obx

Throb

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:42 pm | Posted by: admin

Throb

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TEST

Scale

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:41 pm | Posted by: admin

Scale

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DForm

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:40 pm | Posted by: admin

DForm

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TEST

Pull

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:27 pm | Posted by: admin

Pull

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DFormFactory

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:27 pm | Posted by: admin

DFormFactory

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Reform

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:26 pm | Posted by: admin

Reform

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ChaosPull

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:26 pm | Posted by: admin

ChaosPull

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Blow

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 4:24 pm | Posted by: admin

Blow

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Stop

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 3:33 pm | Posted by: admin

Stop

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StayInWindow

NextTextThursday, 4 August 2011, 3:32 pm | Posted by: admin

StayInWindow

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Native Representations in Video Games

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceTuesday, 12 July 2011, 6:00 pm | Posted by: elizabethlameman

I finally got around to putting together a short film about Native Representations in Video Games. It’s a little bit academic, a little bit presentation, and a little bit my take on things. There is enough content that I could extend this into a documentary as extensive as Reel Injun by adding more footage, interviewing game developers to explore the origin of the representations, and interviewing  Indigenous people who participated in the games as voice over actors. I could also analyze the representations much deeper. As is, it’s a good simple overview to give people information.

When it comes right down to it, I’d much rather focus my efforts on putting out new representations in games rather than revisiting old ones. This is my final nod to the past as I look ahead to the future of Native representations in digital games. Right, by finishing that dissertation in Indigenous game design!

And just because, as many representations as I did mention, the list is still incomplete…

For the Princess and the Vixen, we also have Shawnee from Outlaw Volleyball.

For the Reimagined, there is Venture Arctic from Pocketwatch Games, which I wrote and consulted for. Indigenous peoples never appear in the game, but the art style is adapted from Inuit carvings. Overall, it’s an environmental simulation game that respects the changes inherent in seasons and the power of weather. It draws mechanics from nature.

- Beth

SSI: The Skins Summer Institute

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceFriday, 1 July 2011, 1:40 am | Posted by: elizabethlameman

Life has been busy for AbTeC as we prepare for the Skins Summer Institute (SSI) in late July at Concordia University in Montreal. SSI is a two-week intensive workshop for Aboriginal (Indigenous/First Nations/Native) youth that combines instruction in video game design with immersion into Aboriginal stories and storytelling techniques. The workshop covers traditional storytelling as well as important topics in game development including: narrative, art direction, 3D modeling and animation, level design, sound, and programming.

SSI is based on the curriculum of the Skins 1.0 pilot, which resulted in the imagineNATIVE award-winning Otsi!: Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends. Whereas Skins 1.0 used the Unreal game engine, we’re excited to use UNITY this time because of the wider range of possibilities and the immense user support out there.

We’re glad to bring back Nacho Nyak Dun storyteller Louise Profeit-LeBlanc and Mohawk artist Owisokon Lahache, who were both invaluable to the success of Skins 1.0. We will also have Anishinaabe photographer Scott Benesiinaabandan, artist Tommy Deer, Secwepemc animator Mathew McNeill, sound designer Shawn Mullen, and sound artist Darwin Frost. From game industry, we’re excited to have Morgan Kennedy from Ubisoft and Ruben Farrus from Minority.

Look out for a new curriculum packet after we recover from the intensity of running the workshop. We’ll have a number of publications coming out based on the curriculum, structure, and student experience thanks to working on assessment with Jen Jenson, Amanda Williams, and Shanly Dixon. We’ll also share the games that come out of the workshop similarly to Otsi!.

If you are interested in following the students as the workshop progresses, feel free to visit the Skins Summer Institute blog that will be launched soon.

Native Steampunk: The Path Without End

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceThursday, 19 May 2011, 3:07 pm | Posted by: elizabethlameman

Finally fed up with the inability of words to capture my interpretation of Native steampunk, I went back to my origins and added a twist. What resulted was an experimental animation made out of imagery that has been in my dreams for a number of years.

