first social of 2010 is… Thursday Feb 11th***

To the distinguished membership of the Hand Eye Society: apologies for this double-post (reason: it’s complicated), please note that the corrected date for this event is Thursday, February 11th 2010. ***

For the fifth Hand Eye Society Social, the first of 2010, we are preparing a brief audiovisual presentation intended to thrill & amuse. Hosted by Mr. Nathan Vella of Toronto’s own Capy, a studio that has recently released a couple of thingamjigs for Sony & Nintendo’s machines, the presentation will include glimpses at two types of blinking lights offered by two dudes with beards:

Firstly, Mr. Kris Piotrowski, born in Poland & raised in Cuban Missile Ssauga, a former Ryerson film student and currently creative director at one of them independent videogame studios located here in Toronto, will be presenting for the first time a (hopefully) crazybananas Wiiware project called ‘Heartbeat’, while attempting to explain some learnings from its roundabout design process.

Secondly, Mr. Craig D. Adams, born on Canada’s west coast & living in Toronto since the turn of this 21st century, will be presenting a three-way collaborative project named ‘Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP’, described as a brave experiment in I/O cinema for Apple’s touchtronic machines featuring 1) the remarkable pixel artwork of Superbrothers, an ambiguously pluralized & irritatingly cryptic art & design organization known for the occasional published pixel illustration & a few DIY videogame efforts at ToJam & with the AGI plus 2) the soulful soundz of Toronto’s Jim Guthrie, the Juno nominated recording artist known for using a PSone as a drum machine & sequencer to make marvelous music 3) the engineering capabilities & videogame design prowess of the fine & noble folks at Capy.

These two projects, still deep in development and up until now all but unseen, will be making what is effectively their world premiere at this free presentation and social event at Unit Bar on Queen West in Toronto on February 11th. Doors will open & beers will be available from 19:00 EST and the half-hour presentation itself will begin at 20:00 EST (otherwise known as eight o’clock in the evening).

Afterwards the entire Heartbeat & S:S&S EP teams, including Mr.Jim Guthrie, will be on-hand for chit-chat, poutine or what-have-you.

*** It has been reported by members of the Hand Eye Society that, due to a rare bug with Safari, Mozilla & all internet browsers other than Netscape Explorer v1.7, the date of the next social was incorrectly displayed in a recently published post & in the promotional images on handeyesociety.com & everywhere else on the internet too.

The correct date for the next social is in fact Thursday February 11th 2010. For real. The 11th. ELEVEN. TEN PLUS ONE. (NOT THE FOURTH). We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this confusion may have caused.

DS Gaming Night Tonight

Oh hai!

So a while ago my friend Scott (the voice actor from Night of The Cephalopods), and I used to throw regular DS nights in bars, then we all got busy and things got put on the back burner. But we decided to start it up again for 2010.

We’ll be having a DS night tonight (Wednesday the 13th), from 7pm until around 1am at The Central over at 603 Markham Street.

More details can be found on Facebook

Feel free to drop in and play a round!

Social #5: The World Premiere of Something Cool

At:
the Unit Bar
1198 Queen St W.
MAP
the unlabelled bar next to the pawnshop, which is next to the Gladstone

On:
November 26th, 2009.
7PM

Let’s:
Smash talk the trash and video games what?

Seriously:
Pekko Koskinen,
from FINLAND, designer of two IGF award winning games Dragonfly Variations and Spawns of Deflebub, as well as co-creator of TOJam game Flowers of Error

and Shawn McGrath,
from EVERYWHERE, creator of Chain3 for iPhone, as well as ToJam favourites Xiq and A Game About Bouncing

Together they secretly collaborate on an unannounced project, Dyad, making this social the WORLD PREMIERE of their new game.  Watch a demonstration of the game and then a break down of design concepts showing an evolution from THIS to THIS.  Afterwards, ask Pekko how he choregraped a dance using shoot-em-up game rules, and ask Shawn about how awesome it was to have Tetsuya Mizuguchi (producer of Rez, Lumines, Space Channel 5) play his game.

As coleslaw, or corn-bread, but ultimately depending on blood sugar levels, Jon Mak (Everyday Shooter guy) may present old, abandoned prototypes of games he and Shawhan (I Am Robot and Proud guy) worked on.

COME and BRING ALL FRIENDS.

Canzine Artcade 2009

Pictures do not really do it justice. When you’re standing in front of the TORONTRON with your hands on the classic joystick and button, you’re wrapped in a cocoon of sound and light that is an experience more than the sum of its parts.

While the crown jewel at the event was undoubtedly the TORONTRON, we had a bunch of things going on in the Artcade. Here’s Craig’s quick vid sweep of the room.

We set up three stations for the game-curious to creatively engage with games. We had a couple hundred people through the room, and they really seemed to dig it. Craig and Karie sat down people in front of Scratch to mess around with a pre-existing game (Jori’s freaky baby at the end of the vid was an example of this), Mark and Rose showed people the wild fun to be had attaching balloons to buses with Gary’s Mod, and Davin invited people to draw their own videogame character which he then animated in front of their eyes.

You can check out all the characters that were created at Canzine including my crappy one — just click on my character and use the right and left arrow. But even more amazingly, if you have a webcam you can actually draw and animate your character from home.

Here’s how:
1. Print out this PDF.
2. Draw your 4 frames (use colour if you want!)
3. Make sure your webcam is plugged in, go to this page and allow Flash to access it.
4. Put your page in front of the cam and line it up (you might want to try lighting it evenly if you have a desk lamp).
5. Click Grab, and then give it a one word character name. It’ll save it to the server (note: there’s no way to delete this at the moment).
6. Now you can go to the character viewer page and find your name in the list.

Kudos to Davin for making this for the Artcade! I think it’d be great for educators or anyone looking to involve visual artists in videogames. And thanks to the volunteers who made this room possible.

Gamercamp Toronto (Nov 21)

There’s a gaming event coming up called Gamercamp that I’m helping organize and I think you might really dig it. Alot of the community is already involved and it would be great to have you there too.

It’s a one day event that happens right here in Toronto on November 21, 2009 and celebrates the creativity, art, and history of video games with top-notch speakers, demos, and an arcade filled with rare and retro games, not to mention Toronto’s own indie game cabinet, the Torontron.

We’re excited to announce the keynotes will be Hand Eye’s own Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns talking about approaching video game development with the rock band model (instead of the movie production one). Not to mention Michael Todd (also a Hand Eye member) who’ll be talking about Broken Brothers Deluxe and the lessons learned from his game-a-week experiment. As well, Gamercamp will be the first place to hear from Gerald Darcy of the Replay Arcade Museum, Canada’s very first gaming museum located here in Toronto and set to open soon.

Between sessions we’ll be showcasing work from the Toronto indie dev community: game demos, works-in-progress and pixel art (there are still a couple spots open). We’ve also teamed up with Replay for a one-of-a-kind closing party, 1UP, which features 25 rare and classic arcade cabinets for an on-site arcade with unlimited freeplay into the night. There will even be dinner provided to power up for all that gaming madness.

The whole thing goes from 1:00pm to 9:30pm at the Lower Ossington Theatre (100A Ossington Ave). Tickets are only $15 and include admission, dinner, and the unlimited freeplay at the 1UP closing party. They’re available right now at Gamercamp.ca.

If you would like to show one of your games or have any questions at all, feel free to send me an email (mark@gamercamp.ca) or check out the site (www.gamercamp.ca).

Hope to see you there!