Bon Voyage. (Tilt-Shift) from jordanbraun on Vimeo.

CALGARY — The 2009 Tim Horton’s Brier was the best-attended curling event in the history of Calgary, surpassing previous highs set at Briers in 1997 and then 2002.

As 12,929 curling fans took in the action for Sunday’s national men’s championship final between Alberta’s Kevin Martin and Jeff Stoughton of Manitoba, the total number of attendees over the 10 days jumped to 246,126. That bettered the previous mark set in 2002 when 245,296 fans turned out, and is now the third-best attended Brier on record.

“It was a good event, a good week all around,” said Ian Henderson, chairman of the Calgary host committee. “And it’s been good for the sport of curling in Calgary. After 2002, we saw an uptick in participation in junior curling and recreational curling in the city. And this time around, we’re seeing a lot more young people than we’re used to seeing in the Brier patch. It’s good to see them adopt the traditions of the game. And so the future of the sport is looking strong.”

Hundreds of young, fresh-faced fans took in Sunday’s championship event, a number of them saying they’ve grown up around the sport.

“You pick it up from your parents,” said Evan Dow, 23. “They take you out to the rink when you’re a kid, and it slowly gets ingrained in you. And so it’s been a pretty good event. I’ve enjoyed it.”

The 2009 Brier marked the sixth time Calgary has hosted the event since its inception in 1927, the third time in the past dozen years alone. All three have been strong successes. Only Edmonton’s Brier in 2005, which drew a record 281,985 fans, and Saskatoon’s Brier in 2000, which drew 248,790, have outdrawn Calgary’s 2009 event.

“We’re really impressed,” said Heather Hall of Edmonton, a recreational curler who also attended the 2005 Brier. “We haven’t missed a draw this week. And I’d say the Calgary event is at least on par with the Edmonton event.”

The 2009 Brier was expected to have boosted $35 million into the local economy, with hundreds of curling fans from across the nation spending money at local hotels, restaurants, bars and retail stores.

The Brier now travels east as Halifax hosts the 2010 edition.

But Henderson says Calgary curling fans shouldn’t have to wait too long before the event returns to their hometown.

“It’ll be back here sooner than you think,” he said. “It was too long between the last stretch, seven years, and so it’ll be back before then because we know we can make this work.”

The Project

I entered the 2^nd annual Global Game Jam at the University of British Columbia in early February 2010, an event where amateur game designers from across the world create and collaborate on a video game in just 48 hours.

The theme of this year’s jam was “Deception,” and the game had to involve “A skunk, a monk or a punk.”

I lucked out with a great team, and we set about trying to rapidly prototype an idea that fit these parameters. Working non-stop from Friday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 3 p.m., we fleshed out a game inspired by Peggle (who doesn’t love Peggle!) that involved two skunks stuck inside the belly of a monster. They find a tumor-like outgrowth named Mr. Pickles who shoots them out from his mouth, and they try to break out of this monster’s belly by ricocheting themselves off dead cells and through the monster’s “uvula,” in the hopes he will “vomit” them out.

What makes the Mr. Pickles game different is that two players can play simultaneously, fighting for control of Mr. Pickles, to see who can get out first.

My Role

We had four members on our team, two artists/designers, a programmer and myself, who worked largely on creating sound assets and in co-designing the game. I recorded most of the in-game sounds via my laptop’s built-in mic through Soundbooth, from belching to the “whees!” of the skunks flying around.

I also created five different soundtracks for the team to consider in GarageBand and Soundbooth, but we ultimately went with a score available via a Creative Commons search. It was the right call – none of mine fit the game as well.

What I learned

Honestly, even though we were there for just 48 hours, there were large chunks of time where I felt entirely useless. I’m an amateur artist, so I couldn’t be of much assistance for art assets apart from basic Photoshop work, and I have no programming experience, so I couldn’t help in the Flash coding either.

But I learned that by simply being there for moral support and helping my team mates with whatever menial task I could, that I could make things easier for them. And that ultimately led to a better game.

We didn’t manage to finish Mr. Pickles Dunks Some Skunks – unfortunately our programmer fell ill on Saturday evening, and we had a few hours of panic trying to determine whether we should abandon the project all together.

But we got a huge helping hand from a local game designer named Andy Moore, and he brought us to a stage where we at least had the mechanics of the game working by the deadline.

Play The Game

You can play Mr. Pickles Dunks Some Skunks via the Global Game Jam’s official site here.

