Girls In Gaming - Rural

GIG Rural Jan 12 2012 Carman

2012-01-23T08:59:00.000-08:00

Girls in Gaming session in the TSRC.

We heard from Erica Glasier, an artist, marketing manager, game designer, blogger, tweeter and more about how she got started in the industry, what she does now and how you can prepare for a career that follows your passion.
She also gave some valuable feedback on our art.

In the afternoon, Sandy and Robin taught us how to take our hand drawn art from the page to digital form and then animate it for use in Flash games.

January 12 Carman

2012-01-16T06:32:00.000-08:00

A great day in Carman! Thanks for hosting us!!!

Erica Glasier of Tactica spoke about her career and how it developed and is progressing. She has a fine arts degree and does graphic arts, game art, children's book illustrations and social media campaigns,

She talked to us about her development as an artist: as a child, at TCI and at university. She also gave us a look at the kinds of work she has done - and she has a rich background of experience.

Erica also gave us some good advice: draw lots, start a web presence, be confident, draw lots of what you like, get your education early and more ....
.

Robin and Sandy Debreuil introduced us to some programming interfaces and languages. Then Sandy had us load a Flash graphic file and led us through using the various tools and layers he used to create the art work for a fortune teller game.

GIG Rural Oct 31, 2011 Carman

2011-10-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Welcome - What is GIG? Competition for best games this year?
Introductions - name, school, game interests/favourites
         x mixers and getting to know each other.
Seth Priebatsch - Building A Game Layer On Top of The World
    x on your own --- Sebastian Deterding- Doing Gamification Right (first 5 minutes)

Game Makers - Sandy and Robin Debreuil (Debreuil Digital Works)
Making games in Kodu (free download from Microsoft Game Lab)
     x also check the Kodu wiki

Devin Reimer - Almost Logical - game maker will talk about his experience becoming a game maker and why you shouldn't program for the Playbook.

GIG March 21 Carman

2011-03-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Carman for hosting us!!

Noah Decter-Jackson (Complex Games) came to talk to us abou tgame design.

He started by talking about the various types of jobs in the gaming industry- on both the production side and the creation side. There are lots of different roles available for different types of people with different interests.

Noah also talked about game design - what the critical elements are and how they fit together. He let us try a number of different examples of games like Tetrix, Pacman and Flow and the ways they are successful without being the same.

Finally he pointed out that for a while it has been necessary for large teams to develop successful games, but now it is now possible for small groups to create and launch games - especiually for the iPod and Android platforms.

In the afternoon, Robin and Sandy Debreuil showed us how to create games in Kodu while Mr. Rivest took a group to learn some javascript.

Survey link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5BGJNTD

Feb. 16, 2011 - RRC and Daniel Mac

2011-02-19T21:45:00.001-08:00

Survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cncmzll

Your teacher has to send in your names to be entered into the draw.

Morning

We were at the Red River Exchange campus to listen to Robert J. Sawyer. who is Canada's best sci-fi writer, and whose lattest series Wake, Watch and Wonder are about a 15 year old blind girls who helps the interenet become conscious.

Robert gave us some background about his career and writing and then answered many great questions fomr the group. He was willing to answer all our questions and gave us great insights into the writing and publishing process and into what happens when your book turns into a TV series and you lose some control.

He also told us thename of his new book, Triggers, which is about post-traumatic stress disorder and an assasination attempt.

His web site has lots of good info - http://www.sfwriter.com/+

We then went to Daniel Mac for pizza.

At DMCI we also learned about Kodu, the 3D game development platform from Microsoft. Sandy and Robin Debreuil showed us many of the features and actions of the program.

GIG February 16 - RRC and Daniel Mac

2011-02-17T22:06:00.000-08:00

Survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cncmzll
Your teacher has to send in your names to be entered into the draw.

Morning
We were at the Red River Exchange campus to listen to Robert J. Sawyer. who is Canada's best sci-fi writer, and whose lattest series Wake, Watch and Wonder are about a 15 year old blind girls who helps the interenet become conscious.
Robert gave us some background about his career and writing and then answered many great questions fomr the group. He was willing to answer all our questions and gave us great insights into the writing and publishing process and into what happens when your book turns into a TV series and you lose some control.
He also told us thename of his new book, Triggers, which is about post-traumatic stress disorder and an assasination attempt.
His web site has lots of good info - http://www.sfwriter.com/

We then we t to Daniel Mac for pizza.

