Dutch animators Jurjen Bosklopper and Mustafa Kandaz created this wonderfully executed short in just a couple of weeks to protest the sale of Foie Gras at Disneyland Paris. Loving the backgrounds too which have a bit of an Eyvind Earle feel about them. (via Cartoon Brew)
Inspired by comic artist and theorist Scott McCloud, French artist Yves Bigerel visually demonstrates how he believes online comics have the scope to be something much more than just reproductions of their paper-based counterparts. Freed from the limitations of print digital comics offer a greater control over the pacing of sequential storytelling; control Yves believes hasn’t yet been fully explored.
He follows this up with a second exploration, imaginatively entitled “About About Digital Comics“. (via Steve)
Zork, the renowned text adventure released in 1979, returns in a new, free, web-based guise for the Facebook Generation as Legends of Zork, developed by Jolt for Activision.
Legends of Zork sees the Zork franchise re-invigorated for the first time since the release of the graphical point and click adventure Return to Zork in 1998. No longer a text or point-and-click adventure, Legends builds on the more casual social web games such as The Nethernet (formerly PMOG) and those that riddle Facebook.
Players create their character then venture further out into the world through simple battles (there doesn’t seem to be any way to use different attacks but as I’ve only been able to play to level 3 these may be learnt later in the game) and levelling. As the character’s level increases more areas become available to “adventure” in. Skill points are awarded as you level to spend on new skills. Money can be found on enemies and acquired by selling recovered items when returning to your home, The White House.
Beyond battling with friends (and enemies) PvP-style in arenas there doesn’t seem to be much more social stuff available but, again, this is early days and more could easily be added in the future.
Die-hard Zork fans might unwelcome the lack of any real adventuring in this new game — there appear to be no quests to speak of, other than going out and bashing stuff of increasingly higher level for cash — but it still appears to be a competitively fun social past-time for when your arms hurt from trying to beat your mother’s high score in Bejeweled Blitz over on Facebook.
You’ll find me on Legends of Zork as Travelling Salesman Muttonchops, named after the very first character I created on World of Warcraft all those years ago. Feel free to say hello!
Finally, for the incredibly nostalgic, you can still play the original Zork adventure online for free.
Yes, yes, yes! A belief I’ve maintained for many years — that Disneyland is an experience designer’s wet dream — has been confirmed! I’m so glad to see that THQ’s Creative Manager Scott Rogers shares my understanding. Scott worked on games including Pac-man World, God of War and Drawn to Life.
Thankfully Cory Doctorow took notes from Scott’s presentation at GDC today and made them along with photos of the slides available for all. Scott states on his blog that he’ll make his slides available shortly.
Update: The slides are now up.
This has just brought to mind the piece Cory wrote for Wired back in 2006 interviewing former Disneyland Imagineer Danny Hillis about Disneyland as an alternate world, a precursor to today’s massively multiplayer games. It all gets me wondering whether anyone else has written about or has been inspired by this topic… Some investigation awaits!
(via Boing Boing)
Host Master and the Conquest of Humor
I love this mini adventure game starring game designer Tim Schafer created by his Double Fine studio in the distinctive style of the games he produced for LucasArts back in the day like The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. Play Tim as he searches, at the last minute, for jokes to use in his GDC presentation. Wonderfully tongue-in-cheek and frightfully nostalgic.
Makes me wonder why LucasArts haven’t yet re-released those classic point and click adventures on platforms like the Wii and DS. They’re made for them — and wouldn’t cost a thing to port! (via 1Up)
You can now follow Antikewl Daily on various social networks. Actually, you’ve been able to do it for ages but we’ve never made much of a song and dance about it!
Follow us on Twitter to be kept up-to-date on all the latest posts, plus a few extra “Also…” links through the week. If you want to follow me personally, you can do that too. We’re also on Facebook.
The long-awaited (for me, certainly) proper glimpse of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. Directed by Spike Jonze and based on the classic children’s book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Spike Jonze is best known for his work on the films Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation — plus the awesome Beastie Boys promo video to Sabotage.
HD version also available on Apple Trailers. (via Ain’t it Cool News)
This is something I’d been meaning to share for some time and has, in fact, been sitting in the Friends’ links to the left for about a year!
I used to work with Lindsey many years ago when she was all pixels and vectors. Since then she’s moved to Scotland, branched into some rather splendid Victorian-inspired artwork and goes by the name of Little Robot.
She also has an Etsy shop.
Taking a break from the usual posting of cartoons, disneyland and video games, I’ve run into a bit of a dilemma with this blog. As I’m not having much luck exploring the more official channels I thought I’d attempt one last cry for help using the very medium that causes me so many sleepless nights!
Ok, perhaps a little over the top but my problem is this:
I can’t get rid of those ads!
I’ve been using Feedburner’s FeedFlare to add some useful links to the bottom of each blog post but something appears to have gone wrong when I merged my Feedburner account with my Google (and, consequently, Google Adsense) account. The ad doesn’t seem to be connected to my Google Adsense account and there’s no way to change it from within my Feedburner account.
Also, because Feedburner support seems to have disappeared when Google ate them up, I’m unable to get any support! I’ve tried the forums and tried emailing them direct but have no confidence that I’m ever going to get this resolved. That leaves me with a couple of options:
Anyone got any suggestions? Do get in touch, either by email or by leaving a comment below.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Update: Google dropped me an email last night with a request for further information. Hopefully on the road to getting this fixed!
Update 2: No further contact from Google yet so I’ve removed FeedFlare and rolled my own “share” links.
Update 3: Fixed! They’re back. They really should update “del.icio.us” to “delicious” though…
Here’s a wonderful retrospective of Disneyland’s Space Mountain by Geoff at Your Souvenir Guide.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be anywhere near Anaheim on its opening day in 1977 (nor, for that matter, old enough!) and haven’t had the opportunity to revisit since the 2005 revamp, which saw it return to the original iconic white, but this ride still holds a special place in my heart.
Disneyland’s Space Mountain is “Star Wars” and punk rock and “Saturday Night Fever” and the New York Blackout, all made one single, glorious whole. It’s all about believing, just for a moment, that you are riding the engine at the center of the universe. At that moment, you are ten years old, like me.
I couldn’t have said it better.
I’ll still miss the Dick Dale soundtrack which ran from 1995 to 2003 though!