I make jewelry such as chokers, necklaces, and earrings. This unfortunately dropped away in the mix of life (mamahood, work, dissertation). I just couldn’t justify spending the time on anything other than what I saw as absolute necessity, but as I grow, I’ve come to realize that these parts of life are the necessity. Without that elation of creation, my perception of life simply isn’t as beautiful as it can be. There are certain creative triggers that I can’t resist, including stories and music. I am thankful for these that have guided my personal breakthrough recently.

The Path Without End, Scene 1

The Path Without End is a story that has been with me since childhood. It tells an Anishinaabe story of the Moon People, and namely, brings into play a mixed child (that is, Anishinaabe and Moon Person). These stories are not my own, but everyone’s, told and kept by our elders for generations.

Cris Derksen, a part Cree cellist, has several amazing tracks that make my mind spin off into other worlds. I ardently believe that much of her music fits the Native Steampunk aesthetic. She merges the cello with Native tones and builds layers using a loop station and effect pedals. It is raw and digital all at once.

Namely, Derksen’s track “Prosperity” kept bringing me back to The Path Without End. I couldn’t get over the visuals in my mind to try to adapt them to a short story. Words. English. It just doesn’t work. Working with photos of raw materials and my best friend Photoshop, I created an experimental animation that is raw and digital, one and the same.

The Path Without End, Scene 7

The Path Without End ended up being a 05:55 experimental animation that took 1,376 JPG exports by hand. Okay, yes, I’m crazy, and yes, I realize there’s an easier way to animate than move layers pixel by pixel. Since I wasn’t working with body part movements for this one, it worked. I had absolute control over every element.

Hopefully it will be in festival distribution in the near future. Without a doubt, this is just the beginning.

- Beth Aileen Lameman

Independent Study : Final images

Mr. SoftieFriday, 22 April 2011, 10:02 pm | Posted by: mclantin

Here are the final images for this Independent Study based on Susan Sontag’s quotation : “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”

Instead of using patterns or shapes, I decided to create shapes made of patterns. All patterns were constructed with words from the quotation.

Letters are always visible until some extend.

Tryouts of patterns and shapes… and text!

Mr. SoftieSunday, 3 April 2011, 10:30 pm | Posted by: mclantin

Here are a few examples of what I have been working on for the last month. I tried to find the balance between the shapes, the patterns and the text. I need to find a way to incorporate each of theses ideas into the same image.

More on patterns!

Mr. SoftieFriday, 25 February 2011, 9:54 pm | Posted by: mclantin

I have recently found a new way to make patterns with shapes built in Mr. Softie. In my Independent study project, I need to use repetition to represent the idea behind constructing and disclosing, behind the painter and the photographer.

In my last project, I mixed repetition to the concept of copies where I would print a pattern designed on Mr. Softie, scan it, print it again… until I obtain the texture of the paper, the feeling that everything was copied. However, I had to find a way to show the repetition without falling in such a boring comparison! This new technique is made from a screenshot (yep, only one!). It think it is more relevant mainly because it’s impossible to tell what it’s based on. The result seems incredibly close to a painting which, in the case of my independent study, works perfectly!

First image : the original montage

Second image : same picture, this time with the pattern effect added

Shapes / Patterns tryouts

Mr. SoftieFriday, 18 February 2011, 6:49 pm | Posted by: mclantin

More details on the first Independent study project

Mr. SoftieSaturday, 12 February 2011, 7:36 pm | Posted by: mclantin

I have been working on using Mr. Softie to create patterns that I could insert in my work. Since it will be a technique I will use again for the second project, I thought it might be interesting to show an example right now.

I first designed this pattern in Mr. Softie and printed it out. I then scanned the sheet, boosted the contrast on Adobe Photoshop, printed it again, scanned it again… it could be an endless process!

It’s also a good way to get the texture of the paper, to add the idea of copy and layering in my work.

Here is the  pattern :

And here is where I disposed it last week :

An independent study with Mr. Softie

Mr. SoftieThursday, 27 January 2011, 5:57 pm | Posted by: mclantin

The quote for this project is : “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” written by Susan Sontag.

