David Beebe
11-08-2004, 02:23 PM
To put this into a little more context, you can visit our bios http://www.tiltedmill.com/people_admin.htm or I can give you the cliff notes (My BA from university was in dance).
When you sit down to craft a dance, you really must focus on the core concept of what you want the dance to be about. It must be a simple concise idea. That idea translates into motion. That motion must retain coherency. Take your right hand thumbs up and rotate your thumb inward (creating an arcing motion). Now translate that motion into your head (nod your head to the left in an arcing motion). Now do both motions together. Now run in an arc to your left. The complexity comes from manipulating the motion- but maintaining the theme.
Visually a dancer does what a poet or song writer does with words and stanzas.
Story and repeating chorus (London bridge is falling down), added story through pattern building (She swallowed the bird to catch the spider-it wiggled and giggled and jiggled inside her, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly…), song in a round (are you sleeping, brother john?). The dancer uses visual rhyming schemes to punctuate stanzas. (a, b, a, b ; A, A, A, B; A,B,C,D,C,B,A). The dancer also recognizes that there are accepted places on the stage that read stronger than others (center stage is very strong whereas upstage left is distant to the observer in a proscenium stage environment). After the technical choreography, there comes the problem of scheduling. X amount of time, with rehearsals. Costumes must be done in a certain time frame, lighting needs to be designed and assigned and music needs to be cut.
When you sit down to design a video game, you need to figure out the core concept and mechanics. What variables lead towards better game play? What elements lead to keeping the theme intact? What is the core element? How do you prevent extraneous feature creep? A farmer gets food how? Ok than a potter gets food how? Ok than the baker gets food how? Likewise there are strong and weak places of presentation for the screen. Than you need to articulate your vision to external people as well as make sure your programmers and artists know what the end vision is. And than comes the scheduling… milestones, deadlines, demos, press tours, external vendors (the manual), cross merchandising.
Of course; you never really have to schedule costume fittings for your programmers…
When you sit down to craft a dance, you really must focus on the core concept of what you want the dance to be about. It must be a simple concise idea. That idea translates into motion. That motion must retain coherency. Take your right hand thumbs up and rotate your thumb inward (creating an arcing motion). Now translate that motion into your head (nod your head to the left in an arcing motion). Now do both motions together. Now run in an arc to your left. The complexity comes from manipulating the motion- but maintaining the theme.
Visually a dancer does what a poet or song writer does with words and stanzas.
Story and repeating chorus (London bridge is falling down), added story through pattern building (She swallowed the bird to catch the spider-it wiggled and giggled and jiggled inside her, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly…), song in a round (are you sleeping, brother john?). The dancer uses visual rhyming schemes to punctuate stanzas. (a, b, a, b ; A, A, A, B; A,B,C,D,C,B,A). The dancer also recognizes that there are accepted places on the stage that read stronger than others (center stage is very strong whereas upstage left is distant to the observer in a proscenium stage environment). After the technical choreography, there comes the problem of scheduling. X amount of time, with rehearsals. Costumes must be done in a certain time frame, lighting needs to be designed and assigned and music needs to be cut.
When you sit down to design a video game, you need to figure out the core concept and mechanics. What variables lead towards better game play? What elements lead to keeping the theme intact? What is the core element? How do you prevent extraneous feature creep? A farmer gets food how? Ok than a potter gets food how? Ok than the baker gets food how? Likewise there are strong and weak places of presentation for the screen. Than you need to articulate your vision to external people as well as make sure your programmers and artists know what the end vision is. And than comes the scheduling… milestones, deadlines, demos, press tours, external vendors (the manual), cross merchandising.
Of course; you never really have to schedule costume fittings for your programmers…