Fantasy game developer Jordan P interview – Super Magfest 2018 – youtube

Jordan Pierson loves video games and started creating them himself. He’s with JEP games.com and I met him at Magfest 2018. He told me about their newest game Akari

1:22 – Jordan tells me about the game Akari. It’s a 3D anime inspired world. It’s his second game. He says a game delayed is better than a game rushed since there are often bugs and other problems. He wants a game to be polished and tight before releasing it.

3:09 – He’s inspired by video games since he loves them. He’s a Game Cube kid. One of his friends told him he should makes and his brother even tried. He loves making games.

4:03 – He loves listening to music when working. He loves anime music, maybe Final Fantasy music. He takes tons of notes that are all over the place.

5:24 – He loves working on the art style and the environment. He wants the player immersed in the world. His cousin helped on the sprites for the game. He wanted the world to be tight. It has a feel of ancient feudal Japan, India, China and Siamese culture. Jordan’s been into these cultures and it’s not just for the game.

7:34 – His brother made a PC video game based on Leroy Jenkins. This inspired Jordan. He kept trying different game engines. He loves fixing bugs and making basic things happen. Testing is big thing to get Akari completed.

10:08 – His first game was tested at Skills USA in Louisville, Kentucky. It won gold at states and he was blown away. It changed his thinking and convinced him he could create a game people like. He then won third at nationals. He loves how many disciplines come together in game development.

12:05 – Game designers are mad artists. They are awesome entrepreneurs trying to give to others. They can change the world with new designs and new stories.

12:14 – One of his favorite games when he was young was Star Fox Assault. Each character has its own importance. They feel like family. Fire Emblem was another great one. He’s a big Marvel fan and loves video editing. But games are immersive and movies don’t have that experience. Some people think things games are for kids. But games make as much money as music and movies.

16:05 – The game industry has something special and keeps getting bigger. It’ll take over industries. Game movies are pretty awful right now. It’s hard to integrate a game into a movie. The immersive experience is taken out.

18:22 – He has a big game in mind that’s too large scale right now. It’s an anime action-slash theme game. He wants game story lines to keep impacting each other in the game.

19:44 – He’s had a real blast being at Magfest talking to players and game designers. The blind game fans have really inspired him. Akari is at Jepgames.com. They’re also on facebook, twitter and instagram.

 

Links

https://www.skillsusa.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox:_Assault

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Emblem

https://www.jepgames.com/

 

For more “Creating Sci-Fi and Fantasy – An Inside Look” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Jordan Pierson

Host: Cris Alvarez

 

Fantasy and sci-fi artist Amanda Schank interview

Amanda Schank is a digital artist. I interviewed her at Super Magfest 2018 about her art, inspirations and method of working.

1:26 – Her Demon Slayer picture on an alligator rug is one of her favorite works because it’s very much “her”. It’s a line art heavy piece of work. It has a pin-up style. She likes adding shadows to the work. She combines urban wear and medieval images.

4:49 – She’ll stare at a piece of 40 minutes to see anything that needs to be fixed before she declares something done. She’ll even paint over prints once they’re ready for sale at conventions.

9:39 – She grew up watching Inuyasha and got into the mood of painting those characters. It’s influenced her throughout her career. She does everything on computer. She likes using a Cintiq for digital drawing and sketching.

12:57 – Lately she’s been inspired by lots of sci-fi. She’s creating a space station universe art book. Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Cowboy Bebop are currently inspiring her. She watches a lot of sci-fi to finish the book. She loves both the visuals and the characters and their motivations too. Evangelion also inspires her but she isn’t drawing lots of mechs.

16:14 – Her tablet is her most important tool. It’s about a 16 inch screen and she feel comfortably working on it. Photoshop has a nice textured brush too.

18:11 – In 2012 she had done a large painting of Red Riding Hood in armor. Now she revisited the character for a new piece. Right now she most enjoys doing textured line art for pin-up style work. She likes creating tattoo friendly art.

21:30 – She started making art when she was one. When she was nine or so she started watching anime and it was so different from Western cartoons she was fascinated by it. She didn’t care about art museums on school field trips until she got into art. She started posting the art online and she’s had a big following since then.

23:20 – She was on a site called Guyana online where you had an avatar that you could buy clothes for. She started selling her art to buy avatar clothes and then she realized she could make real money for her art. She realized she could make a living from art. She’s been doing commissions for 14 years.