The Team

Brian Ford, Alice Tai, Nick Lewis, Anshul Goyal, Andy Moore.

Tools

Adobe Flash CS4 (AS3), Photoshop, Illustrator, GarageBand, Soundbooth.

MDM Perspectives – Featuring Nick L. (English) from GNWC on Vimeo.

Our Masters of Digital Media program focuses heavily on real-world client work, and my particular group delivered a working beta of an Internet tutoriall for secondary students for our client, the Ottawa-based Media Awareness Network.

Our client had gained international recognition for work on a tutorial called Passport To The Internet, which was being used as a learning aid in Ontario elementary school classrooms. The not-for-profit MNet contracted us to build a companion game for high school students, specifically Grades Nine and 10. We had four months to take our clients content and design documents and transform them into a working online prototype.

This game/tutorial, formerly called Digital Decisions, is now called MyWorld.

My Role

I was the Project Manager and Client Lead for our team, which required working closely with a remotely based client via e-mail and Skype meetings, negotiating the scope and breadth of our deliverable, and then disseminating that to our team.

Because of our small group size and short schedule, it proved both challenging and rewarding to meet the ambitious milestones we set for ourselves. We worked closely with another student group, coLab, to employ design thinking into our planning and methodology, using white boards and sticky notes to determine what tasks need to be accomplished when and by whom.

And so my job ultimately was to guide and maintain the vision we agreed on with our clients, and to foster a collaborative environment where my team could thrive.

In addition, I played the part of homeroom teacher Mr. Billings for the Video Chat component of our game.

The Team

Nick Lewis, Ian McDonald, Jeunessa Cheng, Khadija Ghazi, Matthew Schade

Tools

Adobe Flash CS4 (AS3), Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Soundbooth, Word, Things

The Project

The first assignment for our Visual Story class required us to make an interactive photo-film. We had to pick a strong image and then storyboard a number of narrative lines that all used that one image.

We decide to build a storyline around the idea of a man dangling from a ledge, being held onto by another man who could determine his fate.

We then weave this into a storyline that involves a supposed love triangle between three central characters, good friends Dave and Mike, and Dave’s wife Mia.

My Role

On 7 Days, I played the role of Head Writer, fleshing out a multi-strand, cohesive narrative. I also acted in the production as the husband Dave, created a production blog for our group over at teamhotspot.wordpress.com, created and edited sound clips, and assisted with the overall game design.

What I Learned

Because we were working with the ideas of flashbacks and innuendo, almost every line of dialogue in the project was a double entendre. It was difficult to make it all seem natural, and was rewarding when I thought I did.

I also gave myself a crash course in Adobe Soundbooth and recorded, created, edited and spliced audio clips for our film.

Play the Photo-film/ View the Trailer

Courtesy of project lead and team mate Al Sinoy, you can play 7 Days here.

Or you can view the trailer for it here.

The Team

Nick Lewis, Al Sinoy, Shahrzad A., Anshul Goyal, Jeffrey Lane, Milim Kim

Tools

Adobe Flash CS4, Photoshop, After Effects, Soundbooth, iPhoto, WordPress.

The Project

As our final six-week assignment for George Johnson’s Visual Story class, our task was to create a game that explored aspects of journey, transition, and character development through an interactive game or film experience.

We were asked to consider the mythical tale of Charon and his boat traveling down the River Styx, transporting dead souls who may or may not interact with one another. But its main tenants included the following:

“The specific challenge for this exercise is developing strong characters.”

The idea was that the more the user explores the game space or environment, the stronger any sense of the personality of one or more characters becomes. Also from the assignment instructions:

“The nature of the player should be addressed and made clear within the project.”

As with most of this course, we were also working to understand implicit vs. explicit narrative and what role these types of communication have when storytelling becomes interactive. As before, we were free to choose our own teams, and the seven guys on board were all eager to bring their unique skills together.

My Role

I was a co-producer on the Managotchi team, working primarily on both creating original sound clips and acquiring Creative Commons audio assets, on assisting with principal photography, on assisting with game design, and on online documentation. I did this by publishing a site for us at Managotchi.Wordpress.com, creating art assets for it, and updating it on a weekly basis, running through our progress, challenges and successes.

What I Learned

Managotchi was a really interesting experience for all of us, and the one big lesson I took away from it was that it’s hard to find success without all members buying into the same vision.

