The end of last month marked an important milestone in my life. I realized along with my co-founders and partners that the direction our studio was headed in was not the direction we had originally intended. Our business had transformed from a shared passion for projects that bridged the gap between art and technology to a development studio for mobile software applications. The studio had originally emerged as a shared space where classes and workshops could inspire and support the community of hackers, scientists, artists and makers as well as create experiential installations and events. The money that we would get from developing web and mobile games and applications would go towards continuing this outreach and support of creative play.

What we realized along the way was that the work needed for the code development of the applications quickly overshadowed all other projects and endeavors. Had the studio petitioned for non-profit status there may have been more resources and manpower available to extend the educational development and event program, but as it was our basic sustainability needed to happen first. What started as sustainable development projects became long-term commitments and I had to adapt quickly to learning how to code. As we moved farther away from our original plans my business development and artistic skills where put on the back burner to the amount of coding help the studio needed.

Besides my new-found love of coding, the ability to think on my feet and understand both the big picture as well as being a part of all processes of a new business is a skill I’m proud to say I’ve achieved. And I do mean all, from knowing how to sweet-talk a government official into not making us refile our papers for a small name change to knowing what makes an iguana happy. [I'll leave you to figure out that one as it's one of the sweetest joys in life.]

The conclusion we reached together that DINO was not able to cultivate or require my best strengths was both heartbreaking and revitalizing. It’s allowed me the freedom to identify my next challenge and reassess where my abilities can be best applied. Thank you, David and Aaron, for everything. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Now, what’s next?

With Akina out for a little over a week it was good to have some time to flesh out any UI tweaks to the app and make it more user friendly. With that meant taking a controller with already very visually and abstractly defined elements, and making it easier to navigate with, without losing the integrity of it as an object of art. Below are the old and new controllers for comparison:

The nice thing about designing artistic elements for a piece that is controlled with a finger is the simple fact that fingers are attached to hands. This means that where the controller shows up under your finger there is a ‘blind spot’ where non-essential functions can be put, in this case it’s the lower right corner of the new controller that keeps with the original design idea, yet you lose none of the important options for lack of seeing through one’s hand.

Using some of the elements I recently created for our website, I set to making business cards that matched our style. This whimsical and slightly abstract unknown world I created incorporates our business logo into the art. On the back will be our contact information, leaving the front dedicated to having a tiny piece of art in your pocket.

Over this past week my partners and I at DINO Interactive Studios have developed an iPad application that allows input from a specific grouping of ‘fingers’ from the bottom of three objects. When you place the object on the screen surface of the iPad, flowers and vines grow from underneath the object.

This corresponds to the application as it is a flower growing app called Akina HD, available for free in a human-touch enabled version in the Apple App Store currently. My process in creating this was to take the aesthetic of the app and bring these elements into the objects as if they were an extension of game. The art I made for Akina is derived partly from the art of an interactive book I’m currently working on and plan to release on the iPad soon.

We had a pretty lively crowd with luckily enough string cheese and Oreos to go around. There was some LOLing with Pong on an Arduino made by Jimmie Rodgers.

An awesome Tic-Tac-Toe game made out of wood by Schuyler Towne that will have locks to pick in each turn in order to place an X or O on the board.

I made Giant Snail Take Over- a papercraft game from a Mountain Dew box and some animals and town scenes I found online as well as some motorized props. The gameplay was recorded into a stop-motion papercraft spaghetti western movie on Youtube.

Darius Kazemi reworked his turn-based strategy game and posted a movie to Youtube.

Michael Carriere and K. Adam White collaborated on a game affectionately called RAAJOCBDFOTLSOTS made in Flixel, in which you run around and jump on cars but try not to fall off the left side of the screen!

Darren Torpey demoed an early-stage game he is going to bring into Facebook to log emotions and experiences and David Ludwig demoed his Ball Game, a puzzle based game made for the iPhone that uses the accelerometer feature for a ball to reach it’s target as well as his Falling Stuff screensaver he made in Box2D.

Last but not least Fahreddın Basegmez, one of the makers of Mekanimo- a free 2D physics simulator, and his son Dennis created Cows In Space.

All in all a very productive weekend!

With a pitch to a potential client due the next day and an intense desire to put our best foot forward, there wasn’t much time to make our cards in bulk so I made them the old fashioned way- clicks, beeps, cuts and voila. We’ll probably revise it a bit more later but we each have ultra-gloss spikey works of art.

I had originally gone to school for art-making, graduating at the top of my class with absolutely no idea how to use this degree to make money and live. Not wanting to burden my family and fed up with the starving artist stereotype, I looked for a job with steady income and benefits. By the time I had landed some form of a job I embraced the 9 to 5 culture as it felt like I was contributing to a greater something and giving back to society.

If you are an artist and you get a steady job with a set schedule it’s easy to say you’ll find time to create. The reality is very different- there is no on/off switch to creation. Once you get invested into the place where you spend most of your time, evenings and weekends are spent unwinding, not inducing the giddy rush of creating. Staunching that after it starts leaves me feeling empty and unsatisfied.

After getting to a certain point in my company career I knew that though all my creature comforts were taken care of there was still something missing. I knew if I ever wanted to create again I needed to fully dedicate my time to it. Despite reigning back the urge there was little that could change this large part of me, except for the gradual accumulation in years of a 9 to 5 mentality. As I write I am still under the grip of the perspective of the world that comes with intense multi-tasking and high level customer service.

Making the decision to quit my job to open an interactive design studio with my friends was not easy but so far it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. And I owe the process of my realization and understanding of my abilities to that company I spent so long at. I know we’ll do well because I’ve done well, and I know we have what it takes because I have what it takes.

To the left is my desk at my old job. To the right is my desk now. I like where this is going.

This weekend I created the logo for DINO interactive studio. Aaron had a fun idea on a post-it note that I ran with. I drew a couple sketches then took pictures and loaded them into Adobe Photoshop. After playing around a bit Aaron opened my eyes up to the wonderful world of vector aesthetics and I used Adobe Illustrator to smooth and perfect the rest.

Next up is our main page!