At DMCI we also learned about Kodu, the 3D game development platform from Microsoft. Sandy and Robin Debreuil showed us many of the features and actions of the program.

Carman - Nov. 22, 2010

2010-11-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

A great day in Carman with 15 girls from three schools (Carman, Elm Creek and Winkler).

We started off playing a game that Sandy and Robin made up during a crash game production weekend. They have two over-sized heads that battle each other on various levels. They challenged us to come up with more ideas and levels for the game and there were some great ideas put forward.

Then they gave us a maze game (in Flash) that they created and we were able to play the game and then modify the mazes and create our own and we came up with crazy colours and moving wheels and obstacles that faded in and out and way more.

Lunch was a 'spaghetti lasagna' and salad and puffed wheat square (which you only got if you introduced yourself to someone from another school).

After lunch Karla Burr (Velocity Branding) talked to us about her career as a graphic designer and business owner and about careers in the IT sector.

Finally Sandy and Robin showed us some other game templates they had and we got to play then and make changes to them as well.

Don't forget to join the girls in gaming Facebook group!

Swan River - May 21

2010-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Hey - another great day in Swan River!! Thanks to George, Lana and Cam for arranging this with us.

The girls started the day with Karla Burr - the owner of Velocity and came out to talk to us about her career in graphic design and the companies she has owned and run (she also owned Space Cadets).
She talked about her love of drawing and her one year in Fine Arts before switching to Red River for their 3 year design course (after a year of traveling).

Karla noted the importance of networking online and in person. This includes joining and actively participating in professional organizations. She is also involved in many other projects and at Red River College

After the question and answer session and a bagel break we moved on to some game animation.

Sandy Debreuil from Debreuil Digital Works was here to show us a maze game template that could be modified with our own graphics. We ended up with some very easy and some ridiculously difficult mazes, and some very different looks for the mazes.

Lunch was in the cafeteria.

The afternoon was spent with Robin Debreuil from Debreuil Digital Works (Sandy's brother). Robin brought some more game templates that we worked on. We learned to control some of the variables in the games and to edit the graphics to make these really our own games that look and act very different than the original templates.

...

Carman - April 15, 2010

2010-04-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Wow - back in Carman again!!

The first thing we did was to open up some of the games we had made and modified and showed them off to each other and played them. There were some great ideas and some great developments since last time.

Next Mr Rivest showed us some new ideas in GameMaker. We learned how to make the background move - some of us got a bit seasick!!

Next we added an airplane that we learned to control with the arrow keys on the keyboard. Our airplane eventually could fire bullets by using the space bar. Next we need to add some islands in our ocean, and have other planes for our bullets to hit!

After the break Robin and Sandy showed us three new templates they had created for us. The games were a maze, a matching game and moving game. We got to modify these threee games.

Some of the variations included speed, backgrounds, the moving graphics, scores, controls and timers. There are some major cheaters in the group!!!!!!!!

Great lunch - sandwiches and chefs salads and a well decorated rice krispie cake for dessert.

In the afternoon we showed some of our games to Lasha Orzechowski so she could see what we have done. We showed both our Flash games and our GameMaker games.

Then Lasha told us about her career development - from getting a fine arts degree, to being in a large firm to starting her own firm - she sold Velocity last year.

She gave us a great background on branding' and how she develops a brand for a company - from logos to ads to web sites and more.

She then showed us some of the branding she has done.

We finished the day with a question and answer session.

GIG Swan River March 26 2010

2010-03-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

For the first time we are running two streams for GIG - a girls section and a boys section!!

The boys are working with Robin and Rennie on the game template for the morning and the girls are working with Sandy on drawing and animation.

After lunch we are switching the boys and girls to the other session.

Thanks to Cam, Lana and George for getting this organized at the school for us on such short notice and to the students for showing up on a day off.

Elm Creek March 11, 2010

2010-03-11T21:39:00.001-08:00

Reyn presented some info from Red River College about their programs. There is a great need for women in the IT industry. RRC provided us with some pamphlets about their programs.

Next Robin showed us how to do some drawing in Flash and we created some carrots and monsters for our games and learned how to animate them.

Break - fruit and muffins!

We also uploaded the game template and learned how to move our creations into the template.

Lunch - pasta and cake!!

