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Netflix enters the design world for its next docu-series
Next month, Netflix will debut a new documentary series called Abstract: The Art of Design highlighting on individual designers' work and methodology. It'll begin streaming on February 10th, and from the trailer, it looks a lot like the cooking-focused Chef's Table, but for design.
OS X animations used to make abstract art
Emilio Gomariz is an artist who's used the window animations in OS X to create some pretty amazing abstract art. You can look at the YouTube videos to see just what he's done, but my favorite is the one above, called Twist Choreography. To create it, Gomariz opened up a series of long, thin windows from the dock, spinning them out into an orderly stack. There are others, too, where he uses Expose or other OS X tricks (you can make the window animations go slow like this by holding Shift, in case you hadn't heard that yet) to create beautiful patterns as the windows grow and shrink. It's very impressive work, and it shows not only just how creative Gomariz is in terms of putting these things together, but how beautiful the most basic features in the core interface of OS X is as well. There's a lot of creativity here, both from the artist himself, and from the UI designers who helped put OS X together.
Final Fantasy XI outlines the road ahead for classes
Final Fantasy XI has a pretty expansive list of classes, and while that gives players plenty of freedom, it can pose a headache for design trying to keep each job distinct. But the development team has managed thus far, and the latest update previewing the future philosophy for job adjustments shows that there are still more elements to be brought into play. Each of the game's 20 jobs has a unique vision and role, with several potential new abilities discussed. While none of the directions design is taking jobs will be of huge surprise to veteran players, there are some interesting promises of future abilities and goals. For example, the team wants to give Beastmasters the tools to be useful and desirable in a party, while Dragoons are potentially getting more enmity management and more synergy with the wyvern. Final Fantasy XI players should look at the full rundown to see where their favorite class sits in terms of design -- as well as hints of what might be coming down the line.
Lo Res Project builds abstract low-poly models of luxury cars and other trinkets
Triangles. Their scarcity has been the bane of gamers since the dawn of time (circa 1993) and every single leap forward in graphical performance has been tied to increasing polygon counts and smoothing out curvatures. Color us amused, then, to see someone going in the opposite direction for art's sake. The Lo Res Project from United Nude scans in 3D models of everyday objects -- like a Lamborghini Countach, we've all got one of those, right -- before scaling down the complexity of the resulting data to achieve radical-looking angular representations of the original as above. The best part, however, is that if they're really happy with their digital outcome, the designers go and build the damn thing in the real, living, breathing world. Some might describe it as sophistication through simplification, but we just see it as one of the truly geekiest ways to decorate your abode. Hit the source for a picture gallery.
Author of World of Warcraft and Philosophy interviewed
World of Warcraft and Philosophy got released a little while back -- it's a book by Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger that examines WoW-related topics like roleplaying and the Corrupted Blood plague, and ties them into philsophical ideas and thinking. TechFlash has now posted an interview with Nordlinger, and it's a good read as well. Nordlinger says that one reason they chose to talk about World of Warcraft in this way is that it's so incredibly big -- when you have 12 million (give or take a few at this point) people playing a game with a GDP larger than some smaller nations, you're going to touch on all sorts of interesting ethical, moral, and other philosophical ideas. He says the book has been pretty popular, and a few universities are currently considering teaching courses based on the material, not only because it's interesting, but thinking about the game in this way helps improve abstract thinking in general. And perhaps most interesting, he says that reading the book could help players better make ethical and moral decisions in the game. Just ninja-ing the mount from an Onyxia raid might not mean much to you, but when you look at the bigger picture, and what those actions mean for ethics in general, Nordlinger says the book might help players "make more aware decisions, if not different decisions." Of course, in practice, trying to explain higher philosophy to ninjas might not have the desired effect, but it does seem true that exploring the higher meanings of this game and the intents of the people playing it might put a little more meaning into the pixels as well.
Eliss releases version 1.1
Unfortunately, I missed Eliss the first time around, but I won't make the same mistake this time. It's a game designed by a French and Portugese graphic designer named Steph Thirion, and it's sort of an abstract multitouch puzzler -- you can pull and push together differently colored planets all floating around in a sort of space-like environment, with some groovy synth sound effects and music cuts to back up the gameplay. The game got nominated for an IGF award, and for anyone interested in fun puzzlers (not to mention the possibilities of multitouch in gaming), it's a must-see.I say "the first time around," because it's been on the App Store for a while now, but the game just got updated to version 1.1, and the main tweak is in the difficulty -- there are now 25 levels instead of 20, and the curve has been adjusted to make moving through the stages a little smoother. And the game got a price drop, too -- you can pick it up for a mere $3.00. As I said, definitely worth it to get a little multitouch practice in for what might be the future of gaming.
Motorola gets artsy with the KRZR; T-Mobile wants in?
We knew it was just a matter of time before the trickle of KRZR variants coming out of Moto turned into a flood; well, it looks like we'd best be getting to higher ground. We turned up these four models of the GSM-based K1, possibly called "Abstract" and "Rose" (seems logical, right?) in your choice of black or blue. We're not sure where these things are destined or when they'll be heading there, but we also found us some screen caps of a K1 running T-Mobile (check a few after the break) -- and considering that T-Mobile is loving it some fancy Motos lately... well, we'll just let y'all draw your own conclusions.