Actually, at the beginning, I was supposed to take one quote per image but I realized that this sentence describes the whole project. If you take a closer look to this sentence, you understand that it is an opposition, formally and conceptually. In fact, this quote is split in two, right in the middle.

My idea for this independent study project was to make three images that would use photographs and, by adding words transformed by Mr. Softie, make them look like paintings. From afar, the viewer would be caught between the lines and shapes, lost in a large abstract print. Up close, some words and short phrases would be highlighted (disclosed), visible enough to be read. Words from this quote on perception, would compelled the viewer to question what he really sees. This way, the viewer would be confused and have no other choice than interrogates what he perceives.

I had a hard time to figure out how to add photographs to letters in an interesting manner. I finally came to the conclusion that cutting plain areas by adding lines (or precise shapes) was extremely useful. Making theses lines in Mr. Softie required that I played with the repetition of each words which made me more than happy (repetition is an important characteristic of photography, the ability to reproduce the same frame, the same letters, again and again) and stretch them in a proper way. Indeed, those lines have a huge impact on the photograph that is behind : they make it look like a drawing/painting that was photocopied many times. With a closer view, the viewer can distinguish easily that the lines are made of letters, that the background is a photograph. The two other works can be read in the exact same way : the photomontage effect allowing me to simply distort what is perceived even more.

Also, since I am really interested by this Susan Sontag’s quote, I decided to add a little bit of challenge and group the words The/the, painter/photographer, constructs/discloses together and use one group per image that I will do. At the end, I will have three images and each of them will be composed of one part of the sentence. I could then dispose the three prints one on the other which should give much more dimension to my work*.

Here are two versions that I have been working on simultaneously.

First row : First version with two close-up.

Second row : Different point of view of the second version.

* To be honest, I have no idea if printing on plexiglass could work… Maybe!

AbTeC @ Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceFriday, 17 December 2010, 10:06 am | Posted by: Nancy

As announced in the prestigious e-flux newsletter, our lovely co-director Skawennati’s work will be on display  at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg. The show’s title is “Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years International Exhibition of Contemporary Indigenous Art” and will be taking place from January 22 to May 11. It also features many other infamous Aboriginal artists such as  KC Adams and Kent Monkman and is curated by AbTec member Steve Loft.

To find out more about the show, please visit http://plugin.org/

imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival 2010

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceSaturday, 20 November 2010, 12:57 pm | Posted by: Nancy

Once again, the AbTeC team submitted work into the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival New Media category. And, yet again, we walked away with the “Best New Media” prize! This time for our video game mod project, along side the students of Kahnawake Survival School, entitled “Otsì:!! Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends”.

Seen here are co-directors Skawennati Fragnito and Jason E. Lewis accepting the award at the closing awards ceremony. For more information of the project, please visit the website http://otsi.abtec.org/ .

Animism and the Beauty of Animation

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceMonday, 8 November 2010, 1:51 pm | Posted by: elizabethlameman

Animism, an animation written by Cree filmmaker Kevin Lee Burton and Zeros2Heroes CEO Matt Toner, which I was Story Editor for, is available for viewing at The Gods’ Lake alternate reality game (ARG) website. It’ll only be up for a short while before it airs on APTN in January. Wow, it’s 2011. The first episode is open for anyone to view, and you can watch all six episodes if you create an account.

Animism tells the story of age-old treachery around the Sacred Site of Gods’ Lake, which was fictionalized as an alternate reality, but is based on Kevin Lee Burton’s interpretation of our sacred indigenous lands.

