Author Archive for agavin – Page 94

Sucker Punched

Jan08

Director/Stars: Abbie Cornish (Actor), Emily Browning (Actor), Zack Snyder (Director)

Genre: Action

Watched: January 5, 2012

Summary: Style over substance

The concept for Sucker Punch, whacked as it is, is actually pretty decent. The movie is also gorgeous and stylized. Yet… it just doesn’t really work at any rational level. Part Kill Bill, part Pan’s Labyrinth, part Inception, part Sin City, part video game cut scene, this film is all CGI glitz and fetishistic style. It’s also worth noting that the writer/director, Zach Snyder, brought us those other style over substance “classics”: Watchmen and 300.

As to the plot. Wait, I can’t really use that word because as I’ve discussed at length before plot is the action created by opposition to the protagonist’s desire. The characterization in this film is about as solid as a whiff of gunpowder and we have only the most basic desire: escape. The film opens with a comic book style summary of the setup: girl has been orphaned, framed by her evil step-father, committed to a mental asylum (in the late 40s), and scheduled for a lobotomy. From this grim — but actually dramatically interesting — setup we devolve into a series of nested fantasies.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love reality bending films. Pan’s Labyrinth is my favorite film of the last decade. They’re just hard to get right and it’s key to overlap and contrast the inner and outer worlds. In Sucker Punch, the outermost (or real) world is seen for about three minutes at the beginning and again for about three minutes at the end. Oddly, a middle layer in which the girl (named only Babydoll) imagines herself a prisoner not in a mental institution but in a stylish brothel serves up what little plot and characterization we have. This itself parallels with the real world and might have been interesting if we spent any time there. Instead we are propelled one after another into a series of really cool looking fantasy set pieces. Oddly, the “plan” to escape the institution (brothel, asylum — both? neither?) is broken down into a quest of five video game like steps, conveniently provided by Scott Glenn in a role known only as “The Wise Man”. Each step, which in the midworld amounts to things like: “steal a lighter from the fat-cat mayor who is visiting to have his way with the fifteen year-old hotties” is instead rendered into an “action packed” fantasy that has very very little bearing on the task. Also, this setup, which is pretty awful but intriguing is whitewashed due to a pansy PG-13 rating.

We have a big fight in a cool asian temple against three giant robo-samurai-knights. Each has his own weapon! Yah video games. This even includes a Doom-style gatling gun.

Immersion in a steampunk super-sized World War I trench battle, which honestly for about one minute took my breath away.

A return to the assault on Helm’s Deep, complete with orcs in danger of lawsuit from WETA and big fire breathing dragons (the dragon is the lighter — yeah, that’s deep connection).

And a sci-fi shootout bomb run on a super high tech train filled with killer robots. Snooze!

The first three of these, particularly the WWI fight, are gorgeous. I mean really cool looking. But they are ten-fifteen minute fight scenes with almost no dialog set to ethereal music like a version of “White Rabbit” sung by Emiliana Torrini. (NOTE: I did order the soundtrack, that part was awesome) For a minute or three each they seem intensely cool. But they’re just shooting, jumping, slicing and more shooting. We don’t know who these characters are. They’re in a dream within a dream. And we don’t care. They are shooting at thousands of horde-like video game style enemies. We don’t care. Somehow each of these fights results in achieving the fairly straightforward midworld objective. The connection is highly non-obvious.

Highly non-obvious = non-existent.

It’s also worth noting the extremely bizarre infusion of manga/game infused stylization. First of all, by including Comic book, 40s faux-gangster, Asian, WWI, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi we have a serious total complete massive buttload overabundance of style. Any one of these would have made for a highly stylized firm. Extreme too too too too muchness. But the girls in their weird “warrior schoolgirl” outfits is whacky — although I am a lover of midriff — and I could have gotten drunk taking a shot every time someone thunked down a gun in slow-mo or gotten rich with a penny for every giant CGI gun casing that flipped toward the camera. This is of the more is more school of filmmaking. Synder should have studied more closely what makes Pan’s Labyrinth a brilliant film: Two styles contrasting, with one being hyper realistic, a strong tie between the fantasy and reality planes. And most importantly: highly developed characters including one of the most terrifying genuine evil types to cross the silver screen in years.

Sucker Punch sort of totally could have been cool if we cared.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Or read about my current project, The Darkening Dream.

By: agavin
Comments (3)

Posted in: Movies

Tagged as: Abbie Cornish, Babydoll, Emily Browning, Fantasy, Scott Glenn, Sucker Punch, Video game, Watchmen, World War I, Zack Snyder

Near Dark – The Hurt Coffin

Jan07

Title: Near Dark

Director/Stars: Lance Henriksen (Actor), Adrian Pasdar (Actor), Katherine Bigelow (Director)

Genre: Horror

Watched: January 3, 2012

Summary: Old fashioned 80s vamp fun

Somehow I missed this 1987 low budget vampire classic. Not only is it a stylish 80s take on the vampire legend, but it’s written and directed by Katherine Bigelow (very early in her career). She goes on to do Point Break, Strange Days (one of my favorite films), and The Hurt Locker. It’s also packed with a cast straight off the Aliens set. No surprise, given that Bigelow was shacked up with James Cameron in this period. This gives us the ever reliable B-movie king, Lance Henriksen, plus Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein.

This is a dark, road horror movie shot in the days before anything was digital. Still, it’s more watchable than many a newer film. It has excellent direction, stylish cinematography by Cameron alum Adam Greenberg, and an awesome moody Tangerine Dream score (which is going for $120 on Amazon!).

