Creative COW - a real hidden gem...

I have been recieving emails from Creative COW for ages now but only just found time to really take a look at what they were about... and that was because they sent me an email telling me about Stereoscopic 3D (something bound to get my attention, and certainly of interest to a student of mine who produced an anaglyph 3D animation recently).

So I clicked on over to Creative COW only to be astonished that they actually publish a PDF magazine you can download for free, with excellent articles by real professionals about film and media production.

I immediately downloaded the latest issue, and then all back issues.

It is not often you find something so well produced totally FREE.

Where Interactive Media Can Go

Those of you who are old enough may remember back in 1993 a revolutionary new computer game was released - MYST. Back then it used the Mac's hypercard system (you know, the one that might have been a forerunner to the internet if only anyone had realised the potential of linking between stacks on other machines), simple yet effective.

As far as today's interactive media is concerned, the original MYST was pretty low tech. When I consider the simplicity of the original MYST back end it becomes clear that pretty much anyone with an intermediate knowledge of Flash and Actionscript could produce a comparable game today.

What set MYST apart then wasn't the technology, but the creativity with which the technology was used.

And this is what I keep trying to get my students to understand. It isn't all about being able to use the software, loads of people can do that. It is about the thinking, the ideas and the creativity.

That is why we emphasise the design process over the final outcome.

Of course later versions of MYST are a lot more complex than the original in 1993, but the ideas, the thinking and the creativity is still what drives the process, even if the technology has changed.

As demonstrated in this making of video...



The Making Of Myst Iii Exile via Noolmusic.com