how about you sally?
sally: "its hard to fight in a gazebo."
dad: ...billy, you'd better get the belt.

The theme of this piece is contradictions. The contradiction of black and write, text and pure color, straight lines of text, and jumbled chaotic text, small text to large text, and a "happy, religious family" to a family with skewed morals. It is also another contradiction, because the piece is quite silly, but also quite serious.

The next collage I did was a bit more straight forward, and connect the images to my letter, N. There are a few lines about noses (N for nose) and images out of a book I found. I wanted the style to be very light, almost like an illustration in a children's book. The quote in the middle picture says "You smell through your nose. The air goes up your nose and into your head. When it gets in your head you can smell it."
The third collage I made had a similar feel to the first one. The images came off a record cover I found. I thought the couple looked very... cheesily happy, so thats what sparked this collage. At the top it has my phrase, and the dialouge goes like this:
man: "One of these days Alice, POW! Right in the kisser."
woman: "Oh but darling you cant, we're in a gazebo."
man: "Frankly my dear, I dont give a damn."

The quote is from the television show, "The Honeymooners". I have a fourth collage, but I havent gotten around to taking a picture of it yet...











Finally, the last thing we had to do was compile all our process materials, such as sketches, extra lino prints, collage materials, etc, into a process book, and bind it together. I drilled holes through the stack of papers and bound mine with some linen string as a Japanese bind.




Woo, that was a long post. But now its done. I think I've pushed a button to make my text underlined, but I cant find the button to take it off, so... oh well.