Remind you of Aliens?

The lead, armed only with a vampire name (Caleb) is just some Oklahoma hick. He falls in with a cute girl and a little necking turns into a lot of necking — leaving him daylight challenged. The film focuses fairly effectively on the “becoming a vampire” thing and the symptoms and consequences. It’s all pretty cool except for the “have to kill and drink someone every night” bit (or bite as the case happens to be). Poor Caleb has just too much of a conscience for the lifestyle, but still, he’s dragged alone on a murderous undead joy ride.

The red-neck bar blood fest is a particular highlight.

The vampires in this film stick fairly closely to some of the canonical rules: They catch fire in the daylight, drink blood, etc. But the more religious and bestial tones are dropped. No crosses, no invitations, no coffins, no fangs (that we see). They do heal fast.

I very much enjoyed the film, although in many ways it has more in common with a plain vanilla murder spree road trip movie than most supernatural films. My only beef was with the ending. Somehow Caleb and girl manage to just reverse the whole undead thing with a bit of a transfusion. Vampires should be dead. The dead don’t stop being dead.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Or read about my recently released vampire novel, in which the undead do stay dead.

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Movies

Tagged as: Adrian Pasdar, Bill Paxton, Hurt Locker, James Cameron, Jenny Wright, Katherine Bigelow, Kathryn Bigelow, Lance Henriksen, Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, vampires

Parlez vous Crash

Jan06

In the mid to late 90s, Playstation games had three SKUs: SCUS, SCEE, and SCEJ, being respectively the US NTSC version, the European PAL version, and the Japanese NTSC version.

The American version shipped in early September 1996. We finished it in early August (manufacture took a month). From my perspective — and it’s worth noting that during the Crash period I personally did most of the localization work — the European version was finished at the same time. I’d killed myself getting it ready during July. But Europe itself liked to drag matters out with a leisurely testing schedule. I wanted it done, because until it was, I couldn’t do much else.

At Naughty Dog, we pioneered the idea of simultaneous international release. By Crash 2 and Crash 3 the same exact code, conditionalized very slightly, ran all three versions. Jak & Daxter was one of the first games where the American version included the European languages. By Jak II you could switch languages on the fly in the menu anytime. We wanted one code base, one art base, one thing to debug. We wanted it for sale simultaneously world wide. I wanted one gold master.

This goal and the tools to do it began on Crash 1, and were fairly well in place by Crash 2. The international groups weren’t quite as on board and year after year dragged out the European and Japanese editions for extra testing. As best I can tell this resulted mostly from a “this is the way it’s always been done” kind of mentality. Jason and I have never been big on that type of reasoning. Still, that personal caveat aside, even from Crash 1, Sony’s international teams did an awesome job, putting in a tremendous effort to ensure the product was really polished for each territory.

The front of the original PAL edition

Anyway, each territory had its own quirks. With the European version, they stemmed from PAL, the old European video standard. PAL actually has a slightly higher resolution and better color fidelity than NTSC (the US standard). But the kicker is that it runs at 50 hertz instead of 60. For Crash this meant that the frame rate would be 25 frames per second instead of 30.

The resolution itself wasn’t much of a problem. Crash was mostly a 3D game and it wasn’t hard to adjust the projection matrix in the engine to render the game to a different resolution. But the aspect ratio of PAL pixels is also a little different and Crash did have a certain amount of bitmap graphics like the powerups and font. The PAL frame buffers were larger and the machine had the same video RAM so increasing the resolution of the sprites was rarely an option. Generally, we just had to live with a slight aspect shift or stretch them to fit. I developed notation in the original data so that different kinds of sprites could go either way in a fairly uniform manner.

The real kicker was the frame rate. One of the reasons why the animation in Crash is so so much better than most of its contemporaries is that we stored every vertex for every frame — then compressed the living crap out of it. This meant that each segment of animation was sampled from Alias PowerAnimator at 30 fps. I modified the tools to support making a second copy of every animation where the step rate was adjusted to 25fps. The pal version used these files instead of the originals. This worked about 80% of the time. Sometimes it became necessary to notate a particular animation segment as having a strange or custom step for PAL, or even hand code certain frames. I added special constructs to my custom language (GOOL) which made this stuff as automatic as I could.

It often came in these enlarged boxes to fit all those languages!

But the physics and collision systems also needed to adjust to the different frame rate. I had done PAL conversions for Rings of Power and Way of the Warriorand having every great programmer’s hatred for tedium had developed the notion when starting Crash that I would notate all “time and space based” units not in the traditional game programmer manner of “moves X pixels per frame” but in a kind of neutral space. Hence everything in Crash was measured in meters, seconds, and the like. I built into GOOL constructs like (meters 5) or (meters-per-second 2.5). The compiler or the runtime (depended) would convert these on the fly into the appropriate pixel per frame units.

This had a number of big advantages. First of all, even without the PAL issue, it allowed the physics (and the enemies) to move in a fairly frame rate independent way. Special functions were used to deal with velocity and acceleration which took into account the current frame’s estimated real time (based usually on how long it took the previous frame to compute and render). This meant that the code which propelled Crash in a parabolic arc as he jumped would move him further per frame if the frame rate slipped to 20 or 15 (which, unfortunately, it sometimes did). This wasn’t a perfect solution, 15 fps still played worse than 30, but it helped.

