Visichunk: aggregates of visual input
Graeme is up in San Francisco at the 2013 Game Developers Conference where I will soon join him for a few days of Übergeeking and showing off one of our new games: Rocket Patrol.
I just got this from Graeme, seems like he has the Shmooze-o-tron running at full speed:
Yesterday, a news story broke about a Washington State Representative who favors adding a “transportation tax” on the sales of bicycles because “bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride”. His rationale is that because we exhale CO2, we’re polluters. Well, yes, but apparently .01% as much as a car.
Can we please elect representatives that have at least a basic understanding of science?
Also, if you read the article, I think we pay for roads with taxes, not by driving cars on them..
Is it Monday yet?
Some of you know my daughter Kaya and those of you who do probably love her. She’s a pretty special person. She leaves tonight at 5:00pm from SFO on her three day journey to Varanasi India where she will spend three months helping teach young girls english and help with the running of a small school for disadvantaged kids.
I believe in the power of thoughts and intentions. Will you join me in putting a big glowing bubble of safety and love around her on this trip? It would mean a lot to me if you just pause for a second after reading this email and think a good thought about Kaya and her journey across the planet.
Thank you guys, you are an amazing community,
Spence.
Apparently, this was completely off the cuff and non-rehearsed. Would that I had this ability for free-flowing bullsh#t.

I stumbled on this last night. Super interesting ideas about pre-printing components for living structures and not being held back by using traditional building materials. The first prototype looks like it was spun by a giant spider. the second will be equally organic, but have a more bone-like structure. Great inspiration.
Graeme and I are making a quick (one week) game based on a 1906 card game. We needed cool looking 1950′s space era imagery but it needed to be clean and updated. I started with a Google search for 1950′s Spaceships and started modeling After cranking out a little silver spaceship in Silo3D, my modeling package of choice, I brought it into Photoshop as an OBJ. Huh? 3D in Photoshop? Well, yes,.. kinda. It’s still pretty buggy and loses its coordinates sometimes, but you can actually get some cool effects and renders done with the added benefit of being able to layer stuff on top of it in the familiar workspace of Photoshop.
I also used Andrew Kramer’s Element plugin in After Effects to generate some of the more complex models. Neither solution has full-blown rendering capabilities (like refraction) but they do really well for inserting 3D into a 2D workflow.