Updates
1.25.15 - Meeting Recap
Thanks to everyone for coming to meeting on last week. Below will be a recap of the meeting and our plans for 2015.
The Goal for 2015
The goal for the club in 2015 is to publish an e-book. The e-book will resemble a coffee table book that captures the essence of our time in Miami. The book will be a collection of pictures, poems, quotes, and anecdotes that made you feel something during the year. Anything that pulled a piece of emotion or made you pull out your phone to snap a picture, I want it in the book. This is also a way to break the wall between us and digital e-book stores available on all tablets and phones. The book right now has working titles of "Miami and Me", "A Day in the Life of U", or "Life in U". We will make a decision on the title at a later date.
If you're interested in participating in the book, send me an email of a picture, poem, quote, short story, or anything else that might have been important, funny, or interesting to you. I want to include anything that has your fingerprint in the design or decision process.
Examples
Below are two examples of how can contribute. These simple pictures with words of expression. The pictures, poems, or quotes can be anything you want, I just want you to be creative and make a design decision.
Other Topics Discussed
The meeting also covered material for developing tools that could possibly add to building a brand. We only skimmed the surface on the topic and talked about the basics of starting podcasts, youtube channels, websites, and e-books. These are all free electronic channels that take effort to make, but can give you a voice in developing a branch of your brand. These tools allow your voice to be heard. Below are a few links that might help you in developing a podcast, e-book, or screen cast video.
27 Steps to starting a Podcast
Publish an e-book
Download for ezvid for PC screen recording
*if you have a mac use Quicktime for screencasting
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1.15.15 - The first Starters Mob meeting for this semester will be held in one week, on January 22 from 12:15p-1:15p in Ziff Center's Tonkinson Conference Room.
It's a new year so let's start new things. The focus of the meeting will be on how to get started with e-channels that build upon a brand. We'll be looking into how to make e-books, podcasts, youtube channels, blogs, and other types of mediums that are free to create, but add substantial value to a personal or commercial brand. We're all creative and we all have something to say, let's learn something new and create a product with our unused potential. We'll share ideas and gain a stronger understanding of our goals for 2015.
Lunch will be provided and remember to RSVP on the Ziff Center site.
1.5.15 - Happy 2015. Let's make things happen this year.
12.2.14 - Product designer Jonathan Globerson will speak at the Starter's Mob meeting on Monday November 10th at 12:15p in the Tonkinson Room.
Jonathan is the CEO of Glober Design and has designed hundreds of products in which some are sold at Target, Wal-Mart, Bed Bath and Beyond, and other retail outlets. He has designed iPhone cases, treadmills, software interfaces, green tech products and the list goes on. He will be at the meeting to discuss product design, entrepreneurship, and how to turn ideas into a reality. For more information on Jon, visit the links below.
Jonathan's personal website
jonglob.com
Glober Design site
globerdesign.com
10.29.14 - My Lost Pyramid is now available on iOS and Android. Congratulations to all mob members for making this happen. Download today.
9.21.14 - BETA build of "My Lost Pyramid". You will have to download the Unity Web Player Plugin to activate it. Please play and test. We need to try to catch all of the mistakes. The game is very close to being finsihed. Look for any way the game can be improved. Be brutally honest. We will meet this week to go over the game and discuss improvements, next week we will meet to go over everything technical; like how the code connects the images and how the game works behind the scenes. We will try to launch first week of October.
9.8.14 - Below are the highlights of the first meeting.
Reasoning Behind Name Change
Entrepreneur is a dated term with a male connotation. Entrepreneurs are usually visioned as males in suits carrying briefcases in the 1950s. I want a starter to be anybody.
Starter: Somebody who starts something. You don't need to start a business, just start anything. Start learning how to code, how to play an instrument, going to the gym, anything, I don’t care, but always be a starter. Start something new.
Mob: The word Mob is not referring to the mafia, but rather a group of disrupters. Disrupt is kinda the buzz word for start ups, “What industry are you going to disrupt”. Do something different that causes excitement.
