Showing posts with label jordi longueira. 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 :
artist,
cartoons,
dr.slump,
dragon ball,
drawing,
evangelion,
family,
Final Fantasy,
gaming,
he-man,
humour,
interview,
jordi longueira,
memories,
NES,
ninja turtles,
nintendo,
super mario bros,
zelda,
BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.2
Hi BeautiFans,
there was a nice reception for our first edition of BeautiFun Weekly, so here we are again with this new compilation of interesting things that happened recently. Carefully curated among all of us BeautiFunners. Enjoy!
Lourdes (artist) told us about this amazing Japanese painter called Riusuke Fukahori. He masters the art of painting three-dimensional goldfishes using a layer-by-layer and resin covering technique. The result looks both like a painting and a sculpture. Simply amazing.
Also this week, Kevin (game designer) pointed out that an extra-awesome indie game was on sale on Steam! its name is Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians, the gameplay is based on solving puzzles using rhythm and your interaction with the pretty hand-drawn environment. Take a look at its trailer and get amazed with the colourfulness of this title:
We also met Marina Amores who came to visit our studio. She is a kind and talented student from Barcelona. She and another friend of her are going to prepare a documentary on Nihilumbra for their final Master Thesis. In the meantime, you can learn more about her work by watching this great video blog/documentary about the influences of Monkey Island and also how this game influenced other games and films (English subtitles included!).
"A Dystopian Document Thriller. The communist state of Arstotzka has ended a 6-year war with neighboring Kolechia and reclaimed its rightful half of the border town, Grestin. Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested."
there was a nice reception for our first edition of BeautiFun Weekly, so here we are again with this new compilation of interesting things that happened recently. Carefully curated among all of us BeautiFunners. Enjoy!
Optical illusion goldfish
Jordi was at 3December 2013
In this case is Jordi (artist), who did a lecture at 3December 2013 (Barcelona). He focused on the explaining the working process for creating videogame characters and how it fits into the production environment of the whole project (in the picture you can see a cartoon version of himself in the middle of a meeting with Kevin, our game designer).
Indie experiences lived at Madrid Games Week 2013 compilation.
If you have been following us on the social networks during last month, I'm sure you saw we were part of the Spanish indie booth sponsored by Made in Spain Games called Madrid Games Week. It was a very big commercial event focused on the mainstream games industry (no joke, it received over 52K visitors!). In this article at the Spanish site Indie-o-rama, Kevin tried to explain how awesome that experience was and what it meant for us.
Don't miss Beatbuddy!
Also this week, Kevin (game designer) pointed out that an extra-awesome indie game was on sale on Steam! its name is Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians, the gameplay is based on solving puzzles using rhythm and your interaction with the pretty hand-drawn environment. Take a look at its trailer and get amazed with the colourfulness of this title:
Monkey Island documentary.
We also met Marina Amores who came to visit our studio. She is a kind and talented student from Barcelona. She and another friend of her are going to prepare a documentary on Nihilumbra for their final Master Thesis. In the meantime, you can learn more about her work by watching this great video blog/documentary about the influences of Monkey Island and also how this game influenced other games and films (English subtitles included!).
Papers, Please! will be translated to Spanish!
Via our colleague Suey (programmer) and Eurogamer Spain I got to know that Papers, Please! (one of the games some of us are enjoying very much, specially this past week) is going to be translated to Spanish by two great professionals Josué Monchán and Ramón Mendez.The translation is going to be ready expectedly during first months of next year. For the ones who don't know about the game, here is the description you will find in the game site (demo/beta available for download):
Forgotten: A really scary short-film made with no budget and tons of talent.
This week Jesús (community manager) stumbled on Twitter with this video tweeted by David GarcÃa. He made the music for Forgotten, a short-film by Luis Miguel Herrera, who is working as animator at Lionhead Studios and submitted it to their 2013 Creative Day competition. Truly impressive and terrific at the same time!
Super BR Jam ended with 22 games developed!
And lastly, Jesús also wanted to reminds you that today (Friday 6th) is the last day to purchased the games developed and a nice pack of commercial well known games from $5. Every cent raised will go to help Meninos de Luz a charity organization that works with kids education in Rio de Janeiro.
See also:
News and Discoveries Ep.1
News and Discoveries Ep.1
BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.1
Hey ya BeautiFans!
Today we start a new series of posts, where we will talk briefly about the most intense things we lived along the week and the best stuff we have found on the Internet, hope you like it!
NEWS!
Well, we can`t start this first post without mentioning something very important that recently happened to us. Nihilumbra won two awards! At HòPlay Indie Festival, an event mainly focused on promoting the indie scene, it got the Best Gameplay Award! and yesterday Nihilumbra was also awarded with Best Independent Game Award at Fun & Serious Festival 2013! We want to thank everyone who supported us and also tell you that our designer Kevin Cerdà , who travelled there to spread the joy and beauty of our studio among the game industry, is going to write an awesome post next week explaining everything that happened with more detail.
DISCOVERIES!
Nihilumbra is 30% off on Steam sales! so click here and get your copy now!
Game Maker Standard Studio is free for a limited time! if you ever wanted to try your luck as an indie developer, now there is a great chance with this tool, there are tons of documentation and tutorials out there. You only have to download the software and register it, so YoYo Games will send you a key to activate the standard product.
Source: BeautiFun Games' Twitter.
VLAMBEER CLONE TYCOON teaches you how to clone a game from the company and the best of all is that everything is based on real facts! its kind of a news game full of sarcastic humour, amazing work!
The Inner World, a beautifully crafted point and click adventure, is the debut title from our German friends Studio Fibzin. The game has just been released for many platforms: PC, Mac and iOS. Give this game a chance and help Robert to save Asposia in a story full of great humour and creativity.
Source: Our colleague Marcos Sueiro's (@sueythelaw)
We just discovered this great talk from Jonathan Blow at Creative Mornings Portland event. He talks focuses on describing how badly used marketing distorted narrative design in the 80s and 90s TV series and relates that to how some evil monetization practices are equivalently corrupting the true gaming experiences in social and casual games. If you are a game designer, this lecture is a MUST to watch!
Source: Our colleague Jesús Fabre (@JesusFabre)
And finally, but not least important! there is Super BR Jam! it's not a bundle, it's not a jam, is the best of both ideas mashed and improved to the max! around 30 studios from Brazil joined to celebrate the Brazilian indie scene and also help charity! they created some crazy and funny games (livestreaming the process in most cases), sold them in a bundle along with other commercial ones and are going to donate 100% of the money to charity! we really have to praise this iniciative by encouraging you to participate and purchase your bundle.
Here is the list of studios participating in the event:
Critical, Arrowhead, Behold, Miniboss, Swordtales, Kaipora Digital, DeVoid, Pixel Cows, Pocket Trap, Pigasus, Bitcake, Loud Noises, Aduge, Tsubasa, JoyMasher, Hoplon, Otus, TawStudio, Flowkore, Double Dash, Aiyra, Lumentech, Vitreo Lab, ZeroDuo, Broken Finger, Kimeric Labs and Nano Studio.
Source: IndieStatik (@IndieStatik)
Pol, one of our programmers, is a huge Zelda fan! this past week he just beated The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for 3DS, and wanted to share the magic with you thanks to this musical moment! and the HOLY mini chest!
Source: Our colleague Pol Urós (@Daiflys)