And it really paid off with the PAL conversion. The hard work — and it was incredibly tedious — really only took me about five days. After running all the automatic convertors and debugging those I had to go through the entire game and check every single level, every creature, every behavior of every creature or object and make sure it stilled played and looked okay in PAL. If it didn’t I had to play with the numbers, or in the worst case add some special “if PAL do it a little differently” clauses to the GOOL code.

But this was in a world where most American games just played 16% more sluggishly in Europe and most European games 16% fast in America.

Crash played great in both — and looked great in both. The Euro version actually even looked a little better (higher resolution and better color) although the feel at 25hz was slightly inferior. But we didn’t invent the TV standard.

The final tricky bit with localization was the language(s). Crash 1 didn’t really have any voice (which was to become a huge deal in later games). But it did have some text.

This is Crash 2, which is the only picture I could find, but Crash 1 was similar, just with the C1 title page

In typical programmer fashion, I invented another system for this. All of the text was generated by literal strings in the GOOL code, and since I controlled the compiler, I added a feature where a mapping file could be created for each language specifying the English text and the equivalent phrases in each of our five languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian). I changed the way strings were handled to index into a table and to have five files on disk for the string buffer. This is typical now, but was very unusual then. Even on Crash 1 you could change the language on the fly. But Europe made me put the toggle only at the main menu because they didn’t want to have to test for weird bugs that came up when you switched languages in the middle of a level.

I systemized all of this stuff by having the tools and the game itself both have separate notions of: video rate (NTSC, PAL), territory (which country’s disc it actually was), and language. This separated the concept of language from territory, opening up the possibility of foreign languages in the American versions (which didn’t happen until Jak 1 for logistical and legal reasons).

As requests came in from Europe to do peculiar and territory specific things like “make the game harder because European gamers like a challenge” (after Crash 1 we refused to acknowledge this “truism”) I modified the tools to allow territory specific overrides in the files that controlled the game data. For example, CONTINUE_POINT_64_32 in the jungle level, “hide in europe.” While I’m not sure the frustrated Euro gamer appreciated it, the system did make serving the producer’s requests easier.

In any case, the Euro version of Crash was lavished with the same attention to detail with which we did everything, and Sony Europe did the same. This was one (if not the) first product for which the whole international organization was behind and where they controlled the worldwide rights. Each Sony territory really pulled out all the stops in supporting and promoting the game as “made here.” It was highly localized, not just the game itself but each little country in Europe doing its own advertising and marketing campaign. Even the Irish filmed their own ads with Irish accented actors. Traditionally game players were highly “nationalistic” with, for example, French games selling better in France. The attention paid by both us and at all levels of the Sony infrastructure to selling a worldwide product aimed specifically at each and every consumer group really paid off.

The game sold like wildfire everywhere. Although we had certain champion territories like France and Australia (Crash’s virtual birthplace) who really poured on the love.

The story continues with Crash goes to Japan!

If you liked this post, follow me at:

My novels: The Darkening Dream and Untimed
or the video game post depot
or win Crash & Jak giveaways!

Latest hot post: War Stories: Crash Bandicoot

Yes, Crash really took to the old country.

By: agavin
Comments (51)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Crash Bandicoot, Europe, Games, Localization, Naughty Dog, NTSC, PAL, PAL region, pt_crash_history, SCEE, Sony Computer Entertainment, United States

Game of Thrones – Renly’s Armor

Jan05

I can’t resist a little continued geek out and bringing you a video on the making of Renly Baratheon’s armor for season 2 of Game of Thrones.

What’s most impressive about this is not the look per se, but the incredible attention to detail lavished on each and every little item and prop. Truth is, you can’t obviously TELL that this is a unique “fashion prince” take on scale mail, but it’s part of what makes the show look fairly medieval, and not all lame shiny like say… King Author. Oh and then there is the fact that it’s well written. And that’s the most important thing of course.

My full episode by episode coverage of season 1 can be found here.

If you liked this post, follow me at:

My novels: The Darkening Dream and Untimed
or the video game post depot
or win Crash & Jak giveaways!

Latest hot post: War Stories: Crash Bandicoot

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Television

Tagged as: A Song of Ice and Fire, Armor, Art, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, Mail, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Television, World of A Song of Ice and Fire

The Final Cover

Jan05

And if you believe I’m really done, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…

But anyway, I’m done for now.

Click to embiggen.

As you may have noticed if you were following the last cover post, I went with the orange — again for now. The gray is perhaps prettier, but the orange pops. I also changed up the author font to a more vintage typeface to imply the 1913 time frame of the novel. And we made various other tweaks like brightening the girl which is mostly for shrunken E-Book versions of the cover where she got lost in the shadows.

Anyway, I’ve already uploaded the new version to all three E-Book sites I’m currently live with. Amazon has already updated, but the lamer, slower other sites will lag behind. If you downloaded the old cover and want to upload I suspect you can just “delete” the book from your Kindle app and retrieve the new one from the archives. I’ll test that myself soon.

So you should just go and buy it if you haven't

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Book Cover, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, E-book, The Darkening Dream

Special Prize Winners

Jan03

The first round of the crazy Naughty Dark Contest already has not one, but two special prize winners! And these lucky guys are both from Crash’s home country, Australia.

Tyson Cleary of Tasmania

and

William Errey from Perth

For more info on the contest, a detailed list of prizes and rules can be found here!

Both guys also wanted copies of the original Crash Bandicoot and here they are prior to shipping. I signed both cover and CD, including my special unforgable “symbol.” Yes, like Prince, I have a symbol. But you’ll have to ask the Painted Man what it means.

Thank you both immeasurably!