The themes are very timely, especially as we face the daunting impacts of mining and resource extraction in communities such as the Tsilhqot’in First Nation and Fort Chipewyan First Nation. Thankfully, a recent legal battle protected Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) from mining, a relief for Tsilhqot’in people such as filmmaker Helen Haig-Brown. Similar cases are taking hold, including the Beaver Lake Cree Nation case against the federal government and Alberta provincial government to halt tar sands development. Maybe a shift really is happening, as Animism suggests…

It has always been important to me to be involved in projects that not only move me forward as a writer, but that I stand by in belief. It has been an interesting and rewarding experience as story editor for Animism and cultural consultant for The Gods’ Lake ARG. For Animism, I had the opportunity to see elements of myself in a collaboration and realize the possibilities of animation for my own writing. I’m bubbling over with images in my mind that can actually be done via animation. It’s a breakthrough that I am hoping will result in tangible animations or at least good ol’ cut scenes in a game, since my writing style calls for the visual but live action Aboriginal steampunk isn’t exactly in the budget (yet). For the ARG, I had the pleasure of working with Nis Bojin, the designer and writer. It’s rare to see an ARG that is in-depth but also welcomes in people of various ARG playing experience (from nil onward).

I’m also surrounded by interesting people in Portland who are new to me, like Tess Martin, whose backlit tissue paper animations are unique and inspiring. I have a few short, short stories that are waiting for adaptation to animation. I just need to get set up with Photoshop again, and I’ll be ready to roll.

Onward to the next project and loving life,

- Beth

Through the Looking Glass Self: Group Identity and Avatar Design in Second Life

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceMonday, 1 November 2010, 5:01 pm | Posted by: Nancy

Through the Looking Glass Self: Group Identity and Avatar Design in Second Life

Colorado State University/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paper presented by Rosa Mikeal Martey and Mia Consalvo

Approaching the podium is a woman with bright pink streaks in her hair, dressed fully in black and with the brisk walk of someone possessing the cool sort of confidence. Automatically, through just her physical appearance and the spotlight setting, we label her as artistic, intelligent, and possibly Goth.  She speaks.  No accent proves a North American upbringing. Closer inspection brings piercings to light, extra layers of eyeliner, and the superior quality of her shirt’s fabric. A rebel? An intellectual? Upper-middle class? We make guesses without even realizing we are doing it. Her statements are digested with certain awareness, a new twist, based on accessories and hair choices and even her title, giving more weight to her speech than the written word alone could ever hope to convey.

It is unfair, biased, and yet completely typical.

Judgment is a default (emphasis on the fault) of human nature; seeing someone and auto-placing them into a series of general categories. People who wear suit and ties are considered either successful or society’s sheep, depending on the viewer. Those covered in tattoos are either expressive or reckless (more commonly: future regretters).  Men and women who wear glasses are, modern-historically speaking, either brainy or high school outcasts. Sometimes both. And so on…

Our appearance, both what we choose to wear and what our genes choose for us, cannot help but project certain clues to not only our tastes and ethnicity, but our personality, our sexual orientation, our social class, our upbringing, our education, even our  hangouts. Though these generalizations are often inappropriate, especially in the rather liberal society of the Americas, this habit of ours is best put to use when people wish to be recognized for their preferences. Whether by a turban, a designer handbag or a cat-eared hoodie, connections are instantly forged when two people share such uncommon markings.

In the world of Second Life, anything is possible. Upon sign in, users can manipulate their default human avatars to be anything from a leggy super model to a “flying spaghetti monster” (as Rosa Mikeal Martey, our presenter, commonly used as an extreme example). Despite this ability, the same phenomenon occurs within this virtual realm: people put themselves into categories. Different than real world ones, but categories none the less. The race of flying spaghetti monsters is, regrettably, a one-of-a-kind breed. However Pseudo-human fox women with giant breasts can be found en mass.

Martey and Consalvo’s study of Second Life society first began with wishing to test the capabilities of the medium by creating a simple point-and-click adventure game. But as avatars began arriving and playing through the level, the point of interest became not the ability of strangers to work as a team, but primarily how they looked while doing so. On the doorstep of their island arrived animals, robots, elves, werewolves, vampires and even a few recognizable celebrity or fictional character skins. The usual standards of humans no longer applied. Variations of species were more common than skin color.

