Showing posts with label humour. Show all posts
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Jordi Longueira (Part I/II)
Jordi Longueira is a passionate 26 years old artist, most of that time he has spent watching cartoons, reading comics, playing videogames, but above all, he has been drawing and constantly trying to improve his technique. Let's know more about his story.
Jordi: The first memory I have is from 1992, then I was 5 years-old and my father gave me a Nintendo NES. I remember exactly how some delivery guys came home, installed a 17inch TV and plugged a NES to it. In that moment I had no idea of what was that machine, I thought it was some sort of a VHS player, that device used some weird tapes. The first one I saw in movement was Super Mario Bros and my thought that it was a horrible cartoon... until they moved the character and it blew me away. I loved all kind of cartoons as a kid, and videogames were the most awesome extension of cartoons ever, those were ones you could manipulate at your will!
Jesús: So your father was curious about games and decided to buy a console overnight? Are games also a family hobby at home like happens in the case of Lourdes?
Unfortunately not, nobody in my family plays games,only my sister played a little when she was little,I was the one who got deeply hooked. After seeing I couldn't stop playing, I think my father repented of buy a NES console. My family is very traditional, my father has a restaurant and still works there during like 12 hours a day, my mother has been a housewife during all her life, but also helped my father at the restaurant. Both of my parents have no distractions or hobbies, they have seen videogames as a waste of time and toys for kids for a very long time.
Wow! So in your specific case, get to work on videogames within such a discouraging environment has been a big achievement.
I have to admit it wasn't anyway easy, my parents didn't appreciate my passion for videogames, cartoons, or drawing. They kept telling me this was useless, that no way I would make a living out of it. But didn't care about what they could say, in particular about drawing, I simply loved it and couldn't stop doing it. Was particularly obsessed with drawing, did that all day long, even at school, where several teachers sent letters to my parents complaining because I wasn't paying attention to their lessons.
Remember I spent the whole day sketching at school: He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Flinstones, Evangelion and many more. Drawed everything I watched in all the cartoon series, even at the same time they were moving on the screen! (sometimes I had no time to finish the sketch because the character -logically- moved, and was a bit frustrating). But I have to remark a cartoon series that captivated me, that would be Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump.
Why Dragon Ball and which of their characters did you like the most?
Dragon Ball and anime in general was a huge fenomenon for the kids in Catalonia in the 90s. As happened with Dr. Slump I loved that innocent humour of the first era when Goku is a kid, I even spent the few money my parents gave me in buying Dragon Ball comics, the white and red series.
For me the most charismatic character is Vegeta, also I love Majin Buu because of his excentric personality mixing extremely stupid humour in the middle of the more absolute chaos.
Can you tell us about where you were born and how was your education?
I was born in Terrasa, a city close to Barcelona, where I'm still living with my mother. I was to a very conservative school, where you had to talk to all the teachers like they were eminences. Drawing for me turned also into a way of showing my rebelliousness against that educational system. It may seem contradictory, but my most hated subject was Plastic and Visual Arts, I had to deal with geometry or geography but never had to draw anything! The most useful thing I take from that time at school were the many Dragon Ball drawings I sold to classmates. And with that money I could rent my favourite games!
Which games did you enjoy the most during your childhood and adolescence?
I'm a big Nintendo fan, maybe its all due to being NES the first platform I played on. Since then I purchased all their systems. So being such a big fan of the big N is very much caused by Super Mario Bros, that was the first game I ever played and the one that would end up hooking me to the medium forever. The game was hard for that time and for my age (5 years old), but instead of discouraging me when I got killed, it managed to animate me and keep trying and trying.
In the NES I also discovered the first Zelda game, that was even tougher than Mario! I was lost all the time, with no idea of what to do or where to go, until ten years later I ended up beating it (without using any guide!). Nowadays I can proudly say I beat all the Zelda titles developed by Nintendo except the ones for DS, simply because I cannot stand the touch controls.
I loved two player cooperative games because I played them with my sister. In the NES era I cannot forget to mention Chip'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. And for SNES I very much enjoyed Donkey Kong Country, that cooperative mode and pre-rendered graphics impacted me like nothing else I ever saw before. Also the second part was devilishly hard!