Over the seven-week production cycle, we worked through so many iterations of the project, with different names and game engines and narratives, mainly because not everyone on the team would buy in to any given idea. And it was tough given how open the project was to interpretation – one week we thought we were working on a first-person shooter using Unreal Engine, the next, we were working on a strategy art game using C++.

We took inspiration from art games such as The Passage, Execution, Flower and The Marriage for wanting to create something unique. Ultimately, with three weeks to go we realized we had to make a decision, and the idea to spoof the popular 90’s toy Tamagotchi with a simple Flash interface came up.

Despite having to abandon 3D art assets and long strings of code, it was the first idea everyone was thrilled about, and we worked 12 to 15-hour days from then on to create a game that was both fun to work on and fun to play.

Play the Game

The game is 10MB, so it’s easiest to download from here (courtesy of team mate Jordan Braun), where it will open in a new window/tab.

Team

Nick Lewis, Jordan Braun, Ryan Klesc, Jeff Lane, Clark Kim, Anshul Goyal, Ryleigh Kostash,

Tools

Adobe Flash CS4, Photoshop, Excel, iPhoto, Canon SD780, Wacom pen tablets

The Project

The final assignment in our Building Virtual Worlds class was lovingly dubbed “The Kobayashi Maru,” after the no-win test Spock creates and Kirk cheats in Star Trek.

We were given five weeks to design a student installation for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition, or CODE Live, which had leased our school’s warehouse for the Olympic month.

We began with two weeks for student pitches that had to meet CODE’s ideals, which were to promote creativity, connectivity and collaboration.

From there, three weeks remained from bringing three winning proposals from paper to physical form, to a level presentable to a global audience.

I was assigned to the team that pitched the Collaborative Hallway Lit-Obstacle Experiment, or CHLOE.

CHLOE consists of 12 square pads placed in a 3×4 pattern down a hallway, so that anyone crossing can’t help but walk over. When a person walks over one of its tiles, a score projected on the wall rises by one.

Every 15 seconds, five of the 12 squares flash an LED-lit “X”. If someone steps on one of these, a “Game Over” animation flashes on the screen and the cumulative score resets to zero.

The idea is for people to become unwitting participants in a giant social video game. Would they know to avoid the X’s? Would they intentionally step on them?

We set up this experiment by connecting the floor tiles to an Arduino microprocessor, which led via USB to a laptop running five different Flash animations. These Flash animations represented five different video games – i.e. the user sorts recyclable items into bins, shoots alien spaceships, etc.

You can read more about CHLOE, the proposal and production process, over at Jeunessa Cheng’s site here.

My Role

Our group of 11 split into Programming, Flash and Construction teams. On the Construction team, I was responsible for the physical construction of CHLOE’s plywood frame, the physical functionality of switches, and placement of computer, projector and motion sensors.

This included working with the programming team to create and finalize an accurate blueprint for our floor tiles and frame, researching materials to determine polycarbonate sheets and plywood were our best resource, working with professionals to bring the material to specification, assembling the floor tiles with sensors and LED strips, and finally painting, finishing and placing the installation in the hallway.

What I Learned

The goal of this project, I ultimately learned, was for our instructors to see how we fared in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. The three final projects chosen were all incredibly ambitious and it led to a lot of unrest when we all thought it impossible.

What saved us was Design Thinking.

We all got together in a classroom next to a wall. Working silently, we all wrote on sticky notes every little task that had to be accomplished for CHLOE to work, from soldering sensors to painting ramps. When we were satisfied, we each took ownership of the tasks by placing these notes near our names. We then took each of our notes and broke them down into our schedule, giving each one of us a mini-milestone to deliver. Then it just became about what each team member had to do on that given day, so that no other teammate fell behind.

So I learned that by breaking a tough assignment up into manageable chunks, you can engage everybody on your team, meet your deadline and maintain morale. It was so incredibly rewarding to be able to deliver a working product on time.

I also became aware of how much I could accomplish if I just jumped in headfirst and trusted my team.

Team

Nick Lewis, Jeunessa Cheng, Ryleigh Kostash, Derek Zhao, Anshul Goyal, Alice Tai, Xiaorui Li, Sonu Sharma, Sagar Datta, Carmen Chow and Milim Kim.

Tools

Flash, Arduino microprocessor, sensors, a table saw, a handsaw, a drill and lots of paintbrushes…

Nick Lewis TV Reel from Nick Lewis on Vimeo.