It’s also worth noting that this has made the virtual hat for the first round even more lucrative for the rest of you. Due to their prize winning each first round ticket is worth at least a 2% chance of winning a prize now — and if someone else claims a special prize, it could be even greater. So read up on the rules and participate.

Start by purchasing The Darkening Dream!

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Contests, Darkening Dream, Games

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Australia, Contest, Contests, Crash Bandicoot, Giveaways, List of prizes medals and awards, Naughty Dark Contest, Tasmania, The Darkening Dream

For sale at B&N and Google

Jan03

My novel, The Darkening Dream, is now for sale at Barnes and Noble and the Google bookstore.

Buy it Now!

The Nook version is fine, but use Google only if the others don’t work for you. Google’s processing engine rips apart the EPUB and puts it back — with less than dazzling results. You can read it fine, but they mangle my nice CSS formatting and butcher the little chapter start illustrations. I’m still trying to get an improved version through their system.

Paper versions are coming in about two weeks.

Truly it’s no wonder Amazon is winning the E-Book war. I simultaneously started the process of uploading to: Amazon, B&N, Google, Kobo, Sony, and Apple. The results, from best to worst:

Amazon: Took 15 minutes, it was ready 7 hours later.

B&N: Took 15 minutes, nice previewer, took 7 days to post.

Google: Took 2 hours. The interface is one of the worst ever designed. I wasn’t even sure it was processing when I was “done.” Took 48 hours to post. Mangled the book and the price and have been struggling for days to get an updated version posted.

Sony, Kobo, Apple: Still waiting for my applications for accounts to go through. This should be instant! Haven’t even been able to submit the actual book yet.

As a note too, I refuse to use Smashwords until they allow a direct EPUB upload. Using their crazy meatgrinder is not appealing at all.

Find out more about the book here.

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Barnes & Noble, E-book, Google Bookstore, Novel, The Darkening Dream

Sugar & Spice

Jan03

Title: Sugar & Spice

Author: Saffina Desforges

Genre: Crime Fiction

Length: 353 pages

Read: Dec 26 – 28, 2011

Summary: Disturbing, but gripping

I was slogging through a best selling YA historical fantasy when I finally couldn’t take it anymore. That particular piece of anonymous juvie trash was making me want to gag myself with a spoon so I needed to wash the bad taste out of my mouth with an entirely different kind of filth.

Enter the disturbing indie crime thriller about no less a subject then a serial killer with a taste for little girls. Apparently it’s been a runaway best seller in the UK (both the author and the setting are British). And you’d have to be a total whack-a-doodle like me to even pick up something like this.

Sugar & Spice doesn’t have the greatest writing in the world. The book has a peculiar distant quality — maybe a good thing — and the point of view changes are frequent, confusing, and totally jarring.

Still, I couldn’t put it down. Desforges sure did a lot of research into the dark unpleasant corners of the human psyche. And this book attempts to put you there. Full frontal. It’s not a comfortable place, but it does have all the fascinating quality of a colossal train wreck. There’s no brilliant storytelling here, although the prose is workmanlike and clear. The book could use a 15-20% trim-job. But it’s still a compelling journey if you like to read on the dark side.

If you don’t, stay far, far away.

For more book reviews, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Book Review, Crime fiction, Saffina Desforges, Serial killer, Sugar & Spice

Announcing the Naughty Dark Contest

Jan02

This is the kickoff post for my new experimental — and hopefully permanent — giveaway program. Via this contest you, dear reader, will have the opportunity to win signed copies of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter games as well as my books and cool toys. All you have to do is participate in my gleefully elaborate scheme to help sell and promote my new novel, The Darkening Dream.

A detailed list of prizes and rules can be found here!

Or by clicking anytime on the big contest icon in the sidebar.

So if signed copies of any of the following look up your alley, read the rules and participate! And even if you aren’t a collector they apparently have significant dollar value because a set of four signed Crashs sold on Ebay recently for over $453!

By: agavin
Comments (5)

Posted in: Contests, Darkening Dream, Games

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Contest, Crash Bandicoot, free, Giveaways, Jak & Daxter, Naughty Dog, Prizes, The Darkening Dream

A-Frame – Ultimate Picnic Food

Jan01

Restaurant: A-Frame

Location: 12565 Washington Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90066 – tel: 310-398-7700

Date: December 15, 2011 & February 28, 2012

Cuisine: Gastro Picnic

Rating: Really yummy

A-Frame’s building used to be an IHOP — hence it’s architecture and the name.

It has, however, been really revamped.

A nice Burgundy to begin.

The menu is fairly short. We ordered everything tapas style, regardless of the category.

“Heirloom pickles.” I like pickles, but perhaps better with rice al la certain Japanese dishes.

“Island Farmer’s Market Salad.” A nice pleasant salad with Asian notes.

“WAGYU BEEF TATAKI with sliced pearl onions, ginger, pickled jalapeño and shoyu vinaigrette.” This was a wonderful dish. Very tangy with great texture.

“BLUE CRAB CAKES with lemongrass creme fraiche, bibb lettuce, and perilla leaf.” These crabcakes were to be eaten “thai-style” wrapped in lettuce. They were quite good.

“CHARRED BABY OCTOPUS with carrot kochujang puree, bok choy, pickled vegetables and nori seaweed.” Another nice dish.

“SESAME LEAF WRAPPED SHRIMP TEMPURA with fresh cucumber, herbs and shoyu dipping sauce.” This had shiso (a Japanese mint relative), which pretty much means I adored it.