If Mario made me love videogames as a gamer, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the title that made me dream with the possibility of one day becoming a game developer. It had really epic and memorable moments, characters that you took very fond and a dark atmosphere without needing to use blood or gratuitous violence. Ocarina of Time is, without a doubt, my favourite game since then.
I also had a Playstation One, where I played the sublime Final Fantasy IX. The seventh installment of the series was great, but I liked this one much more. I loved its ambience that took back to the origins of the saga and some of its characters (specially Vivi and Steiner) are the best I have ever seen in the saga in regards to design and history. The only complaint I have about the whole game is the final part, I wasn't satisfied with it since it went too far from what the initial story purposed.
The last game I will remark is Pokemon Blue Version, it had a huge amount of creatures to capture and train, attacks, evolutions...I never learned the names and dates at my History classes but I managed to learn the 251 Pokemons with their level evolutions. Also, spent countless hours with my link cable, exchanging creatures with my classmates.
Other interviews:
Tag :
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dr.slump,
dragon ball,
drawing,
evangelion,
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Final Fantasy,
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jordi longueira,
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BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.6
Broken Age - Act 1 is out for backers!
Everybody freaked out when we saw the huge amount of cash that Tim Schafer got on his famous kickstarter campaign. Some people were extremely happy with the result, others were suspicious. Tim Schafer was like this:
But now finally we have the chance to try with our own hands and see with our own eyes what have been happening inside Double Fine. I can't imagine how hard must have been to carry the burden of having so many people expecting so much from your project. They had to do a great game, or get ready for the internet's punishment.
All this was in my mind when I started playing Broken Age a couple of days ago. And I fell in love with it in ten minutes. It's just beautiful. The dialogues are funny in that special Schafer way, and the plot seems really intriguing to me. It has a cute, cuddling, happy aesthetic with a somehow twisted and even creepy plot inside, something that reminds me a bit of Adventure Time (wich can only be good).
Right now I can't say anything deeper: I haven't played enough. But it's a game that my girlfriend is going to love as much as me, and that doesn't happen often. For god's sake, it's like watching a Disney movie. The good ones, I mean. I hope it has songs. That would be awesome.
Via @truguers
Grab it Magazine
Some weeks ago we got an email from Chris Stead, found ar Grab it Magazine, an iPad Magazine focused indie games and indie developers. I took my time to check it out and really found very useful information, also the information is showcased using quite stylized and intuitive interface. Also read more about interesting games like Simogo's Device 6 and République by Camuflaj and Logan. You can try the first issue for free and give your feedback to the editors.
Via @JesusFabre
Eggnogg: A Nidhogg parody
This week we saw the launching of Nidhogg, one of the most anticipated indie games in the last years, the game was shown for the first time in 2010 and also won the IGF Nuovo Award in 2011. With those precedents and being a cult favorite even before reaching the market, we can't get surprised to see this free parody by Madgarden we discovered thanks to IndieStatik. It is not exactly like the original, but it gives a similar vibe.
Via @JesusFabre
This week I discovered a site called Objective Game Reviews, it is full of sarcastic humor, you start seeing it when reading their About section. And then it goes on if you go reading the game reviews.
For years, gamers have called for reviews to be more objective. Every few months, there is some controversy about a new game that got a score that was too high or too low. Gamers blame the opinions of those who write reviews. Game journalists have their own ideas about what makes a game good or bad, and these ideas influence the score they give to games.
Here at Objective Game Reviews, you can finally read a review without worrying about the opinion of the author. So, go ahead! Browse our reviews and discover a new game you will love!Via @JesusFabre
Scorpion's Pride: A local Spanish soccer team anthem that may sound familiar to you.
What you are about to listen is the Orihuela Soccer Club Official Anthem, and maybe you will find out some similarities with Zelda Theme and also Castlevania SOTN Dance of Gold song. Surely it is pure coincidence, but for us its something worth to remark. This anthem sounds a bit game-ish!
Via @AniolAlcaraz
JAASS: Jordi's Acrobatic Art Style Showcase.
(Try to imagine what he can hold in his head when he is not working - on Megamagic -)
Here you can check out our previous issue of BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries.
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games,
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magazine,
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