Hypercompendia

After playing a bit in the various software programs that are geared towards story in games, hypertext, animation, if, etc., I ‘m getting the feeling that I really like playing in words. That is, I like typing them.

When working in Storytron or Alice, even though I understood the mechanics and understood them to be a simplified and organized method of creating via extremely complicated written programming, the methods didn’t particularly appeal to me.

In other words, I think that even with the format of simplification for the writer, I would much prefer to be able to type in "Alice takes three steps forward and turns to face the White Rabbit."  This action is clearly a direction possible in Alice, but the method of achieving it, even though meant to be simpler, seems to me to be more complicated.  Or maybe, as a writer, it just doesn’t hold the same glow.

I want it I want it I want it.  I also want another thirty years to play with all my toys.

iModeller 3D Professional Edition that makes 3-D out of a series of photographs.

Stumbled onto a video via The Writers’ Group and just can’t come to terms with it. 

Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the main brains behind Alice, is dying of cancer.  Inspirational above and beyond the very depressing fact that this young man’s life is being cut short and that his wife and three young sons will not have his physical presence in their lives.

Every one of us is given life with the caveat of its inevitable end.  One life is no more valuable than another.  And yet, sometimes you just can’t help but feel the pain of loss.

Just to have it handy when the time is right, a link to a website called gabcast which seems to offer in audio what You-Tube does for video.

An example, where it can be used embedded in a weblog, is at The Writer’s Blog where Ruth reads her poem, Night Hunger.

Found this rather comprehensive site that’s free for the sign-up and gives some excellent lessons towards drawing: Drawspace

Excellent for the beginner or anyone interested in the growing field of animation and new media.

If I knew what I have in software capabilities of the programs I have, I may be already able to create an element or object and then animate it, which just happens to be both my burning desire and the big boulder in my path to successful learning.

Then I stumbled across this program, Toonboom, which has 2D capabilities of animation and is compatibly integrated into software such as Flash, and possibly Alice.  Here’s one of the tutorials and it sure looks like it works very similar to the Adobe programs.   I’m adding Toonboom to my sidebar as a possibility though it just dawned on me that I can possibly find out on the Alice forums how some of the items and characters were created by the users. 

It seems I carry my sabotage techniques into this area of new media as well.  Slowly getting used to the commands, taking a day to make an arm move because I back out in disinterest when it doesn’t go my way.

Or maybe more; looking on the web for creating a character from scratch that can be integrated with Alice.  Noble I would hope, but more likely simply stubborn, not to want to use an unoriginal.  The creative spirit is easily offended.

Maybe it’s the Borgesian influence of Ficciones that I’m currently reading, but it seemed like a good idea to practice manipulation of Alice by creating my own people and have them walk through a maze.

There is a taller hedge maze available, but then I just know that with my lousy sense of direction, and even with the top angle view, I’d lose Joe and Ada and never find them again.

Well I have a small working video produced in Alice just using some of the basic principles and keeping it real simple.  It’s not the same one I started with Socrates and Dr. Sheutzenheimer, since I’d developed some sense of story with that and didn’t want to mess it up.

Overall, the software is enjoyable to work with and one of the easier ones I’ve tried.  The graphics being as sophisticated as they are helps tremendously to keep the momentum up when drudging through the technical aspects of making the animation work.  I think that’s what hindered me on Scratch; it just wasn’t nice enough looking for the effort put into it.  When you see what’s available and what’s being done by folk in the animation field, even at amateur levels, you want to leap rather than crawl.

Besides, I’ve always been one for instant gratification.

Stacking snowmen, aligning soldiers, finding the center of gravity, learning angles, point of view, perception.

Just playing; getting used to subtleties of movement much as learning touchpad or a mouse.