Despite this preference for the strange, avatars more often than not had a clear choice of gender. And usually that gender was female, though the creators were careful to have 50-50 male and female user participation. Another interesting decision that many users made was their clothing. Knowing they were about to participate in a game taking place in Victorian/Steam-Punk style city, many of the seasoned users purchased or made costumes to match.  Outfits were also provided for those who hadn’t had the time.

Still, in this virtual world where changing clothes is as easily as the click of a mouse, users were strangely attached to their style and, knowing they were being documented, many insisted on keeping their usual outfits for the sake of identification. If they were members of a popular Western simulation, they wouldn’t dare take off the cowboy hat in online public. Much like a diva can never have a bad hair on the red carpet, it would be considered disrespectful of an ever so carefully crafted personae or image.

The world of Second Life, despite its assets of anonymity and un-restrained creative options, has sadly become, in majority, nothing more than a distorted mirror of the real world. The goal of most avatars is to be noticed, as either part of a strange society or as a fantastically attractive version of their real selves. As the Madness Machine Study has discovered through their social experiments; it is more a medium of enhancement than creation, of belonging rather than innovating. And, as with most applications that are driven by user content, its primary business is adult entertainment.

But we shall not fret. As long as there exists at least one flying spaghetti monster in-world, we have hope for imagination.

Madness Machine Study (Colorado State): http://scribes.colostate.edu/

Machinima Workshop @ imagineNative 2010

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceFriday, 22 October 2010, 11:34 am | Posted by: Jason

Skawennati, Nancy and I are in Toronto this week, giving a two-day Machinima Workshop as part of imagineNative 2010. We have nine students, invited by iNative to participate, who spent yesterday on a very steep learning curve. Today we’re going to start shooting 3 30 second machinimas to enter into the Machinima Expo promo festival.

Machinima Teaching Sandbox, AbTeC Island (imagineNative 2010)

Shaping Language

Mr. SoftieFriday, 8 October 2010, 1:47 pm | Posted by: Bruno Nadeau

We constantly convey our thoughts with languages and writing systems that evolve throughout the ages. These systems remain in a constant state of change, unconsciously transformed in everyday interactions, explicitly assaulted by playful artistic experiments, and broadly affected by technological innovation.

Spoken languages, which enjoy a much longer history than their written counterparts, were long transformed by the uses and abuses of the people who speak them, indirectly affected by technology. They evolve slowly over time shaped by everyday spoken discourse, and they adapt more drastically in time of needs, but it is not until the recent technological advances of the last centuries that speech became a practice that regularly relies on technology. Societies developed the means to travel ever further, bringing diverse people close enough for their languages to clash, merge and deform, but the direct widespread impact of tools on spoken languages is still recent. It is only with the advent of the phonautograph and later the telephone that spoken languages became directly affected by technology.

Writing is a different beast, forever dependent on some form of technology, it relies on a range of heterogeneous tools used to delineate spoken words. The accessibility to these technologies tends to change over time as they infiltrate everyday practices, and often, as their cost decrease. Scribes in Ancient and Medieval times were provided with the once expensive materials with which and on which to write, and new discoveries and inventions provided new writing technologies, new inks, new surfaces that transformed their practices. Computers enjoyed a similar but significantly more rapid evolution as early programmers with access to expensive systems made space for the everyday typist. Writing necessitates materials, technologies and skills that are not equally available to everyone. The practitioners who engineer and possess the skills to use the technologies we write with have had a significant impact on the production of language.

It is hard not to wonder how the printer hired by Mercure de France, the house that published Guillaume Apollinaire’s Alcools in 1913, reacted, proceeded and affected the outcome as he was asked to bend his standard practice? How did the advances in techniques of lithography and photolithography transformed the work of F. T. Marinetti when his requests for an unusual page were possibly met by the frowns and blank stares of some printers? How do the decisions of programmers and software engineers behind font formats like TrueType and OpenType, type design applications, like FontLab Studio, Fontographer and FontForge, and any application that make use of the type they help produce affect our everyday typographic landscape?