In the afternoon we added more controls to our paddle nd modified a number of variables to customize our games.

Finally, Clint showed us how to move to another level in game Maker (a new room from an invisible object).

We spent time making vairations of our game and adding new graphics.

Thanks to Deb Russell and Barb Lepp for organizing this for us.

GIG Rural - Carman, Feb 22, 2010

2010-02-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Girls In Gaming Rural 2010

Thanks to Mrs. Armstrong and Carman Collegiate for hosting this session!!

After the introductions, Noah Decter Jackson, the President of Complex Games presented on the whole idea of gaming - including some history and current ideas. Complex Games has developed games such as Pirates Ahoy, Star Alliance and Solaria.

Noah also talked about different roles involved in game design from producers to programmers and artists to game designers (and yes, there are some jobs as game testers). Other posibilities - sound engineers, music composers, motion capture experts, story tellers, etc.

Air Traffic Commander - a new Facebook game developed by Complex Games. Noah will send us the link and I will post it when he does.

Noah also showed us some games and talked about time and cost to develop them - from one day games (Big Fish) to years. He also talked about the role of the game designer and what they have to consider - players, objectives, procedures (actions), rules, resources, outcomes (what happens as you play)

After our break, Heather Armstrong and Clint Rivest showed us GameMaker and how to use it to develop games quickly and easily.We worked on creating the Apple game - from the tutorial.

Lunch - Subway

Afternoon - Sandy and Robin Debreuil of Debreuil Digital Works brought us a Flash template and showed u how to use it to customize it for our own purposes.

We played with hacking the box and circle game they provided and got some wild results.

A free 3D editor -- GMAX (free video game modeling tool)-- http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

Date for next session - click on this Doodle link and make your choices

WInkler Feb 23

2009-02-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

We started the day by learning some of the drawing features in Flash with Robin Debeuil. He had us draw an 8x8 tiled screen that we made flash rapidly.

Robin then started us on some Actionscript - the programming language of Flash.

Subway for lunch!!

In the afternoon, Ryan FitzGerald (from nihilonaut.com) talked to us about story and narrative in games. He talked about the narrative toolbox (including subtext, where what is actually said is not really what is actually meant.) He also metioned that besides programmers, story tellers and artists, games need producers (who find the money and people) and music/sound effects creators.

Ryan talked about ARGs using the AI movie trailer and Nine Inch Nails' album release games as examples. (try argnet.com).

Then he divided the group into groups of five who had to create a game based on the pieces he gave them.

January 26 - Carman

2009-01-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Katie De Sousa showed us some of the art work she is doing at infinite ammo. Check out Paper Moon game on their web site. She talked about her experience as an artist, working online and when she uses paper and when she uses a tablet. Katie says an online presence is essential. Deviant Art is one goodplace she uses.

She also mentioned cgsociety, conceptart.org, and cghub

She went to school in Atlantic Canada , the Centre for Arts and Technology (graphics and animation). Expensive, but very good.

And Katie did some digital drawing while the girls were drawing on paper.

In the afternoon Sandy Debreuil showed us how to do some Flash animation - taking a face and animating it to match some sounds.

Miami Saturday Nov. 22

2008-11-22T09:54:00.000-08:00

Sandy and Robin did the Flash programming thing and the initial games are on their way!!

Here's a link to all your games:
http://miamimanitoba.com/gig/index.html

Sandy also included most of the code, in case any of you forgot anything (no chance of that, I know, but just in case...)

Michelle Osinski shared her experience and ideas about the images of girls and women in gaming. Thanks!!

Thanks again to Wanda Stockford for arranging everything!!!

November 21 2008

2008-11-21T12:46:00.000-08:00

This morning Sandy and Robin Debreuil did a session on storyboarding where we got to see some of the storyboards they have created and got to create our own,

We also started outlining a game on diabetes that we hope to create on Saturday.

Lunch was lasagna and salad!!

In the afternoon, Noah Decter-Jackson helped us understand game design (cause he's a real game designer) and he showed us some cool games.

Finally Sandy and Robin got us started with the drawing tools in Flash.

Welcome to GIG Rural

2008-11-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

GIG is Girls in Gaming (an intro to the video game industry)

This is the rural Manitoba edition - so far involving schools from Miami, Winkler and Morden, and hoping for Carmen, Altona and Gretna to get involved.