Sources of inspiration thread

[Stephen L (inactive)]

I mentioned this on the other forum an age ago, but I was reading through them again today - I really like the poetry of Yannis Ritsos. Someone posted a bunch of translations over here. The following is maybe a bit too ideologically convenient, but the easiest bit to quote from out of context

AND look, my brother, we learned to talk
very quietly and simply.
We understand each other now—there is no need for anything more.
And I say that tomorrow we will become still simpler;
we'll find those words that take on the same weight in all hearts, on all lips
so that we can call figs figs, and a trough a trough,
so that other will smile and say 'We're making you
a hundred poems an hour.' This is what we want too.
Because we do not sing to separate ourselves from people, my brother,
we sing to bring people together.

[shouldice]

Here's kind of a silly one, but some great ideas can come from it: http://videogamena.me/

[Kor]

This live recording of the Austin Peralta / Strangeloop Project is a real inspiration for me. It's conjugate sounds for breaking genres.

I'm enjoying this a lot.

Me too. Thanks!

[mcc]

Is there a word for this art style?



Like this thing from old comics with everything thin crisp lines and the big fields of solid color (usually slightly ugly or inappropriate colors, and everything seemed to always be either washed-out or oversaturated). There was an era when it seems like all comics looked like this, I assume because of something about the printing process?







I don't really like comics but sometimes I like this particular style rather a lot, there's something that seems really uncomplicated and... honest, about it? I found myself wondering about video games with graphics "drawn this way" after watching this one really fantastic Madvillain video, which does an amazing job of imagining that art style in motion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY

It seems like cel shading should be able to look like this as easily as the sort of Disney-ish style people usually seem to go for, and in sprite land it should be even easier to make this work, but I don't think I've ever seen this really explored in a game (comix zone had more of a 90s style to it?). The two games that seem to come closest are Viewtiful Joe (that got a bit more anime at moments, but it seemed to be aiming in this direction) and Killer 7. Killer 7 was almost more kind of its own thing but there are a lot of things in that one really striking Batman Year One shot I posted at the top there that make me think of what Killer 7 later did (all-consuming pools of shadow, unusual but expressive color choices).

Somewhere in this post I want to mention Jack Kirby's New Gods but I have no appropriate segue. New Gods / Fourth World if you're not familiar was the one series where they finally just let Kirby's animation run as bugfuck nuts as it wanted to if he weren't constrained to writing stories about humans on earth wearing capes:







Oh my God what

[Ed K]

Oh nice! I don't know if there's a word for it, but I've been trying to develop something along these lines for a while.
(For my efforts, see various images here. NB some of the art is "sampled", and none of it animates..)

As well as comics (eg. this, via this book) I was also getting very interested in woodcuts, because it felt like something that might work as highly constrained game art:
Also: Frans Masereel

Someone (can't remember who) pointed my to ZPC, a game with a similar style.

I really like Mike Mignola's treatment of this:

Speaking of whom, BLDGBLOG (worth a bookmark in general) did a great interview with him, mostly about settings rather than graphic style.

---

A few more unrelated things:
Recycled Replica Rayguns
Boris Artzybasheff (Soviet Anthropomorphic Machines)
Socotra - a very alien-looking island
Tantalisingly abstract "landscape with house" (found via butdoesitfloat.com, but you've already got that bookmarked, right? :P)

[peterstock]

At the risk of being completely at odds with the rest of the comments, I find nature very inspiring - plants, animals and landscapes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterstock/

[Kor]

At the risk of being completely at odds with the rest of the comments, I find nature very inspiring - plants, animals and landscapes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterstock/

GET OUT!

hehe :P
No way. Nature is awesome :3


Shinmoedake volcano


source

[shouldice]

Ferrofluid sculptures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me5Zzm2TXh4

"Science is kind of like magic sometimes."

[Ed K]

At the risk of being completely at odds with the rest of the comments, I find nature very inspiring - plants, animals and landscapes.

Hey, not at odds with me! Eat* plants, watch animals**, sleep in landscapes...
(*With the right understanding of dangers and armed with some ethnobotanical appreciation. **Maybe eat a few of them too, within reason :P)

That ferrofluid is creepily alive, shifting and shivering like that. Uncanny.

[shouldice]

That ferrofluid is creepily alive, shifting and shivering like that. Uncanny.

It's beautiful, but it's also kind of what I imagine highly concentrated liquid Evil to look and behave like.

[Salamosam]

This book: http://www.amazon.com/Web-Life-Scientific-Understanding-Systems/dp/0385476760/
Web of Life by Fritjof Capra.
He discusses life and organisms as a process, which I then try to emulate using game mechanics.
Entropy, evolution, cell division, consumption and waste, the whole bit.

[mcc]

Via Brian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamihlapinatapai

[thecatamites]

Ivan Chtcheglov's "Formulary For A New Urbanism" is really good and also kind of exciting from a vidcon perspective in that theres maybe not a huge gap between "WILD STREET"/"HOTEL OF STRANGERS" and "MOON ZONE"/"DRILL ZONE" etc....?? get Pumped about space....

the Monster Killers webcomic is wonderful and really gets across the sense of uh extremely dense weird worlds that I've always liked about games



everything in this e-cache...

http://nomoneydown.tumblr.com/ this is a really good tumblr / recommended for people who like noirlac etc..!

chinese bootleg games like this one

edit: also EVERYTHING!! from this site of old japanese graphical text adventure games http://oldavg.blog.shinobi.jp/ there's a lot of amazing looking games with titles like MYSTERY HOUSE and DREADFUL CAVERN and also everything's drawn in this kind of mspaintesque lineart style that i like a lot. my favourite is this game http://oldavg.blog.shinobi.jp/Entry/60/ for the wonderful colours

[mcc]

There is a store I like in Houston called Half Price Books. My favorite thing to do at Half Price Books is to go to the technology section and try to find books on obsolete programming languages. I was out visiting Berkeley last night with a friend and to my surprise learned there is a Half Price Books in Berkeley, I of course made a beeline for the tech system and there I discovered--

A book named Cyberspace, published 1991.



"A possible 'urban landscape' of the matrix. Ownership and identity groups of data cells are indicated by the transparent superstructures. Note clock-number orientation system on the horizon."



"Two algorithmically composed objects in a cyberspace chamber. Dynamically varying algorithmically composed textures combining computed and scanned information are displayed on both objects and environment."

That second message was attached to what you realized, if you stared at it for a moment, was in fact like a model made out of wood or something and then spray-painted to look glossy and computer-rendered. They wanted a picture of a computer-generated geometric shape, but apparently lacked the ability or budget to make that happen, so they just mocked up a real object and tried to pass it off as a 3D-rendered one.

[Jonas]

A great source of inspiration for me is the work of Lord Dunsany. (My favourite of his short stories, and probably the best short story I've ever read, is The Field.)