Since the second project of the semester is about game design, I thought I would write about an artist in that field. I remember seeing a documentary two semesters ago called “Pixel Art” on youtube. I thought it would be the perfect place to find a game designer. His name is Jason Rohrer. There isn't alot of information on how he came about as an artist or why he decided to pursue a career in the field of Game Design. Jason Rohrer is known as a game designer and a computer programmer but he also writes and is a musician. Jason has been making games since 2005. This was the year that his first game Transcend was released for the world to see. The most recent game that Jason created is called Diamond Trust of London which is a " A two-player strategy game about deception" Coming fall 2011 for the Nintendo DS For more information about the other games that he released see the third link under other links.
Having made 9 games since 2005, the game that recieved the most attention is called Passage. The video at the top of the page will give you a glimpse of how the game was
Sources:
1) Pixel Documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU
2) Background info about Passage: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/statement.html
3) Short Video documentary of Passage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3o0HFXPfco
Other Links:
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/
http://northcountrynotes.org/jason-rohrer/worklog/
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/releaseLog.html
desgined. The drawing style of the video game tha Jason uses is pixel art. The main story line of this video game is abou the "passage of life and death." His characters are representational figures of himself when he was younger and as he got older. The female figure that is seen in the game is acutally his wife. These two figures travel sideways throughout the game passing blocks looking for treasures. The characters and the choice of color is really simple and not too over the top which works well with how the message of the story is conveyed. It's intersting to see the backgrounds disappear into the sides. Over all the game lasts under 5 minutes.
I was really interested in how Jason created his characters for his video game since I was basically in charge of the look and sprites of the characters.