I am shocked...

Ok this has nothing to do with Game Design but I just had to share this.

As I was looking around in Chaozhou, I just tumbled on a... Cafe, and check this out... the cafe and I share the same name, 達米安, or Damian, the English version of Damien in French. Well actually I used to be called like this when I was in Taiwan three years ago but I changed it officially for 佘米恩but it doesn't really matter. This is... surprising and quite odd.

As you'll find on the sign, the Eiffel Tower along with the Big wheel...and some French "Le café de Damian"... which basically means that there is another French Damien in town...A small freaking town in the south of Taiwan (50 000 inhabitants). Wow life is really full of coincidences.

And yep it also means that I have the exclusivity no more... What a shame...

我剛剛出去玩，發現有一個很特別的咖啡店。。。為什麼很特別，那個咖啡的名字是達迷安咖啡。。。怎麼會！！

3年前我中文的名字也是達米安，我就覺得很奇怪。潮州不是很大的市，不過有兩個Damian，他們都是法國人。。。

T'es où Théo? Where are you Théo? 小米, 你在哪裡！

http://www.tesoutheo.ca/

T'es où Théo, le jeu, c'est la version online interactive de la série télé québecoise du même nom, uniquement disponible en français (pour le moment en tout cas)

T'es ou Théo the game is the interactive version of the Canadian TV series of the same name. The web site is only available in French (at least for now)

J'ai designé une dizaine de mini-jeux au gameplay et thèmes variés, lorsque j'étais chez ODD1 à Montréal. Pour le moment, il n'y a que 2 mini-jeux online, le prochain release est dû pour mi-novembre.

I have designed 10 mini-games when I was still working at Odd1, in Montreal. For now, only 2 mini games have been released, more will come very soon.

Bon, ne vous attendez pas à un jeu pour hardcore gamer, on est sur du 3-5 ans là.

It's not a game made for Hardcore gamer, our target audience is 3 to 5 years old (preschoolers).

Chaque jeu a été designé pour convenir à son public, du coup, simplicité/ usability, rejouabilité et fun sont les maître-mots.

Each game has been designed, thoroughly thought to match the likes/dislikes and skills of its audience- the mini games are easy to play, fun and most of all, replayable.

Mon préféré des deux mini-jeux est le cochon glouton... un jeu de course / parcours 2D side scrolling dans lequel le joueur contrôle un porcinet rose qui sue quand il court et qui doit collecter la nourriture sur son chemin avant de passer la ligne d'arrivée. Simple, et pas mal efficace. L'essentiel est que les enfants s'éclatent dessus (pas littéralement...).

My favourite so far is "le cochon glouton" that we could translate by "The gluttonous pig" (doesn't sound good though...) It's a 2d race side scrolling game in which the player controls a piglet. Small piglet has to collect as much food as possible while dodging the various obstacles on his way.

Spliced is finally back online!

After few weeks (shall we say months?) of absence, due to... let's say technical issues, Spliced is back on Teletoon.com!

Click here to play

I'm pointing this out since this game is actually my first BIG game design, and even if I would change a lot of things if I could (as every game designer would do), I'm pretty proud of it. Hey we even got an award! Teletoon Most Awesome Game Ever! Go check it out!

This made my day...

3ds Max 的上課-耐心耐心

十二月二十八日要開始3ds Max 遊戲動畫設計認證班。我不想等那麼久！
這是那個課程大綱：(很有趣)- 72個小時的課程。

Still a month and a half to go before the beginning of my 3DS Max Game Animation Design program! I got the course outline, and it looks very interesting. I have absolutely no idea how much I'm going to learn within those 72 hours, but looks like we are going to study every aspect of 3D animation, as it is mentioned in the outline.

- Basic operations/Props/Game scene build/Game items (weapons/ barrels, etc.), Mapping/Topography (Terrain, plants, trees, etc)/Buildings, and object integration- for the first session

-The second session will focus on character modeling and animation: texture mapping/ bones/ the whole thing based on martial art fighting scene.

It's gonna be tough, but there's soooo much to learn. Can't wait.

IIllustrator course- Logo

Here's a logo we had to design in class using Illustrator. The objective was to use the various tools we had learned so far.

Since we use the traditional Chinese version of the soft in class, the hardest part is to remember all the tools we have been using. The easiest, to reproduce the content of the course, at home, using my version of Illustrator (in English). The content of the course is also taught in Chinese which is, actually, quite fine. (you get used to it).

However it's freaking hard to use a software that is written in a language that you do not master, especially when it is in Chinese... You can't possibly read a word when you just don't know the characters it is made of...

To give an example of what exactly happened during the first courses (and it still happens...): during a Flash class... For your information, I use "___" for each Chinese word I don't know.

Me- (I just forgot where the bloody "path" tool is, in the numerous tabs of the UI)

---"Hey, madam, could you please help me find the___(path tool), to modify the ___(the trajectory of my character) because I just can't find it in the ___(User Interface)

With some luck, it ends with my teacher taking hold of my computer and just showing me where to find it... Or if it's a really bad day (occurs all the time), she will try to explain me, just with WORDS, you know, those words in Chinese that I still did not learn. And how does it end? By me saying "Ohoh ok ok, hao le, hao le, xie xie..." (which means "thanks a lot for helping me, even if I just did not get a word of what you were saying,I'll just wait here and die of shame while you go on with your course...")

Yep, class is fun here.

在Gjun我們都用中文的軟骨。好難啊！有的時候，我沒辦法看得懂。但是我只要習慣。最難的事是看得懂那個UI，我就先要翻譯.File,Edit,View,Modify,這樣還ok。比較工藝的字我都不會看得懂，就沒關係。不過回家的時候，看看以下，用我的字典，就要記得這個很重要的字。慢慢來，慢慢學。我在家有英文的譯文，很幸運1！
老師也很好。有問題的話，幫我一下。她將的很快，可是將得很清楚。

My first post! 第一個文章！

And it's just below...

Regarde en bas !

看下面把！