Sarah Hatton:::
games, design, art, research, writing and ephemera
The Gamefinder
Use this app to find a game
Go to the Pogo.com homepage and check out the Gamefinder. A new little app for helping new players find the game they want, and also a project I worked on.
posted May 31, 2010 | Comments (0)| Tags: flash, flex, RIA
Pogo on Facebook
It is very important to mention that Pogo has released on Facebook. I didn’t work on this project, but know a lot of people who did. Go ahead and try the app!
posted April 04, 2010 | Comments (5)| Tags: Casual Games, Facebook, Pogo
iPhone Shakes Hands with Adobe: What does this mean for web artists?
TechCrunch has just posted a great article on the upcoming Adobe Flash CS5’s ability to compile straight to the iPhone. If this doesn’t send shivers down your spine then you are either a)not me, b)a hater or c)just not that into Flash. If Flash was free, I would tout it as the best tool for artists to learn how to program, however it is not, so often students resort to things like Python or JS instead. I wonder if profs who teach “web art” and “programming for artists” will start including iPhone apps into their curricula.
posted January 26, 2010 | Comments (0)| Tags: Adobe, cs5, flash, iPhone, web art
POGO HAS WIDGETS
I just want all of you to know that Pogo has widgets:
posted July 21, 2009 | Comments (3)
Embodied Poetry Documentary
Students plan their embodied poetry project
still from the documentary
Below is a video of the embodied poetry process used by the students who showed work in my thesis show. Sorry this was all ridonculous for a while, should be right now:
Say it Like You Move it: A Documentary from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.
posted June 26, 2009 | Comments (7)| Tags: embodied, esl, poetry
Movn’ aka My Grandpa Called It
Ok so three things on top don't really equal a fruity hat
When I did my internship in San Francisco last summer, well the Bay Area actually, down in the peninsula at EA he recited that familiar lyric to me and told me not to leave my heart in San Francisco. I call him Dad Dad, and Dad Dad called it because he is a west fanatic. I guess I take after him and so, upon graduating from my masters degree I have moved back to the Bay Area to head back to EA to start a career (the word career sounds so early nineties for some reason to me) in the games industry. My job should be a challenge, never boring, and creative and so I am psyched to say the least.
The move here, however, was an experience. I had to pack my car so full I couldn’t see out the back or the sides and stuffed in the mess was my pet snake. Originally named Slithers by his first owners, I slapped on “Mr.” to the front so it would sound like the Simpson’s character. Mr. Slithers hasn’t gone on many road trips before. As soon as I carried his terrarium into the car he was totally confused. The sun in Tempe was super bright, so I covered his cage with old t-shirts that I serendipitously forgot to throw out at the Goodwill donation kiosk. Mr. Slithers didn’t get a sunburn but I did. Go figure. Mr. Slithers was packed in there so tightly though, that even the check point guys at the California state line (normally not there but I suppose working because of swine flu) didn’t seem to notice the snake when I agreed with their question-statement of “oh Idaho, that is far, congrats on moving to California, no plants or animals in there, ma’am..?”. I simply said “no”.
My trip took two days, and had an unfortunate late start on the first day. Arrival to LA wasn’t until around 11 pm and my buddy Chloe waited until then for me to arrive at her house. Thankfully she still took the time to chat and catch up and told me all about her life in LA after grad school. The next morning we caught breakfast with another friend of mine in LA at a cute diner.
The drive to San Francisco included two pit stops with “urination prohibited” gas stations. The first one just didn’t have one, the second one was missing its key. So FYI if you are driving up the 101 from LA, be forewarned, the gas stations are tiny and they would rather you pee in their soda fridge than in a toilet. As my friend Sharon would say, “frown.”
Although lacking in pissable gas stations, the 101 has some beautiful rest stops. I stopped at one and shot a picture of my “carmen miranda” car. I call it that because it just felt so packed to the brim and was so un-aerodynamic that I felt like I was driving one of her giant hats on wheels.
And so I finally made it to San Francisco, I drove my carmen-miranda-car up the traffic laden 19th ave through the Sunset to my new place at 25th and Balboa in the central Richmond. Hooray. Today I headed down to San Mateo for Maker Faire and saw my now ex-roommate who coincidentally made it to SF before I did since she works for O’Reilly media. You may know her, she is Bekathwia on Twitter and of course on the Make and Craft blogs and does a regular video pod cast as well. Additionally my friend Matt showed his Power Glove 20th Anniversary addition, also completely awesome. Below is a video of an LED tower that will go outside London School of Economics, on display at Maker Faire. It is sideways to see how the words go through, unfortunately they are upside-down. I left my buddies at Maker Faire who will return to the Valley of the Sun without me feeling a little sad, but my internet addiction will sure do everything but prevent us from keeping in touch and they very well know they have a couch here no matter what (and everyone else too).
Maker Faire from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.