“CLAM CHOWDER with green curry, lemongrass, pancetta, coconut milk and toasted sourdough.” A really nice take on “clam chowder.” Essentially it tasted a lot like one of those creamy coconut milk/lemongrass thai soups, but with a nice bacon richness somewhat akin to a great New England chowder. Bravo!

“BABY BACK RIBS air-dried and hoisin-chili glazed.” These were some great ribs too, with a rich “Chinesy” taste and a good amount of vinegar.

“ROASTED LAMB with toasted sesame oil, shoyu and garlic served with fresh herb salad and salsa verde.” This dish was fine, but it didn’t have the flavor impact I was looking for.

“CRACKLIN BEER CAN CHICKEN with kimchi, century egg, salsa roja and verde.” Good fried chicken.

“Lamb Meatball Skewer.” These were nice ground lamb skewers, but they seemed a bit expensive for what they were.

“Pan Roasted Brussel Sprouts. with rice cakes, kimchi bacon puree and diced apples.” The bacon sold it.

“BANANA BACON CREAM PIE vanilla cream, caramel bananas, and bacon brittle.” I hate banana, but this was still good. The bacon sold it!

“THICK ASS ICE CREAM SANDWICHES with black pepper szechuan ice cream and salted chocolate cookie.” This was a wonderful ice cream sandwich. I loved the peppery ice cream.

“CHU-DON’T-KNOW-MANG pound cake cinnamon churros, with malted chocolate milk and vanilla ice cream.” And this was the complete winner in the dessert category. These were some of the best churros I’ve had, and that milkshake-like thing was awesome.

Happy times!

The chickens going around and around.

Overall, I was very pleased with A-Frame and will totally be back. This was a pair of VERY tasty meals with a unique take on fairly uncomplicated food. Essentially, it’s very contemporary without being avant garde, and fuses eclectic flavors from around the world with American comfort foods.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: AFrame, California, Clam chowder, Culver City, gastropub, Los Angeles, Public house, ribs, Santa Monica California

Cover Takes – Opinions Wanted!

Dec31

Even after the product launch has begun, I’m still tinkering — and such is the way of it in the new world of agile product development. My current cover (to the left) now has an awesome image, but the overall effect isn’t quite bookish enough. So in the interest of total transparency (or mind numbing boredom?) I’ll continue to let you in on these intermediate steps of the creative process.

My cover designer, Pete Garceau, has whipped up a couple concept sketches. To the right is a darker colored take and below one in the original color scheme. You can click them to embiggen.

These are NOT in any way finished. Just concepts.

What I want to know for you, reader, is:

1. Which color scheme do you like, and why?

2. Your opinion of The Darkening Dream font/logo?

Please let me know in the comments!

Discover more about my novel, The Darkening Dream here or on all sorts of other links in the left sidebar.

It’s worth noting, that in the specialized world of book design the book designer (interior), the cover designer (logo design cover layout), and the illustrator (who paints the image on the cover) are sometimes all different people!

NOTE: I updated this post at 10:43am PST with slightly newer takes on the covers. The “older” two can be found here and here.

By: agavin
Comments (19)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Book Cover, Book design, Color Schemes, Cover art, Cover Design, Covers, E-book, The Darkening Dream

Kotaku Dreams

Dec30

Gaming site Kotaku has run a quick little feature on The Darkening Dream today.

What do you do after founding and retiring from one of video games’ most successful development houses? If you’re Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin, you write books.

The first of said books is The Darkening Dream, a shadowy fantasy novel about a young girl caught up in a battle that pits ancient supernatural forces like vampires and Egyptian gods against each other.

You can check out the full post here.

Thank you guys! And I’ve already seen a big sales jump. I hope all the fans of my old stuff love my new stuff too.

Discover more about my novel, The Darkening Dream, here.

By: agavin
Comments (5)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Arts, Darkening Dream, Egyptian pantheon, Fiction, Kotaku, Naughty Dog, press, The Darkening Dream, Video game

The Look – Pastor Parris

Dec29

Pastor John Parris is the junior of my two point of view villains in The Darkening Dream. Given the kind of occult woodblock look I’ve been developing I tend to focus on the character’s magical nature to develop their icon.

With Parris I got off to a false start, drawn in by this classic image of Baphomet. It has strong associations with the occult, witchcraft, and demonology. All good stuff that Parris likes to keep close at hand, wrapped in black silk coverings. Or perhaps in a human-skin pouch.

I even had my artists do this rendition (above). But this was a red herring. Truthfully, Baphomet is a nineteenth century rendering, a reinvention of such things in light of 1800s eclecticism. It’s more akin to the effect this image has for us moderns, being cool, exotic, and devilishly naughty. Parris comes from a school of magic that is much more about really believing in fire and brimstone.

So I turned to this kind of image (above) showing a seventeenth century witches sabbath. This is totally apropos, but I didn’t know how to make an icon out of it.

Then I found this view (above) of the witches table. Parris is a ritualist and he often employs candles (lychnomancy) in his magic. The scene was too visually complex, but it was a start.

So I did a ghetto version for my artists (above), using Photoshop to strip away some of the excess and they came back with below, which was about perfect. This shows the tools of Parris’ trade: the candle, the powder horn, bowls for mixing, blades for bloodletting.

Discover more about my novel, The Darkening Dream.
To find out about developing a style for the interior art, see here.
Or for more information on Pastor John Parris, the warlock.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Baphomet, demons, John Parris, Magic, Occult, Parris, Pastor John Parris, Pastor Parris, Salem Witch Trials, Succubus, The Darkening Dream, Warlock, Witchcraft

Guest Interview – Farsighted

Dec27

I’m experimenting again by allowing a guest post/interview by a fellow author.

