Dodo Blog

It’s been a while since I posted a random selection of links: A look at the progression of colour through Pixar’s UP, Better Off Undead: a wonderful short film by Bobby Pontillas, a short piece on subtractive game design as seen in Ico and Portal … and stylish mockups of collectors edition game cover art. [...]

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I just got an article published on Gamasutra!

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Just came back from the excellent Annecy 09 animation festival, and a short stop in Paris for the AIgamedev conference, the latter marking my first attempt at public speaking as a game developer. I was invited to participate in a panel on how animation combines with AI to create interesting character behaviour, which has been [...]

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From the Experimental Gameplay Sessions: I couldn’t make it out to GDC but I wish I could’ve seen this: Spy Party: This game, developed by Chris Hecker (”Spore“) has a character doing suave and subtle things in a cocktail party, trying not to get spotted. One player is the spy, whose animations are a little [...]

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Some sites worth stopping by: Victor Navone has a great post on expressive eyebrows, Jesse Harlin thinks song in games can do better than fake Latin … and Dinosaur Comics is still hilarious. Speaking of hilarity, I’ve recently started listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast. Interesting and often funny discussion on the ever varied subject [...]

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For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games… Now, The Act…

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For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games… A bit of Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 this time… One thing Valve does very well is make it feel like you’re present in the world by having characters [...]

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There’s a great post at Temple of the Seven Golden Camels on how posture can be used to say different things, and how effects can lead the eye… I don’t have to tell you how this could apply as much to games as it does to drawing.

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There was something else I wanted to talk about in Shadow of the Colossus. There are many things that set apart this game, but there is one that’s rarely mentioned: This game has anticipation, one of the key principles of animation so often deliberately ignored in games. It is interesting that Ueda chooses not to [...]

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For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games… Two this time… Ico and Shadow of the Colossus: Not the most recent, but still remarkable both, for their daring use of animation in making you feel connected to the world [...]

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