This extended chat over at the Giant Bomb headquarters post wrap up of the Game Developers Conference was really fun to watch. You get expected appearances from the GB crew (Patrick Klepick, Jeff Gerstmann) and lots of game industry veterans (Phil Fish of Fez, Robert Ashley). It’s a good balance between random humor and some actual serious discussion on game design and music.
Almost any modern web designer now has to decide between potentially thousands of custom web fonts. To rapidly prototype different combinations in the browser, even with good front end development chops, can be pretty time consuming.
Typecast is a web app that tries to address this problem. You get a much more visual, WYSIWYG interface for trying out font combinations, but with the advantages of actual font rendering in the browser. I don’t see a personal need for the app given the cost ($29 a month isn’t a minor expense) and considering at my day job we’re mostly focused on Proxima Nova. But especially in an agency environment, this could be a huge time saver.
I’ve seen hints at this over at other posts, but developer Rob Stinogle gives the best explanation I’ve seen of how to use Dropbox as an effective Git remote repository. It’s no GitHub, but for a private project where you’re the sole contributor, it’s pretty slick, not to mention free (assuming you have the Dropbox space) and secure.
Really brilliant super cut of Bruce Willis being pursued by characters in 39 different action films. If you’re even vaguely into Willis or classic action films, it’s a fun way to spend ten minutes.
Mobile designer Rakesh, writing on his own blog Radesign, gives the GMail mobile app a visual makeover. I’m not crazy about everything he does (most notably, making unread titles blue), but if anything, Rakesh illustrates some great guidelines for general readability and contrast. It’s applicable equally to both native mobile app design and the web.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading through this extended profile of developer Patrick Welker’s setup, as interviewed by tech writer/blogger Shawn Blanc. We share a lot of software in common, and I dig his hardware setup, though mine is far more compact and travel friendly due to my style of work.
Designer Khoi Vinh:
This inverse relationship between active user input and automated output is wonderfully consistent with how real people use mobile software. Unlike desktops, mobile devices are more often than not complements to other, real world activities, where ‘computing’ is not the main activity. Phones and tablets are used in situ, and so their software cannot afford to demand high levels of input effort.
This post over at Definition Magazine admittedly gets pretty technical, wading into a lot of hard core cinematography tools and cameras that I didn’t fully understand. Nevertheless, if you’re into film it’s a revealing read talking about shooting a film on the ground in often harsh, hostile conditions. Make sure you make it to the end where Zero Dark Thirty DP Greig Fraser talks about setting up a lab secretly in a Jordanian hotel. Crazy stuff; huge drives, a 42″ calibrated monitor and a Mac Pro all running through the night as principal photography was conducted during the day.
Giancarlo Esposito, best known as Gus Fring from the Breaking Bad series has a really thorough, highly entertaining talk with The A.V. Club on his past roles, from Miami Vice to Malcolm X and of course Breaking Bad.
Esposito is incredibly charming and eloquent, consistent with the other journalistic appearances I’ve seen him in. A few surprises here as well, like way back in 1982 where he worked on Sesame Street (!):
But what I learned from that show was that there are never any small parts or any small characters. You could be inside a bird costume and still have an incredible effect. I absolutely loved that job, because it was like taking care of a big kid! Mickey’s all practical; he’s a guy who’s Big Bird’s camp counselor for a couple of weeks. But that provided me with a couple of weeks’ work and an opportunity to work with a master. You see Big Bird, but you rarely see who he is. You kind of do, though. You feel his mastery. How wild is life, that you only see him through his feathers? [Laughs.] He affected my life in a major way.
Gamasutra‘s Leigh Alexander:
We dispute and debate, whisper our private hypotheses about those early glimpses and how we think they might turn out, but in the end everyone publishes an obedient preview at the appointed embargo lift, cautiously optimistic.
Who do we serve? What’s the role of subjectivity? What do we owe the developer?
Excellent questions raised by Leigh here. It’s really reached the point where I’m aligned with Giant Bomb on this one: previews are effectively dead. Write up a news story that sticks mostly to the facts before a game is released and wait for a real review and discussion once it’s out.