Native Steampunk: Portland is Stellar

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceThursday, 7 October 2010, 11:58 am | Posted by: elizabethlameman

As I re-evaluate my mama-self for fashion aesthetics in lieu of my Aboriginal steampunk web comic The West Was Lost being exhibited in the New Media category at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, I’ve realized that I’ve lost a lot of who I was/am. Yes, indeed, while living in Vancouver, British Columbia, I was sucked into the world of the yoga bum mom. Horrifying but true. Lululemon, a few basic shirts, and off I went into the world, ready for stains, rough-housing, running, sitting on rain covered swings, you name it.

I was hit that a major piece of myself was missing when Shauna Baker talked me into a photoshoot before I moved to Alberta for production on a documentary. She got me out of my shell enough to get some amazing shots, but it left me wondering: Why am I in such a shell?

The shell became a stone fortress during the summer in Alberta. Fashion? Forget it. No time for it. Everything stayed packed. Why bother? It’s only now that we are nearing our co-location between Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Alberta and Portland, Oregon, I’m re-emerging–pulling out my old pieces, making new pieces, and finding new pieces in glorious Portland.

On a place-hunting trip, I came upon REDUX on Burnside and left with a quirky scarf, an enchanting resin necklace with a little story of gears inside, and a dark brown recycled leather purse. My first purse ever. I’ve never gotten so much at once. Femininity is returning to me, the more my aesthetic is out and about. Unfortunately for me, Hattie’s Vintage Clothing was closed, but I plan to go back. The windows were filled with museum-like displays. I also have yet to visit Keen Garage. The list goes on.

This weekend, I’m planning on attending the Time Travelers’ Marketplace and Ball, a benefit to support the Hillsboro Historical Society, in Hillsboro, Oregon. They reference the preservation of Native history as part of the purpose of forming the non-profit.

Portland, by far, is more than I could have dreamed.

I am reinvigorated to return to where I belong. And, indeed, I do belong. It’s a comforting feeling. It’s time to dig out my hide and my beads, and create.

Ekosi, as Myron would say,

- Beth Aileen Lameman

Rallying at imagineNATIVE

Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceFriday, 17 September 2010, 11:18 pm | Posted by: elizabethlameman

I usually measure years by the academic calendar–the beginning of Fall is the start of another year. There’s nothing better than seeing your accomplishments from past years acknowledged in the midst of working on new projects that you’re excited to finish and show. I’m wrapped up with creative work right now and looking forward to imagineNATIVE as a time to unwind and join in on the community experience of watching films and interacting with new media at a festival.

Myron’s short film Blue in the Face (2010), which I also produced, will premiere as the opening of The Witching Hour on Friday, Oct. 22, 2010 at 11:00PM. I can’t wait to watch for the reaction to this one. It’s a 3 minute comedy commissioned for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s Inside the IIDF Studio contest. I won’t say more. Just come watch it. Special thanks to our actors Shauna Baker, Brandy Maloney, and Sheldon Blue Hawk, of course our fabulous Cree make-up artists Jenny Ruth and Tonianne Willier for making this film possible, and D’Arcy O’Connor for having fun with us on sound, along with Pierre Cruz and Jenna Mitchell. We had a blast.

In my own work, The West Was Lost (an online interactive comic which was developed by Zeros 2 Heroes after winning the Comic Creation Nation: APTN Contest) is featured in the New Media category.

Archer Pechawis, who won last year’s Experimental Film category at imagineNATIVE 2009, is returning to the New Media category with the experimental website 5. It chronicles a series of five site-specific events that took place during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Artists involved included, among others, Dana Claxton and Skeena Reece. Archer has always been a supporter of AbTeC and its efforts and I enjoyed Skeena’s performance and Dana’s vision of the Unpacking the Indigenous Female Body symposium.

For full on AbTeC rep, we have Otsì:! Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends, the “boss” level of a video game made in collaboration with the senior art class at the Kahnawake Survival School and Obx Labs at Concordia University.

It’s a strong year for AbTeC and meanwhile projects such as TimeTravellerTM.com, which won the imagineNATIVE 2009 New Media award, are still filling our lives with inspiration.