These are the reasons for the rebranding. Always think about starting something new and always think about disrupting.
Falling Light
Falling Light (working title) is the title of the game the s>mob will bring to Android and iOS devices. The game is a simple tocuh based game where the player smashes falling squares for a hi-score. A very basic game with hopes of bringing it to market before Thanksgiving. Below are screenshots of the game in its pre-alpha stage.
Falling Light Specs
The game will made using the Unity game engine. The coding will be done in C#. C# is Microsoft's proprietary language that is quickly gaining a lot of momentum with developers.
The Game Needs Help
What can you do to improve the game? Below is a list things you can do. Please feel free to do as much or as little as you want. If you have creativity that needs to be expressed, this could be great place to showcase your skills. This is for creative expression, not stress. Choose to do whatever you want, if everybody chooses the same thing, that's not a problem, we'll try to use everything we create. If you need any help with a tool I am more than happy to assist.
1. Sound FX: The game needs sound effects. The player should be rewarded everytime they smash a square. The player should enjoy tapping the square causing it to shatter. Sound can drastically elevate gameplay. Each time a square shatters what should it sound like, should it sound like glass shattering, a grenade exploding, or an egg cracking, etc.
How to make sound: Sound effects literally comes from recording sounds with a micropohone. Your phone probably has a terriffic mic and you don't need a sound studio for this basic game. You can simply make a KURSSHHH sound into the mic on your phone and come up with a great sound effect. Don't be afraid to use your mouth to make sounds. You can record a wrench hitting a steel drum or your hand knocking or wood or a beer bottle smashing into the ground, they're all great sound effects. Sounds can then be altered and pitches can be changed in other software to slightly or drastically alter the sound. And if you don't want to record anything and you just want to find the right sound then you can visit FreeSound.org or OpenGameArt.org to browse through libraries of open source sound effects. However, if we do use open source sound fx, we might not be able to put revenue generating ads in the game.
2. Background Music: This is the music that consistantly plays and loops while the player is in the game. This music can either drive a player crazy or add extreme pleasue to the player's environment. If you have a mac you can use Garage Band to create beats, guitar riffs, or whatever else. There are blenty of tutorials on Youtube, here is one, I'm sure you can find better ones. And if you don't want to make anything and you just want to find the right music you can visit Jamendo.com or OpenGameArt.org to browse through libraries of open source music tracks. However, if we do use open source music, we might not be able to put revenue generating ads in the game.
3. Background Art: From the pictures above you can see that the background is simply all black. A great background can do wonders for a game. Where do you want the player to go? You can put them in the air with a blue sky and clouds, you can put them in Egypt with a background of the pyramids, in paris with the Eiffel Tower, or on the surface of the moon with the Earth right behind it. Below are samples of simple backgrounds from popular games. You'll notice that some backgrounds can be as simple as a couple clouds in the sky.
How to make background art: Backgrounds will usually be made in an image manipulation tool such as gimp or photoshop. A great technique is to simply make parts of a background in seperate layers piece by piece; for example, start by making one tree or one cloud, and then that one object can be be copied and pasted many times. While creating images in gimp or photoshop keep in the mind the difference between types of images. The two main types are .png and .jpg. PNGs allow you to have a transparent background called an Alpha Channel, JPGs are solid images always needing a color in the back (default is white). Quick simple tutoriol in gimp on how to add transperancy to an image.
Gimp is a free photo manipulating software and you can download it here.
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8.28.14 - The first meeting of the s>mob is on Monday, September 8th at 12:15pm in the Strauss Conference Room (Fishbowl).
The Agenda: We'll go over the year's goals and objectives. Ultimately, to get the mob started we'll go through the software developement life cycle and publish a simple video game onto iOS and Android devices by the end of 2014. This process will allow you see what it takes to develop and publish mobile software.
The Strauss Conference Room is located in back of the study room by the elevators.