– Andy

About Farsighted!

Alex Kosmitoras may be blind, but he can still “see” things others can’t. When his unwanted visions of the future begin to suggest that the girl he likes could be in danger, he has no choice but to take on destiny and demand it reconsider. Farsighted is the winner of the 2011 Dragonfly eBook Awards. Get it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About the Author: Emlyn Chand has always loved to hear and tell stories, having emerged from the womb with a fountain pen grasped firmly in her left hand (true story). When she’s not writing, she runs a large book club in Ann Arbor and is the president of author PR firm, Novel Publicity. Emlyn loves to connect with readers and is available throughout the social media interweb. Visit her on her website, Twitter, Facebook, or GoodReads.

Let’s get to know the author a little better through this rousing Q&A…

Q: What was it like writing from the viewpoint of a blind, teenage boy? Were there any parts of Alex’s personality/life you found hard to come up with?

A: You know, it wasn’t as hard to write blind as I initially thought it would be. It didn’t take long to begin “seeing” Alex’s world the way he does. I wrote the entire story without knowing what anyone or anything looked like (except for Alex himself). When it came time to shoot the book trailer, the directors were asking me questions about the scenes and which props they should bring, and I really, really didn’t know what to tell them!

As I got to know Alex better and better, it became easier to tune into his way of seeing things. I read books about coping with blindness in a school setting and spent a great deal of time pondering how I might behave if I couldn’t see. In the story, Alex has always been blind; he’s always known the world to be a certain way. Not everyone understands that, and they have trouble talking about it with him. I gave Alex a tendency to overcompensate. He knows who he is and what he’s capable of, and he wants the world to know it too, so sometimes he overdoes things a bit.

Q: Your cast of characters has international flavor? What’s behind that choice?

A: I don’t see why my characters all need to belong to the same culture or ethnicity. What fun is that? Culture shapes our characters in a big way, so by diversifying my cast, I was able to hit on more types of personalities and situations. Grandon is based on my hometown; it’s small and kind of boring. I couldn’t wait to escape and move on to bigger and better things. My home town was mostly Caucasian, but somehow I ended up with a very diverse set of friends even though they made up less than 1% of the student body. Fast forward a few years, and I end up marrying a man from India. He’s from New Delhi, like Simmi. I’ve always been fascinated by other cultures; I even decided to pursue my Master’s in Sociology for this very reason. I credit two early life influences for this attraction: 1) My adoration of A.C. Slater in Saved by the Bell, 2) Disney’s Aladdin being the best movie ever.

Q: What was the inspiration for Farsighted?

A: Everything started with a single image—my face in these tacky oversized sunglasses reflecting out at me from the car’s side mirror. I was daydreaming while my husband drove us across Michigan for my sister’s wedding. Something about my image really struck me in an almost horrific way. I felt the glasses made me look blind but found it so weird that there was still a clear image within them; it seemed so contradictory. At the time, my book club was reading The Odyssey, which features the blind Theban prophet, Tieresias. I started thinking about what it would be like to have non-visual visions of the future and began forming a modern Tieresias in my mind. Lo and behold, Alex Kosmitoras was born. I didn’t want him to be alone in his psychic subculture, so I found other characters with other powers to keep him company. Thank God for my poor fashion sense. 🙂

Q: What would you like readers to take away from Farsighted? Is there a different message for adults than for teens?

A: First and foremost, I hope that readers will enjoy themselves. My primary goal is to tell an interesting story that people will find entertaining and be glad they read. Secondly, I’d like to infuse contemporary Young Adult fiction with a bit more diversity and teach readers about the beauty of other cultures and other ways of life. I also hope that Farsighted is a book that leads to introspection—what would I do if put in Alex’s place? Did Alex ever have a choice or was this path his destiny? What would it be like to see the world the way he sees the world?

I like to think of anything I write as being kind of like a Disney movie, in that the primary audience will be children, but there are extra tidbits for the adults too. Farsighted has been infused with a great deal of research about runes, classic mythology, and Eastern spirituality, but you don’t need to understand any of that to be entertained by the story.

Q. There have been articles written this year about YA being too dark for teens. What are your thoughts on this?

A: I definitely agree. I want to get back to the core of the YA genre, and I attempted to do that with Farsighted. I also think that paranormal has gotten a bit too out there. One thing I hear from readers quite a bit is that the paranormal seems normal in Farsighted. They don’t question the existence of the powers, and it doesn’t seem out there like some other books of the genre do. That was important to me. I wanted my story to be run by the characters, not the fantastic elements. This is a story about Alex, not about a blind psychic.

Q: What motivated you to structure the book around the runes?

A: Remember how I said my Master’s degree is in Sociology? It’s actually Quantitative Sociology. I’m a numbers person as well as a word person. I love things to be organized just so. If you set a stack of papers in front of me; I’m going to fuss with them until they are lined up in a perfect stack. It’s just the way I am. Shaping each chapter around a rune gave the story order, which made me feel happy and comfortable. Whenever I got stuck and didn’t know what should happen next, I was able to learn more about that chapter’s rune and get the inspiration I needed to continue. The runes themselves tell a story, one that is successfully completed. I felt that boded well for Farsighted.

Q: What is your writing process like?