Hope to see you there! And here’s hoping I have an iPhone in time…

- Beth

Mr. Softie Goes Cross-Platform

Mr. SoftieSunday, 12 September 2010, 7:26 pm | Posted by: Bruno Nadeau

During the last few months, Mr. Softie development took a new direction. We put aside the extensive list of new features we want to experiment with to concentrate on making Mr. Softie accessible to a wider audience. The limitations inherent in the original decision to use the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), which meant producing a Windows-only application, became increasingly obvious as more people were asking about a OSX compatible version of the software. The idea of running Mr. Softie in a virtual machine like Parallels often lead to blank stares through a thick barrier of entry; it was time to put what we knew aside and leap into cross-platform development.

Enters Qt, a cross-platform application and UI framework that is a peanut butter solution to the hair loss caused by years of MFC use. The idea was simple, stop adding new features for a period of time (as short as possible) and port the code to Qt. It took a bit longer than expected, mostly because of the many Qt features that use different approaches than MFC, and the easily underestimated hours of finicky cross-platform UI tweaking, but we made it to version 1.0b for Windows and OSX.

Needless to say that the trailing ‘b’ in the version number could be an uppercase at the moment. Most of the features that are present in the last windows-only version of Mr. Softie (v0.9.6.9) made it to this first Qt version. Many features were improved. Arranging text objects forward and back is more flexible than before and can be applied to any type of text objects (i.e. glyph, word, passage) unlike the previous passage-only limitation. Transforming is simpler, no need for a shortcut to rotate objects, handles are available around the selection. There are too many changes to list here.

With every major code transformation comes an infestation of bugs. During the next months we intend to play with Mr. Softie, find those bugs and clean up the application as we release updates up to a stable 1.0 release. Until then, enjoy our experimental typographic text editor.

Download: 1.0b for Windows | 1.0b for OSX

NextText

obxTuesday, 27 July 2010, 4:51 pm | Posted by: admin

Mr. Softie at Typ09

Mr. SoftieTuesday, 22 December 2009, 5:21 pm | Posted by: admin

Mr. Softie will be at the Typ09 conference in Mexico City on Thursday October 29th. We are organizing a workshop, Bending Letterforms with Mr. Softie, as part of the TypeTech section of the conference. Limited space, register soon.

Typo at Center Stage

Mr. SoftieMonday, 2 November 2009, 4:02 pm | Posted by: Bruno Nadeau

Day 1

Typ09 began in style.  Speakers had to adjust to the 360 degrees of audience surrounding them, wishing they had paid more attention to how they appear from behind when practicing their talk. The audience, surrounded by 16 screens displaying the same slide presentations and videos, must decide which one to pay attention to, and end up looking like noone is listening because of each participant’s different focus point.  And, to whoever sets up 16 contiguous screens, please exploit the opportunity of making one connected screen space instead of just duplicating content.

Among the tidbits of information that struck me most, Jan Middendorp presented some really interesting work of hand-lettered book covers of the 50’s and 60’s. One caught my eye more than others, a design by Hermanus Berserik that could have been the long lost relative of Donald Knuth’s Punk font (I couldn’t find the cover online, so if anyone has it please forward).

Soon after that, Francois Chastenet presented his research, which was recently published in “Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles.” Looking back, this was for me one the most interesting talk of the five days of Typ09. I am curious to know more about Chastenet’s comparative study between photography of 1970’s LA and his recent research. From my geeky perspective, I couldn’t help but think of how graffiti, its form and style, creates not only the physical boundary that Chastenet’s was talking about by defining a perimeter, but also creates boundaries between the different groups that interact with the signs. Who writes them, who erases them, who understands them, who doesn’t.