So with Maker Faire done visited by me, tomorrow starts a new day, a new job, a new life. Holy hell that sounds really cheesy but I assure you I did get the occasional chill (and sometimes sick chill) of freedom as I drove up through the People’s Republic of California (where hopefully my 98 Jeep passes emissions test) listening to the awesome playlist my professor Alice made me and the awesome gigs of music my friend Andrew gave me on the iPod my brother lent me for the trip. I owe them a lot. Thanks guys, you saved the day!
In summary, yes, I guess I left my hear in San Francisco, and I had to drive through pissless gas stations with my carmen-miranda-truck with snake “illegally” in the back, but I think it is going to be worth it. I know this because I am sitting in a coffee shop with two high school girls working with their tutor on writing and drawing projects for World History (I think). Their homework somehow involves the need for a Wacom tablet. They hiked it over to the coffee shop to work on their drawings and diagrams for their paper! What a great place to be in.
posted May 31, 2009 | Comments (2)| Tags: moving
My Thesis Show
Sarah Hatton's MFA thesis show
Here is the poster to my thesis show. It is April 20th to the 24th in the evenings in the Digital Arts Ranch on ASU’s campus, in building Tower B.
posted April 01, 2009 | Comments (0)
Thesis Show Map
My thesis show will be April 20th to the 24th in the evenings. It will be on ASU’s campus at the Digital Arts Ranch. Below is a map:
posted March 31, 2009 | Comments (0)| Tags: showMap
Test Case of clevr Panorama tool for a friend
Here is a panorama view of a photo from a friend using a tool called clevr:
Panorama of 3601small on CleVR.com
This tool is nice and possibly much better than anything I could write on my own, plus it is free! I was trying to write it from scratch in Flash but hopefully this will help a friend who was trying to embed QT VR in a swf, which I think is impossible, but I am not sure. If you know anything about QT VR over the web and how to do it, please feel free to comment, as always, but I think this clevr is the way to go!
posted March 24, 2009 | Comments (2)
More digital poetry to come yet!
As of today, there are five working examples that exist for the embodied poetry:English Idioms initiative I am working on with the ELL(ESL) high school teachers and students and the SMALLab team. I demoed them today and I got pretty good reception from the students. The examples we have are: “runny nose/my nose is running”, “afraid of your own shadow”, “talk until blue in the face”, “got up on the wrong side of the bed”, and “head over heels”. Videos will be posted of the three not yet up here.
Tomorrow students will be randomly given the idiom they will make on their own. They will start designing their idiom composition on paper first and then we will move to SMALLab and SCREM after Spring break.
posted March 05, 2009 | Comments (0)
Embodied Poetry #2/English Idiom: S(he) is afraid of his/her own shadow
The example below uses the same methods described in the previous post. It was made by creating motion paths in the SMALLab and then these motion paths are used to drive animations. I used SNapz Pro X to capture both the sound and the video in this one. The frame rate is low, but that is not from Snapz Pro. Snapz is actually just capturing the desktop and I think this example is kind of a stess test for the renderer I am using (SCREM and Dash, both AME softwares).
Check out the sweet drop shadow on the word “afraid.” GET IT??? Ya, that drop shadow feature was written by AME’s own Loren Olson, who is a total Cocoa and Obj C guru. Thanks to Loren for making the TextDisplay Dash object so awesome.
English Idiom: S/he is afraid of his/her own shadow! from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.
posted March 02, 2009 | Comments (0)
Embodied Poetry: English Idioms
I am working on my MFA project these days. Part of it has to do with working with a group of high school English Language Learners (and a group of awesome teachers and my profs Ellen and David and my friend Andreea, we make an awesome team). In collaboration with the students, I am going to make a whole bunch of super cool animations that involve using the body to create motion paths to drive text objects and images and sounds within compositions. The motion paths are 3d recordings made inside the SMALLab space. (you can see a video of the SMALLab including details on the Embodied Poetry initiative in the previous post) The point of doing this is to use the body to make action poems that create concrete representations of figurative language that can be hard for the foreign language learner to understand. We are focusing on idioms for this unit, because many English idioms include, actions, colors and parts of the body: all things you can leverage in the SMALLab. This example is one that I made on my own to be shown in an upcoming demo for the students. This animation represents the idiom “you can talk until you are blue in the face but…”
I recorded myself holding one of the SMALLab objects low in the space and then I bobbed it up and down until I was standing on my toes. The values of the 3d actions are then applied to things like color as well as the size of the text objects that say things like “blablabla” and “can I convince them?” and “argue”.
Idiom: Talk until blue in the face from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.
posted March 01, 2009 | Comments (1)
So what the heck is the SMALLab???
I sometimes have a hard time describing the project I work on. Luckily, I work with super smart people who are incredibly articulate. The video here describes the Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab and all the most recent projects we are working on. This video was shot and edited by my prof Aisling Kelliher. She did a super job. Additionally, you can see a few of the projects I worked on: all the language arts learning scenarios. GO TEAM SMALLab!
