Toon Boom visits Georgia for Game Design Camp

My friends at Toon Boom just told me about an event in my neck of the woods (Georgia). They are co-hosting a game design camp at SCAD for students aged 12-15. Thats probably a bit younger than most of my readers, but hey, some of you might have kids that age. Here’s some more info and link to the details on SCAD’s site…

Combining the expertise and prestige of SCAD with the outstanding products and faculty from Ubisoft Entertainment and Toon Boom Animation, the SCAD Game Design Camp offers an educational adventure in game design for students ages 12-15. To simulate game production as approached in the professional field, teams of students are directed through industry processes, in order to construct a board game from start to finish. Students discover creative methods via brainstorming, interactive practice and teamwork.  After this weeklong camp, students gain a familiarity with game design software, 2-D technology, and specialized equipment used in the game design industry.

Flash CS6, the new Sprite Sheet maker / HTML5 exporter?!

Well the Adobe CS6 line is getting ever closer to release, so I guess its time I start looking into what’s ahead.  To be honest, I grimace a little every time there’s a new version because I can’t avoid the inevitable spend,  its hundreds straight out of my pocket, regardless of whether the upgrade is worth upgrading.

But this time around there’s at least two features that will make me actually reach for my wallet. Seems like CartoonSmart’s website will see a return of some simple animation using Flash CS6′s export option for HTML5. As some of you might remember, the site used to have a lot of Flash, then very little, then almost none at all. Sorry, I love my iPad. But if I can animate even simple image transitions or fades in Flash, then export it to HTML, I’m there.

And then the other VERY interesting feature is this Sprite Sheet generator. Is that alone worth a few hundred bucks, meh, who knows. There are some free sprite sheet programs out there, but for a hardcore game developer, this will come in really handy. And I think this feature further steers Flash in the right direction, being used for game graphics/animation instead of web animation.

You can read about some of the other features, on Adobe’s site. OR from another blogger here

The 4th and final chapter (for a while) of my iBook is now available…

Well I’ve made it through 91 pages! Phew, I feel like a writer.  I’ll be breaking for a bit on this project, but not before I give away yet another chapter for FREEEE…..

Chapter 4 goes into everyone’s not-so-favorite subject, Creating Your Own Classes with Cocos2D!  But don’t worry, I’ve made this as easy as possible. And of course there’s lots of fun images, and even some video.

If you don’t have an iPad, you can view it online as a PDF or download it as a PDF. Click here to grab it! Just remember, you miss out on the video and some of the nice formatting as a PDF.

And for you lucky folk with an iPad and a recently updated version of iBooks, you can download the latest version by clicking here if you are reading this from your iPad (it might take a bit to load) And I would probably recommend deleting the old version of the book if you previously downloaded it.

And you can also download a zip file of the iBook, by clicking here, then once unzipped on your home computer, you can just drag the iBooks file to iTunes. Sync your device and enjoy!

Ever wonder who else makes iOS Starter Kits??

I did. So I found a new friend.  The guys over at iPhoneGameKit.com have some great ones. And they do things a bit like our iOS kits, because they also have a lot of instruction included with their packages.  Take a look at their two kits for sale…

First up is Quexlor, an Action RPG Engine with code and tutorial….

This one looks particularly sweet because well, I loved playing Phantasy Star as a kid, so the top down RPG games have a soft spot with me. And this kit comes with hundreds of textures, characters and objects as well.

Also written in Obj-C and Cocos2D, holla!

Next, they’ve got a  Monster Checkers Starter Kit, which also doubles as a vehicle to learn Objective C and Cocos2D. You even get a 100 page e-book. ( Wait, that sounds like what I’ve been writing! )

This too comes with a bonus zip package full of thousands of royalty-free characters, sprites, buildings, other images and sound effects.

And I’ll end this article with a pitch from their own site, “Do you want to make your game in a few months? Or by the end of the weekend?”

True.

Chapter 3 of the best little free iBook (or now PDF) is available!

I guess I should update this blog at a faster rate than I’m updating this iBook. She’s kept me busy for sure this past week. But I’ve added a whole chapter on getting started with Cocos2D, which outta be a great companion resource for my current iOS students. And there might even be some things in this chapter that I haven’t talked about in the tutorials.  Point is, give it a download!

If you don’t have an iPad, you can view it online as a PDF or download it as a PDF. Click here to grab it!  There’s about 60 pages of “real” content, then the rest is the glossary terms which get added as their own pages.  Also keep in mind, there’s a lot you miss in the PDF, some of the images are interactive in iBook form, and of course none of the movie files play. At a later date, I’ll try to fix that by adding some links to YouTube versions or something.

And for you lucky folk with an iPad and a recently updated version of iBooks, you can download the latest version by clicking here if you are reading this from your iPad (it might take a bit to load) And I would probably recommend deleting the old version of the book if you previously downloaded it.

And you can also download a zip file of the iBook, by clicking here, then once unzipped on your home computer, you can just drag the iBooks file to iTunes. Sync your device and enjoy!

Doesn't code look pretty here ??

What would a CartoonSmart book look like?

I dunno. Because neither of us will probably ever see one.  But how about a CartoonSmart iBook??… you can read one today!

Well part of one. Last Wednesday (so one week ago) I decided to really explore iBooks Author. It is the most intuitive program I’ve ever used. Like most of Apple’s consumer software, without any help I was able to create and publish within no time. And what I made in an hour was inspiring. Granted all I did at that point was modify one of the templates, but seeing it published to my iPad spurred a ton of ideas. Here’s what’s so cool (and completely different from making Apps)…

• Without creating any kind of developer profile or signing up for stuff, I was able to publish the book to my iPad. All you do is plug in the device and open iBooks (download the latest version though). As any of my iOS development students know, this is absolutely not the case making an App. One of the toughest things about being a developer is one of the first steps, getting the app on the darn device. Put it this way, iBooks is basically a jail-broken format.
• If bullet point 1 up there didn’t wow you, well check this out… I can distribute what I created today AND without any official permission or review from Apple. In fact, I’ll give you two chapters of what I put together this week. The only catch, and it isn’t much of one, I can’t sell you something in the iBooks format. To do that, I would need to distribute through Apple. But for right now, I’m just excited I can give this to you for free. Again, that’s completely different than the uphill battle you face distributing an App for free.

So to stress-test iBooks (and stress my ability to convey knowledge via written word) I wrote two chapters of an iOS programming book. Its 140MB, because I’ve included about 30 minutes of videos inside the book. How cool is that?!

Here’s how you can get this work-in-progress:

1. If you’re on an iPad reading this now you can open the iBooks file directly. Just be sure you have the latest version of iBooks already. Click this link. It will show a blue loading bar in the URL window, then once downloaded it will prompt you to open the book in iBooks.
2. You can download a zip file with the .ibooks format. Click this link.  The zip will download, open it. A file called cartoonsmart.ibooks will be there. Drop that into iTunes. In your Library, you should see it under Books. Then when you connect your iPad to iTunes, you should see the book in your Books tab ready to sync up.  If you don’t, again, make sure you have the latest version of iBooks.

If you don’t have an iPad, eeeeekk, that stinks. But don’t worry, I won’t be making only iBooks from here on out. This was just something I wanted to test out. We still have plenty of video courses ahead. Check out this format though, and tell me what you think.