26:14 – Artists are behind the scenes in everything in business. Art directors and artists create media, billboards and so on. They’re crucial to anything visual.

29:20 – She loves the Fifth Element and she watched it all the time with her dad. Star Wars is an inspiration. She loves Child Thief by Brom. He’s a writer and illustrator.   Cowboy Bebop has stuck with her throughout. Neverending Story is one of her loves. She’s been trying to do Fifth Element fan art for a long time but wants to make it perfect so hasn’t finished it.

32:41 – She loved the concept art for Valerian but she wasn’t happy with the movie at all. The visuals weren’t shown as much as advertised. The movie was too rushed to enjoy the art in the movie.

34:51 – Her gallery is on https://amsbt.artstation.com/.

 

Links

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290223/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106145/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213338/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/

https://www.amazon.com/Child-Thief-Novel-Brom/dp/0061671347

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088323/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2239822/

https://amsbt.artstation.com/

 

For more “Creating Sci-Fi and Fantasy – An Inside Look” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Amanda Schank

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: science fiction, fantasy, art, artist, digital art, fifth element, cowboy bebop, anime

 

Game developer Brian Palladino interview

Brian Palladino of WhiteBoard Game Studio studied industrial design but decided to go into indie game development two years ago. I interviewed him at Magfest 2018.

0:47 – Brian talks about his game Disco Ships. It’s sort of like Asteroids and is multi-player. Also, your health is your ammo.

2:40 – Brian started in industrial design and decided to design games using Unity. He took classes on making games and started making prototypes. He was in New Jersey but moved to Philly since there’s a lot of game development going on there. They’re the PHL Collective.

5:30 – The key is to just keep making games. They have weekend game jams to make games. Magfest tries to keep the convention indie. AAA aren’t a part of this convention. Lots of AAA designers like to go indie to create what they want.

10:00 – Brian talks about applying industrial design to help finish a game. Producing is the key. You only learn all the facets if you keep trying new things and new projects.

12:44 – Brian is inspired by all the games he’s played. He likes making things people enjoy. Game creation used to be wizardry to him until he learned how to do it.

14:40 – He loves Nintendo and is inspired by their stuff. Mark Brown on youtube puts up videos on good game design. He’s created his own artwork for the game but he really likes the technical side.

17:40 – He couldn’t do his work without Unity. Music is big for him too. He’s also been in a band with his brother. Creating games brings all his interests together.

20:51 – He loves working on the core mechanics of a game. Game loops are very interesting to him. Adding “juice” or particle effects are really interesting as well.

23:35 – He once designed, on paper, a huge game and realized he had to de-scope the game. Managing his time is one thing he picked up while developing games. He also learned the studio pipeline and process.

24:55 – Game designers should provide enjoyment to people. It’s a circle of enjoyment between the players and the designers.

27:30 – He mentions Stardew Valley as a really interesting task game. Games have tasks to varying degrees.

29:30 – He’s always been a big Star Wars fan. He saw the prequels before the originals. He likes the visuals in the prequels more than he likes the originals. Evolve is a game he really likes. It’s a very futuristic game with a lot of strategy. The developers streamed game development on twitch before they released it.

33:51 – He never watched tv as a kid. He always played games. He’s hard pressed to see a movie. He’s focused on playing games. Interactive content is more interesting. He did like the Aliens series. He also liked Lord of the Rings too. He loves Skyrim and Fall Out.

36:16 – He’d love to create an online multi-player especially as an indie game. He also loves class-based games like Overwatch. He would like to make a mech game. He wants to change up what the controls do for every different character. It would be a form of game art. Grow Home & Grow Up kind of did that.

40:30 – Only 2 years ago he wondered what it would be like to create a game and now he’s here at Magfest. He says if you want to do something just do it. There are lots of resources.

41:50 – They’ll try to put the game on Steam. It’s on itch now. They’ll send press kits to the big companies. They’re on @discoships on twitter.

 

Links

http://discoships.com/

https://phlcollective.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337

https://unity3d.com/

https://stardewvalley.net/

https://www.evolvehq.com/games/3673

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/

http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/1691/Grow_Home__Grow_Up/

 

For more “Creating Sci-Fi and Fantasy – An Inside Look” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Brian Palladino

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: indie game design, video games, magfest, magfest 2018, PHL collective