What is a Video Game?

For the last week of class the main topic was video games. The class as a whole talked about what makes a video game a video game. We as a class made a list of things or parts that make a video game a video game. Like does it have to have a storyline or does it have to be fun. From there we were shown how most of the parts of things that was on the list could be challenged. Like does the game have to be

fun? When you think about games they are meant to be fun. Now a day games they are challenging that part of games. By making games that are scary and make you think, like Slender Man. Slender Man is a game where you go around finding objects but you have to avoid Slender Man at all cost. If you do not then you die and game over. It is stressful because he can come out of any where and if you look back he goes after you faster.
 The way the game is made makes the concept of Slender Man more scary. The game design is your out in the woods and you only have a flashlight. The flashlight only goes so far so it can freak someone out when Slender Man shows up. Also it is easy to get lost with in the woods.

After we talked about the list we were broken up in to groups and given different types of video games. As a group we were given Jurassic Heart to research. Jurassic Heart is a game that lets you fall in love with a T-Rex. It is a dating simulation game, which is extremely popular in Japan. It has the traditional Japanese dating sim. It starts of with a girl who is going on a date with her long-time crush. The twist is the long-time crush, is a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T-Rex also attends the same high school as the girl and wears a tie. The game has you make three decisions, like what kind of hair clip to wear. With each decision that you pick it will affecting the outcome of the game. You can have a short date or a long one dictating on which decisions you pick. If you get to the end, you have a great date and the end up singing together or you can make him mad and the date ends. 

Love & Rockets

This week in class we talked about different types and kinds of comics. We were put into groups and was given Love & Rockets to research and breakdown.

Love & Rockets is a comic book series by Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez; sometimes their other brother Mario Hernandez would be in the process.  The first issue of Love & Rockets was self-published by the brothers in 1981, but in 1982 it has been published by Fantagraphics Books. The Love & Rockets Volume 2.
magazine was temporarily stopped its publication in 1996. However in 2001 Los Bros revived the series as

Love & Rockets have several ongoing serial narratives. The most prominent being Gilbert's Palomar stories and Jaime's Hoppers 13 stories. It also contains one-offs, shorter stories, surrealist jokes, and more.

In Palomar it tells that story of a fictional village in Latin America and its inhabitants.  It has vibrant characters and fantastic events.

Hoppers 13 follows the story of the tangled loves of a group of characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. The two memorable members of Jaime’s cast are “Maggie” and “Hopey”, whose on-again, off-again romance id a focus for many of the storylines.

The brothers like to play with passage of time in a relatively realistic manner. For example in Jaime’s Hoppers 13, Maggie's character, a pro-solar mechanic, debuted as a slight yet curvy young adult living in a world both distinctly chicano and punk with a sci-fi twist. As she develops in more detail, she started to gain weight slowly. Over the years, Maggie and the other characters have evolved, growing more layered and complex as their stories develop. The present Maggie, who now wears her hair bleached blonde and has a penchant for wearing sexy bathing suits, is the manager of an apartment complex. Jaime has also made extensive use of flashbacks, with Maggie and the others presented at different ages from toddlers through teenagers and young adults to thirty-something’s.

As a group we talked about that the way the brother draw and make images was basic black, white and flat looking. We also looked at that they liked to use woman as the main roles of the stories. 

"Art is a sense of magic" ~ Stan Brakhage

For this week I picked to watch three films by Stan Brakhage. 


Brakhage was a non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film. He had a large body of work, in which he explored a variety of formats. Some of the approaches and techniques included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film and the use of multiple exposures.


In his work he explored themes of birth, mortality, sexuality and innocence. Also they are noted for their expressiveness and lyricism


From what I have viewed from his films. He explores many different ideas of making a film. An example in the short film "Window Water Baby Moving"he uses and handheld camera to film a woman giving birth. the images jump around and has this depressing and off mood to it. Another example is "The Dante Quartet" in this one there are many different paint splatters stills formed into one film. The last example is in "Preludes" which he takes what he did in "The Dante Quartet" and add music to go with the stills. 


"Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word." ~ Stan Brakhage