TGIPF! What?

TGIPF! What?

March 20th, 2009

Posted by Zoe at 16:56

imgp2407Thank God Its Pastry Friday! If you’re following our blog, you might notice an inordinate number of posts about food and drink. Well, Pastry Friday is just another food-related tradition that has to be shared. Can you picture all the sugar happy pre-caffeinated game developers swarming over warm muffins and freshly sliced bagels, even daring to duel with fruit? No? Well be sure to check out our gallery of this morning’s spread!

Slant Six website 2.0

March 18th, 2009

Posted by Zoe at 11:27

slantcompanyphoto1Welcome to the new home of Slant Six on the web. After listening to our fans and team members, we decided it was time to give a voice to our studio and let people know just what we’re working on, who we are, and why our studio is such a great place to be.  Plus we wanted an excuse to draw cool hotrod inspired artwork.

Be sure to visit often as content will update regularly and frequently (atleast relative to the old website!). If you’re interested in specific content, be sure to drop me a note on Twitter @SlantSixGames or even personally at @ZoeFlower. You can also email media@slantsixgames.com or join our Facebook page. Yay Web 2.0!

-Zoe

Slant Speaks at GDC 2009

March 18th, 2009

Posted by Zoe at 11:12

paul_02Who is this guy and what does he have to say? Well, it’s Technical Director, Paul Martin, who once again has been invited to speak at an industry event. This time, Paul will leap technical hurdles and logistical buildings with his “Audio Adventures on the PS3″ which tackles SOCOM Confrontation from an audio perspective (in case you couldn’t glean that from the title).

You can see a detailed breakdown of just what will be discussed here. If you’re attending GDC, be sure to stop in and say hello on Friday morning at 10:30am. If you say you read about his talk on this blog, he might be nice enough to offer you a lollipop.

Inside the Artist’s Mind

March 18th, 2009

Posted by Zoe at 11:09

David Denofreo, 3D Artist, is well known around our office for his fascination with photography. Here’s an overview of David’s latest vision and how he achieved such compelling results… don’t worry, no developers were actually harmed (physically) in the making.

david_face_crop_02I’ve had the idea of doing wide angle, unflattering portraits for a while now. It’s an interesting way to see a version of yourself. These are characters that we all have inside and some of us only see them in the bathroom mirror when you’re alone and the door is locked. To get in close and see every pore and hair, every little imperfection is a wonderful thing. People are not perfect and I’m grateful to those who are willing to share that with me.

I hope with these portraits, the subject is able to embraced their own imperfections and find humor in them. I would prefer to capture the awkward moments. The photo that is taken when someone has their eyes half open and in mid spoken word. The worst timing for a photo is what want.

With some faces, I would rather go for the extreme emotion.

The great thing is, everyone has a unique face. With every new shoot I learn what works with their face and who they are. I don’t always get it the first round, and I’m really happy that people are willing to come back for a second shoot so I can get it right.

How these portraits are done technically, is very easy.

Lens – Sigma 10-20mm

Software – Adobe Photoshop using the LucisArt 3 ED plugin for the simulated HDR look. Cross Processing and Bleach Pass done with Tiffen DFX plugin.

The hard part, and also one of the most enjoyable parts is working with the model. Trying to find that character they have inside is a lot of fun. Sometimes the character is right there and all it takes is for them to stick out their tongue! With other people I have to dig a bit deeper. I’ve only asked a couple of the people to participate in the beginning to get the ball rolling. The rest of the people in the collection have all asked me if they could participate after seeing the photos.

Spotlight: Game Designer, Tyler McCulloch

March 17th, 2009

Posted by Zoe at 11:14

This week we’ve cornered Tyler McCulloch, and forced him to give up his dark secrets of game design. I don’t think we succeeded but you can atleast find out why he’s here and what he pretends does.

Quote:
“motion blur is the new lens flare.”

Years in Industry:
Just over 5 years

What do you consider prerequisites for your job?:
Being able to build ideas like lego, but allowing them to be molded like clay.

How long you’ve been at Slant Six Games?
2.5 years

Best part of the job:
Waking up each morning and knowing I get to hang out with a bunch of awesome people all day.

Morning web surf:
Shacknews and Kotaku usually for game stuff, Gamasutra and various game dev blogs for development stuff, and finally the ‘oddly enough’ section of Reuters for my news updates.

Favorite Work Perks:
Slant Six is a great company to work for, and they’ll go out of their way to try and make you happy. They are constantly try to improve the quality of life here by listening to their employees, encouraging company backed outings, to having a BBQ just because!

What do you like about Vancouver?
You couldn’t ask for a better location, than where Slant is located. Beautiful views of downtown from across the water, Granville Island a couple steps away. Umm, plus the Emily Carr University of Art + Design is really close by. And umm, those Arty girls are pretty. Yeah.

What kind of person do you need to be to work here?
The great thing about Slant is that everyone gets along so well, regardless of the type of person they are. There are no egos here, just a bunch of people sharing ideas while trying to improve themselves and the game they are working on.

What do you do for fun outside the company?
I once met a guy who thought it was really fun to run full speed into a wall with enough force to knock him out… Well, actually it was me. Um, well, actually it wasn’t fun either, I just didn’t see the wall.

What games do you play?
I love playing all sorts of games. One of my greatest pleasures though is playing a game that may be considered a ‘flop’. I love trying to figure out what went wrong and coming up with solutions that I think may have helped if they had the time to implement it.

If I weren’t working at Slant Six games I’d be:
On my own private tropical island pretending I was a survivor of Oceanic flight 815… until I got hungry and heading back to my resort when my chef would have made me a deliciously ginormous meal which I would eat with one hand on a controller.

« Older Entries

Slant Six Outpaces the Competition

This weekend, a group of our hard working team members participated in the annual Vancouver Sun Run, a 10km race through our beautiful city with over 50,000 participants. Not only did we place FIRST in our division, beating out 118 other teams, but we placed tenth out of all the corporate teams that ran the race. The next time someone suggests that game developers are basement dwelling couch potatoes, perhaps you can suggest they take a look at our website. High performance game developers who can outrun you in the street.  Pretty impressive don’t you think?

more »

Match Making in Confrontation

A new update from our friends over at the official SOCOM blog gives you the scoop on one of the highly anticipated feature updates in the upcoming 1.5 release for SOCOM Confrontation… the Tournament feature! Find out how tournaments will function with details on structure, registration, scheduling and teams. Read it all here…

more »


Check it out, IGN gives the first Fireteam Bravo 3 review: .html

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