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TIFF Nexus is a series of
creative jams and conferences
designed to connect diverse creative
sectors, so we're bringing together
game developers, content creators,
filmmakers and digital artists to
innovate around specific themes
relevant to each conference and jam.
The Comics Vs. Games jam, which brings
together comic artists and
game developers,
will be showcased at TIFF 2012.
I had all of the game makers come up
with three game ideas and write
short paragraphs about them.
And then I had all of the
comic artists sketch out three ideas.
I looked through those and
tried to find interesting matches
and pair up each of the teams,
and then give them a document that had
all of those game ideas, and said:
Here are a bunch of ideas that you had
look through them, pick one of them,
maybe pick something else, maybe mash
two of them together.
We basically got all of those
different combinations.
When we started doing the
Comics vs. Games project, we pitched
ideas to each other.
"What if we do this and this?"
and I'm like "What about this?"
and then she's like "what about a
choose your own adventure?
But how would that work?"
and then I say "I know exactly how
it would work!"
The game is The Yawgh.
It's a multi-player choose your own
adventure game, that is different from
other choose your own adventure games
in that there's no combat in it.
There's six weeks to prepare for
That Yawgh, which is this mysterious
thing...storm... something...
and so you build up your stats
and all your choices that you make
throughout the game,
everybody's choices effect everybody
else, and what happens.
One thing that I wasn't really banking
on, although I should have when I
started the game, was just how much
is involved in creating a game.
I was the programmer,
and I did some of the writing,
and I did the game design for the game
Emily did all the art, which is
fantastic, and all of the storywriting
Individual illustrations:
there is a lot, like 60-something.
It ended up being a lot more then
I thought it was gonna be, but I think
having finished it, I'm really happy
with how it turned out. I'm really
glad I spent all that time.
We're No Angels is a game about GOD
who is the ultimate music groupie,
fanboy.
He can usually wait, on average,
around 27 years for all his favorite
rockstars to die, so they can put on
private shows for him.
The game is about Elvis Presley,
and Jimi Hendrix meeting up and saying
"We want to get out of here!"
"Let's bust out of heaven!"
I worked with Jamie Fristrom
a really talented game-designer
who lives in the States in Washington,
and he's developing the game aspect
of this, and I have been providing the
story ideas, the story content and
then the art work.
The Mysterious Aphroditus is a
fighting game, that revolves around
Victorian ladies and gentleman
fighting for the hand of a mysterious
theatre figure.
Christine suggested doing a fighter
because that was something she wanted
to make, and I suggested the Victorian
setting because that was something I
wanted to draw.
And it was such a weird combination.
I have absolutely no experience making
games, it was completely new to me,
so I need Christine's help a lot.
Kyla's art was just gorgeous!
I was just blown away by it!
All the work that Kyla did.
I think it would be great to work with
someone that talented again, and let
steer it in the direction they want.
I had a comic book I was working on
and we combined it with the video game
with the animations, and we came out
with Brigandage.
He told me what the story was about,
I looked at what assets we had
and I went: "ok I can see we have a
medieval, heavy-metal aesthetic,
lets make this into a basketball game
with a baby and beating each other up
and exploding barrels, and he said:
"That sounds amazing!" and it worked.
So, you're either the barbarians,
which are Dracula's parents, trying to
save little baby Dracula
from being killed by the Church,
or your the Church and your goal is to
kill him.
The first time I went to the studio
and I got to see my game up
on the screen, and to see all
the developer's playing it and being
super excited: that blew me away...
because I designed everything,
and animated everything, so it was
really exciting!
I was laughing for an hour!
And I really suck at my game!
I'm getting better though.
My game is called Cumulo Nimblers
and it is... sort of a Mario Brothers
style jumping to get coins game
mixed with the way pinball works
in that you can't always expect where
you're gonna land.
Farbs (the designer)had ideas of what
he wanted to do,
and I had ideas of what I wanted to do
the challenge of working with him in
Australia was that the time-difference
was so huge, that we'd have to chat...
midnight my time, 5 o'clock his time.
We had a shared dropbox folder
that I could put files into and he
could put game stuff into and so it
was a true collaboration in that we
combined our ideas into something
completely new.
A lot of times what people try to do
in game jams, they try to bring...
let's say an illustrator or cartoonist
to work on a game, it's really
them doing the visuals and that's it.
But these feel like a natural, fluid,
combination of both things.
My hope is that it'll introduce
a lot of indie comics people
to what's happening in the indie-game
scene and vice versa.
I think there's a lot they can share
with each other.
I am also hoping that creators will
start doing cross-collaboration
the comics world and the games world.
The Nexus project wouldn't exist
without the support of the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
through their Entertainment
and Creative Cluster Partnership fund.
Through that, we've been able to get
the funding to really bring these
diverse creators together,
these different sectors,
because they realize the value
and importance of cross-sector
collaboration.
I like making comics because
I like telling stories
and I like writing because I like
telling stories
so I just think that games are another
venue that you can tell stories in.
Working with an artist has really
shown me that collaborations are
really cool and I actually have
started looking into collaborating
with other artist's now.
I want to do something like this for
every comic book I ever do.
When I'm going to Comic-Cons
and selling my books,
I can host game nights with the game.
Or when we go down to Fantastic Fest
and we're debuting the game to another
audience, I can actually sell comics!
You get a great cross-platform
of stuff... and it's exciting!
It's awesome!
It's clear that these people
really worked well together, and
really cared, and the results speak
for themselves.
It's really blown me away,
the stuff they've come up with.
It's been fantastic!