A: I begin with a seed of an idea and work out from there. With Farsighted, I started with Alex and created the rest of the story and characters to fit around him. Using the runes as a structural framework for this novel created an outline for me too. I’m a numbers person as well as a word person. I love things to be organized just so. If you set a stack of papers in front of me; I’m going to fuss with them until they are lined up in a perfect stack. It’s just the way I am. Shaping each chapter around a rune gave the story order, which made me feel happy and comfortable. Whenever I got stuck and didn’t know what should happen next, I was able to learn more about that chapter’s rune and get the inspiration I needed to continue. The runes themselves tell a story, one that is successfully completed. I felt that boded well for Farsighted.

Q: What do you like to read? Who is your favorite author?

A: I LOVE YA—I read it, write it, love it! My favorite author is JK Rowling. The more I read, the more I realize how brilliant she is as an author. If you remove the dialogue tags from Harry Potter, you still know which character is speaking, and Rowling managed to create an intricate beautiful world without allowing her character development to suffer, which is tremendously rare. I consider her literary God. Suzanne Collins, and JD Salinger are classic faves.

My all-time favorite book is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, definitely. The novel has so many layers and entertains on so many levels. Also the characters in that novel seem more real than those from any other I’ve ever read. It’s just beautiful—that’s the only word for it.

Q: If you had to be stuck on an island for a year with three literary characters, who would they be?

A: First up, we’d obviously take Robinson Crusoe. He knows what he’s doing, and he can be the provider. I’ll also take Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games—if we get in any kind of danger, she’d be a great protector. Lastly, I’d take Ron Weasley. Ron and I can live the good life, while the other two make sure we all stay safe and well-fed. I know I would never get bored with Ron around—he’s just 24/7 entertainment.

Q: You’ve taken a risk by going with an unconventional ending. Without spoiling the story for your readers, can you tell us why you made this choice? Are you glad you did this? Do you feel it’s been successful? Why or why not?

A: Yeah, I ended with a cliffhanger, which goes against traditional publishing wisdom. But you know what? I. AM. INDIE! Being indie means taking risks and breaking the mold and, boy, am I excited to do it. The ending is kind of polarizing, people either love it or wish there was more there. The joining thread is almost everyone mentions looking forward to the next book in the series. Farsighted demands a companion, and people see that. I think it was a good decision since this is the first in the series and since I enjoy toeing the line of convention. It’s fun to shake things up.

By: agavin
Comments (8)

Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Alex, Alex Kosmitoras, E-book, Emlyn Chand, Farsighted, goodreads, guest post

11 reasons you should buy The Darkening Dream

Dec26

1. It’s a great book.

2. It’s only $2.99 — but the price might go up soon.

3. You loved Crash Bandicoot.

4. You loved Jak & Daxter.

5. I was a great boss, friend, or co-worker.

6. My vampires don’t sparkle.

7. There are several beheadings.

8. Decrepit ancient Egyptian gods are cool.

9. The girl on the cover is really cute.

10. I handed you a glass of $100 wine at some point.

11. The book includes a “cesarian by vampire scene.”

And 4 refutations to your protests:

1. I’m poor – but it’s only $2.99.

2. I don’t have a Kindle – you can read Kindle books on a smartphone, iPad, or the web.

3. I’m too lazy to click twice – bad excuse.

4. I don’t read – do you really want to admit that?

Buy it now!

Then after you do, retweet, share, like, or otherwise spam this post or a link to the book on all of your social media! 🙂

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, Crash Bandicoot, E-book, IPad, Jak & Daxter, Kindle, Naughty Dog, The Darkening Dream

The Darkening Dream for Christmas!

Dec25

As a surprise move, I’m stealth launching The Darkening Dream — right now! — although only the Kindle edition.

If your stocking has been stuffed with a brand new Kindle, or you already have one, or you read on the Kindle app anywhere (iPad, Android, etc.)…

Buy it now!

Stealthy introductory price of $2.99. Which is certainly a bargain given that it took me two busy years to write and a lot of work to produce the layout, cover, etc.

So, you might ask (after you have purchased your copy — hint hint), what is a stealth launch?

Well, firstly, while the book is totally done and the E-Book version is all typeset, I’ve only put up the Kindle version. In the next week or so I’ll try and get all the other E-Book variants up (B&N, iTunes, etc.). Also, I’m still finishing up the paper editions. These will look great but they take a bit longer because I have to wait for physical proofs (5 days), make changes, then wait again, etc.

But also, I’m bucking the marketing machine that over the last thirty years has moved more and more to “big launch and then go away” mentality. Pretty much all big products: movies, albums, books etc. are marketed this way now. The marketeers build everything up for a big launch, hope for the best, then turn elsewhere a few scant weeks later. Truth is, this serves the marketeers more than it does the customer. Novels don’t age very fast. I enjoyed The Maltese Falcon as much as any book I read this year and it’s 81 years old. And the potential reader who happens to stumble upon my book doesn’t really care if it was published today — or last year. And it will take me time to collect reviews, get the other editions out, build up more web linkages etc. Later, when I have more of that in place I’ll begin the bigger marketing push.

So try it out and see what you think. Afterward, please review the book on Amazon. Reviews matter!

If you’re still not convinced:

Find out more about the book here
or read the sample chapters
or even check out a bit about the characters.

By: agavin
Comments (8)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Android, Andy Gavin, Christmas, E-book, IPad, Kindle, The Darkening Dream

The Look – al-Nasir

Dec24

In the process of developing the interior look of my book, The Darkening Dream, I wanted to create glyphs to represent each point of view character. In general, despite my big library of occult titles, I find a lot of references on the web (Google for the win!). Ultimately, I’m trying to produce original works, but reference art is very useful in communicating with your artists.