I was looking forward to Alberto Coberto’s talk on “Spanish Type Specimens, and even though I was please to see so many specimens I would never come across, I felt it fell short of what it could have been.  From the title, my expectations where steered in the direction of Alastair Johnston’s “Found Poetry: The Dude Typographers” article found in “Text on Type.” Coberto did poke at the idea when he mentioned, over a single slide, the religious used as content for the one specimen. I would be surprise if this was an exceptional case. As a recent example of interesting type specimen that goes beyond the oh-so-common and boring lorem ipsum or random news headlines, Tipo distributed their type specimen as a nice recipe book, found on the table of free goodies. This leaves me with one problem. Where do I place this ‘book’, on the shelf with other type specimens, or in the kitchen with the cook books?

Day 2

And on the second day Spiekerman spoke. After a morning session that involved too many instances of the word “global” without really digging into the interesting and “honest” (thank you John Downer) reality of type designed today, the work of contemporary Mexican type designers closed the session. However, already after a day and a half, my brain was overflowed with type design, so much that I remember apppreciating the work of comtemporary typography in Mexico, but could not name one that was presented.

Which gets me to Spiekerman’s presentation. This was a great example that all those monotone try-to-talk-about-everything-i’ve-done-in-the-past-until-now presenters should look at and remember the next time to want to entertain an audience. People, pick a subject, no matter how precise and be excited about it. Spiekerman’s talk  about his work designing door numbers for modern furnishing supplier Design Within Reach was inspiring, not because it showed a million typefaces on slides flicked at seizure inducing speed, but because it showed the whole process, its ups and downs.  The first types of numbers are beautiful and designed for certain contexts, and just like any other technology, type is used and abused in ways that type designers could not have even imagined.

Another somewhat unrelated tidbit of information that struck me was the presentation of Chilian artists by Felipe Caceres. The one Chilian artist that caught my attention enough for me to remember is Alejandro Faure (1865-1912). At first sight, and before Caceres mentione the name of the artist, I would have sworn that the art work in front of my eyes was made by Alphons Mucha (1860-1939), a check artist whose work I really appreciate. Given the simililarity of their work, the two artists must been part of the same singles, and everything came together when Caceres mentioned that Faure moved to Paris for a certain period of time, just like Mucha did in 1887. This is something I would like to did further into.

Day 3 (aka First Signs of Type Overdose)

The morning session took us in an interesting direction, from my perspective, that would question some technological issues. One presentation I was looking forward to was Granados and Zenke’r talk on “Reading Technologies” (I’m not sure which one of the two presented). Sadly, this presentation fell short of what it promised. Instead of truly questioning the Amazon Kindle, with its e-ink paper, networking capabilities, and graphical possibilities, the presentation digged itself a hole by complaining about issues pertaining solely to the Kindle’s software. If half the presentation involves slides that show a close-up of the screen of a device, without pertaining to the actual devices, then you should realize that you are talking about a completely different problem. A problem that might be present on the Kindle currently, but that is not tied to the Kindle.

Soon after, Christopher Moore briefly explored the possible uses of e-ink paper in the future, based on, again, the Kindle and one of Esquire magazine’s cover that used the technology. However, ten minutes is no doubt too short to really dig into the subject, Moore started a discussion on a subject that will certainly be more present in the future of the Typ conference. Hopefully, the conference’s organizers will realize that 40 minutes to talk of one persons typeface is often too long and boring (unless they are Dutch and can make it exciting), and that 10 minutes to question a difficult subject is just a tease and leave the audience a little dry.

Day 4

On the fourth day, we presented both workshops, “Computational Typography for Beginners with NextText for Processing” and “Bending Letterforms with Mr. Softie.” The workshops went well, even tough the number of attendees was fairly small, probably due to different reasons. Coding scares people, especially when the workshops are organized in a school or department that might be unrelated to the subject (we had to kick out med students that were having a quiz in the room scheduled for the workshop).

Mr. Softie, which is considerably more user friendly, attracted a few people who actually stuck around, went for a break and came back to play with the software, which was a nice thing to experience. If beta testing is like leaving your children uder  someone else’s supervision for the first time, this might be similar to having the baby-sitter aggreeing to come back a second time, telling you that you kid is, well, baby-sitter friendly. Of the things I might would change for future workshops would be to start the conversation with the attendees earlier.

Day 5

Say no to tuna tacos.

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