Lara Schenck
Artist, programmer, researcher
All Posts
Ordered reverse-chronologically.
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Chrome Maze
This is incredible, like, really incredible.
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Themes from DML 2013
Had a great weekend at DML 2013: met a ton of excellent people, heard excellent talks, and had some excellent dinners in Chi City. A few resonant themes and takeaways: Civics are not in crisis, agency is. It seems like civics are the problem because of widely popularized (and hilarious) media showing ignorance (Jaywalking). The […]
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Hippo illustration
I needed to make an anthropomorphic/mentor-like figure for a project and did some experimenting with a hippo. Pretty cute, if I do say so myself.
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DML Conference 2013
In a couple of weeks (March 14-16) I’ll be heading to Chicago for the annual Digital Media and Learning Conference organized by the DML Research Hub. The theme this year is “Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation”. There has been a longstanding narrative of youth political apathy and disengagement from democratic life. As […]
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Research on Curriculum Design and Quest to Learn
Article: Quest to Learn as a Model for Higher Education Pretty much exactly what I want to do. In this article, Justin W. Marquis goes through a few key features of Q2L and examines how they might be applied to higher ed, particularly the application of design and systems thinking. Tools: Q Design Packs from […]
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Some advice for freelancers
I’ve been freelancing full time for about 6 months now and finally feel that I’ve streamlined my process. I’d like to share a few things that made a huge difference for me: Find a co-working space. I rent a desk at CatapultPGH, and have no idea what I would do without it. The community is […]
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Global Game Jam 2013
I participated in the Pittsburgh Global Game jam this past weekend. In a sentence, the GGJ is a worldwide event where teams make a game in under 48 hours according to a predetermined theme – read more here. I was the 2D artist on a team with two fantastic programmers, Jim Newsome and Brian Bogovich, […]
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The F & Z Layouts in Web Design
On the F layout: The F-Layout relies upon various eyetracking studies for it’s foundational concept. These scientific studies show that web surfers read the screen in an “F” pattern – seeing the top, upper left corner and left sides of the screen most… only occasionally taking glances towards the right side of the screen. These […]
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The Good Man – CSS3 animation
Fantastic audio/visual artwork, created by Pedro Ivo Hudson. via Awwwards
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Notes on the Principles of Game-like Learning
I just watched a great webinar at Connected Learning with Katie Salen who is a co-author of Rules of Play, and director of the Institute of Play. Below is a recording followed by some notes. Katie Salen: Making Learning Irresistible: 6 Principles of Game-like Learning Key Design Principles How do we to take a theory […]
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An Interactive Guide to Blog Typography
via Sidebar (A daily email digest of the best 5 design links. Highly recommended.)
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Art and entertainment are not terms of type – they…
Art and entertainment are not terms of type – they are terms of intensity.
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Educational Games Research
Article: Learning to Play to Learn – Lessons in Educational Game Design by Eric Zimmerman and Nick Fortugno Excellent article summarizing the state of educational games. It addressing the split between educators and developers as well as the importance of using games to communicate process, not raw data: …if your aim is to create a […]
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Listen to: improv4humans
Excellent podcast with founding member of Upright Citizens Brigade Matt Besser. Each episode features fantastic improvisers who break off into scenes as they discuss miscellaneous topics. Dirty humor is not uncommon, fyi.
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New Experiments in Self-teaching [TED Talk]
Indian education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education – the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we […]
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Remove .php from URLs [Snippet]
When making custom sites, I separate my code into various php files that each include a consistent header and footer so that I don’t have to deal with verbose, redundant HTML files. By default you end up with gross URLs like mysite.com/contact.php. Make it mysite.com/contact by adding this to your .htaccess file and replacing index|about|.. […]
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Epic Small this week = Socrates + Game Mechanics
Epic what? Started by the brilliant Sam Wilson (a member of Catapult as well!), Epic Small helps you accomplish small creative tasks one at a time at week long intervals. Here’s an article by Kate Stoltzfus at Yinzpiration with some more info. I was on a roll with Epic Smalls a couple months ago […]
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#1reasonwhy: what women deal with in the game industry
via Raph Koster’s Twitter Also check out this segment on NPR: Online Harassment Gets Real For Girl Gamers
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A Template for Analyzing Game Design
A note about analyzing vs. reviewing a game: an analysis mainly consists of what is actually present in the game, not what you think should be. Pick it apart and see what choices the designer made and think about why. I figured it’d be helpful to have a template for guidance when critiquing a game. […]
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What if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars?
It would be amazing. via kottke.org
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Issues & Assets, a card game concept
Issues & Assets is a card game about WWI I’ve been working on. Pretty random, right? It’s an assignment at the end of Game Design Concepts Level 3 (yes, I am working through this quite slowly) which was: Design a non-digital game with theme a relating to World War I. The primary objective of players […]
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Scathing critique of Digital Natives/Immigrants [Bad Websites]
It’s a cliche by now, but really, Comic Sans? Doesn’t that pretty much prove the Natives/Immigrants arguments? Disclaimer that I haven’t read it at all (likely won’t) so the content could be legitimate. Of course this is in large part design snobbery from my end. On a for real note, I reference the Digital Natives […]
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Pittsburgh Web Design Day 2012
Just got back from Web Design Day, hosted by Refresh Pittsburgh, Pgh’s web design meetup group. After a day of excellent presentations by some excellent speakers, excellent drinks and snacks were had at Commonwealth Press for the after party. #WDD2012 win, I’m definitely looking forward to next year. Thanks to Val and Jason Head for […]
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Artists, read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Yes, it’s a comic about comics. But not about comics as you might initially think of them – it’s about visual and representational language in general. If you are anything like me and have let your art theory knowledge go to seed (somewhat) after college, this is an excellent way to begin reawakening your critical […]