SMALLab @ Arizona State University - 2009 from aisling kelliher on Vimeo.
posted February 24, 2009 | Comments (3)
FLOWER for PSN Not Art?
Thatgamecompany (the game design company that released flOw for PSN) is releasing another title called Flower. You can check it out here. I unfortunately have yet to own a PS3 but the renderings up on the site are absolutely stunning. Lately, there has been much debate on whether or not a video game can be art. Rod Humble, Jason Rohr (Rohr actually critiques some of Humble’s works on his site here) and others have really started thinking about the debate with an art historical/art critical mind. This debate is something I have a lot of opinion over and would like to look into more, especially since I never see any mention of linking games to the types of works done by neo-avant-garde artists, works that relied almost entirely on audience interactions (that were, dare I say, even scripted). The avant-garde and their naked gesticulations and perplexing ideals aside, Flower to me, is a tactical example of a more Objectivist or Romantic Realist genre. It recreates life and represents it, but from an artist’s persepective. The fantasy it potentially allows the player to endure is understandable and identifiable, but it quantifies (or qualifies??) an abstract idea of human connectedness/yearning for pastoral landscapes. Thanks a lot Flower (note sarcasm) for yet again making me want to buy a PS3, something I really cannot afford at the moment. But also… thanks for pushing a few boundaries and creating an entirely different interaction and experience that could be both soothing and rewarding for all types of players.
posted February 10, 2009 | Comments (0)
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble
Check out this awesome game made by Mousechief. It is a Flash turn based board game where you control your girls’ abilities at wit and cunning. Taking place in the 1920’s, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble contains very well written content and characters that highlight the comic mini games throughout. http://www.mousechief.com/dhsg/index.html
posted January 23, 2009 | Comments (0)
The Animation Class: XML Tween Animations in Flash
I recently checked out a tutorial on how to save a tween as an XML file and then apply it to as many individual movie clips as possible. It is pretty cool, I had never tried it before. You can link to the tutorial here.
posted January 11, 2009 | Comments (0)
WordNet for Flash?
I am working on my MFA thesis and currently have a little artist block. Frustrating to say the least… I really want to get some sort of dynamic WordNet library working with Flash, but there are none available. There are plenty for Java and Processing. If you are interested, you can check out JWNL or JAWS for Java or Rita.WordNet for Processing. Rita is the easiest to use. I have tried the Java libraries and the way they work is confusing for me. Rita just has all of the methods pretty much ready to go. In the meantime, here is an awesome resource for other open source Flash libraries (and other Adobe software) called RIAForge.
Speaking of Processing, 1.0 came out back in November ‘08. I have been using it for about a year now, off and on for various things. I prefer using Flash just because of the GUI (and awesome things like FlashDevelop for the PC) and I find ActionScript 3.0 just slightly more intuitive, however, they are almost the same. The main difference is that Processing is FREE. I would like to someday be just as well versed in prototyping and designing in Processing as I am in Flash. If you have never used Processing, check it out HERE! I recommend the reference book with the polka dots, the one by Ira Greenberg. If I ever have the opportunity to teach a computational art, digital media or rapid prototyping class in the future, I would use Processing.
posted January 10, 2009 | Comments (0)
Happy New Year… and don’t forget to hit the previous button…
WPfolio has so far capped the number of thumbnails on my projects pages at ten for some reason, so please make sure you notice the previous button at the bottom right hand corner. So interesting. Hopefully I will be able to fix this. Thanks! Happy New Year!
posted January 06, 2009 | Comments (1)
Recent Work: Using a Wiimote and Flash (How To Corral)
detail of How to Corral, 2008
I have been working on ideas for my MFA thesis. The final works will combine ideas about play, games, language learning, and poetry… most likely. One of my prototypes/works in progress is a piece I showed at Bragg’s Pie Factory in downtown Phoenix. It is called How to Corral. It is a metaphorical piece about notions of wildness vs. normalcy (but mostly it is just fun and causes the participant to look deeply into the relationships of — how the words move — the physical movements the participant must engage in — and the meanings of the words — ). Link to the project page of How to Corral here.
The version I showed at Bragg’s uses a WiiMote. I developed with the WiiFlash server. It is awesome and so easy to use, I hope to use it again. You can download the WiiFlash server here. You must have bluetooth enabled on your computer or laptop to use WiiFlash.
posted December 31, 2008 | Comments (0)
updates on updating, heh
I am still getting some quirkiness from WPFolio, however, the benefits far outweigh the weirdness. My Art Projects “category-page” seems to be too full already and is jamming posts onto another page. It also seems to put things in whatever pattern it likes. Will the thumbnails ever appear as a flamingo shape? We will just have to see.