Braid Artist’s Diary

By: Derek Yu

On: March 12th, 2008

David Hellman, the fantastic artist behind both A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible and, of course, Braid, has a new blog wherein he discusses his art.

The latest entry, part II of his “Art of Braid” series, shows the progression from Jon Blow’s programmer art (which is quite fun!) to what you see today. I love this kind of thing! There’s some good exposition on his creative/development process, too.

Part I of the series reveals Braid Art’s abstract beginnings.

The State of Jon Blow

By: Derek Yu

On: February 14th, 2008

Jonathan Blow has a couple of new lectures up, available for download in mp3 format. They come with the power points he used during the talks.

The first one is from a lecture he gave at Game Focus Germany on January 24th. In it, he talks about design and production, and why he develops games as an indie. Really insightful look into independent game dev. Also some very sobering realities. 3-year games? Bug reports from Microsoft with hundreds of entries?

The second lecture was given at the Nordic Game Jam in Copenhagen on February 1st. I haven’t listened to this one yet, but the focus, I believe, is more on the actual physical labor of creating a game – namely, “design, programming, and art.” (EDIT: Apparently it isn’t like that at all.)

The hardest part of listening to the first lecture was hearing Jon play Braid but not being able to see or play it myself! But if you’re wondering how it’s looking, check out this post which has a bunch of HUGE screens. Props to the artist, David Hellman! Looks fantastic.

Jon is also running an interesting-sounding session at GDC next week, called “”http://braid-game.com/news/?p=161">Nuances of Design."

(Valentine’s Card Image Source: Marzy Blahs)