Let’s start with one of the easiest: al-Nasir, my 900 year-old vampire villain.

In life, al-Nasir, was a Moorish warrior who ruled over the Caliphate of Cordoba. If this floats your boat, check out his detail page on the blog. He’s a violent warrior, so a sword was a natural. The above weapon is a photograph of an actual Nasrid sword from the eleventh century. Contrary to popular imagination, Moorish swords were not curved, at least in this period.

As the style I’m going for is an illustrated, “old school engraving” style, I showed the artists this image, which is a similar kind of sword, but as an drawing was useful in demonstrating how to convert the photographic image into a more illustrated form.

But al-Nasir isn’t just any old medieval Moor, no he’s a vampire, and one who specializes in the flying bat form. So I found this odd sixteenth or seventeen century engraving. The bat wings are really cool and in just the kind of naive wood block style I’m going for.

I rotated the sword, then used Photoshop to snip out the bat wings and build a composite to show the artists exactly what I had in mind. I call this “ghetto art” and it might be ugly but it’s invaluable in communicating visually. Below is the resulting final image, which they got pretty much dead on (haha) with the first try.

For more about my novel, The Darkening Dream.
To find out more about developing a style for the interior art, see here.
For more information on al-Nasir, the badass 900 year-old Moorish vampire.

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: al-Nasir, Nasir, Sword, The Darkening Dream, Vampire

Naughty Dog – 25 Years!

Dec23

www.vg247.com has written a very nice piece on Naughty Dog’s 25th anniversary.

There’s been a few anniversaries in the gaming world this past year: Ubisoft’s 25th, Blizzard’s 20th. But it seems there may have been one that slipped under the radar, which is a big surprise considering this studio is now perhaps one of the most widely-recognised on the triple-A scene.

Naughty Dog is 25 years old this year.

But all things have an origin.

Jamming, man

In 1986, high school students Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin joined forces to found what was then known as Jam Software. The pair had been experimenting with computer programming, tooling around with C++, before combining their talents.

But it was in 1989 that the first seeds of the company as we know it today were sown. Making a new beginning, Jam Software was renamed Naughty Dog, with EA-published RPG Keel The Thief for Apple IIGS, Amiga and PC the first release under the new moniker. Its next effort, Rings of Power for the Genesis or Mega Drive, arrived in 1991 – another RPG published by EA.

And in 1994, Naughty Dog developed a 3DO fighting title for the now defunct Universal Interactive Studios (better known in recent years as Vivendi Games) called Way of the Warrior, with both single-play and multiplayer.

Based on Way of the Warrior’s success, Mark Cerny, then head of Universal Interactive Studios, agreed to back the company’s next games. What came afterwards signaled the beginning of Naughty Dog’s true success.

“Whoa!”

In 1996, with a distribution deal secured, Naughty Dog released a unique platformer called Crash Bandicoot. It was published by the fresh-faced Sony Computer Entertainment, which had released its debut console, the PlayStation, over 1994 and 1995.

Despite a few errors (our first game was actually published in 1985) this is a nice article with lots of good stuff and some fun videos from the different eras. Check out the full text here.

And if you are interested in what I’m doing now, here.

By: agavin
Comments (14)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Apple IIGS, Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter, Jason Rubin, Mark Cerny, Naughty Dog, Playstation, Video Games, Vivendi Games

New Cover Art is here!

Dec22

The new cover for The Darkening Dream is almost done! To the left is the current mockup (click the double spread below if you want to see a large version). It still needs a few tweaks and real titles (those are NOT final titles), but it’s real close.

As I’ve discussed before, I commissioned a new cover a couple weeks ago from artist Cliff Nielsen, worked through a whole batch of ideas and sketches, shot the model in the studio, and voila!

I’ve basically got the E-Book interiors done too, having learned over the last two days how to generate MOBI and EPUB files from my base HTML. I even caught and reproed a bug in Calibre which a super responsive programmer fixed in an hour. These files took a lot of work but they look really awesome with all the little interior illustrations and very nice, clean, formatting.

My last thing is to get real titles done and then I’m ready to go with the E-Book version by around the New Year! Although, titles and Amazon approval might drag that out by a couple days.

Please write in the comments what you think of the cover.

The old cover -- made by yours truly

To see photos from the cover shoot, click here.
For more info on the new cover artist, click here.
For more information on The Darkening Dream.
For more posts on writing, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Art, Book Cover, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, Darkening Dream, E-book, The Darkening Dream

The Hobbit Trailer

Dec21

Nerdgasm update. If you can’t wait for December 14, they’ve released a second Hobbit trailer:

I can see them trying to squeeze every last bit of “bigness” out of what’s in the book. The Hobbit — brilliant that it is — was written before everything had to be designed for the trailer!

And if you missed the first, more serious one:

The feeling of the prequel going second is interesting. It looks great, but it also feels slightly anticlimactic (for those of us who know the stories in detail) following on Return of the King. But still, it might actually be a more fun film(s) — the book is a little better paced than the masterpiece — which brilliant as it is, is a bit odd in the structural department. Don’t get me wrong though, I have read them half a dozen times. 🙂 Even the Silmarillion, which is actually one of my favorites. Although I can’t say I’ve read all of those extra lost tales whatever books Christopher Tolkien pushed on us (a few though).

Also check out this silly Hobbit themed Air New Zealand flight video.

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