EDIT: 4.23.14 Thanks to everyone that applied! We'll be posting the list of participating artists shortly!
We have been keeping quiet about this one for the last six months as we've gotten face deep in all of planning and prototyping! We can finally announce the newest call for art :
DREAM ARCADE
A Platformer's Paradise
Opening September 12, 2014 at Light Grey Art Lab!
Hyper-shifting has never been a problem for you. In fact, because of your ability to flex between the spacetime fabric, you've been singled out to covertly infiltrate a list of alternate realms to seek out a handful of top secret energy sources that have been scattered throughout time and across dimensions. You will have to shift between worlds, take on new forms, fight deadly enemies and navigate dangerous environments -- all to collect these essential celestial artifacts. If you're unable to find them all, the universe as we know it will cease to exist.
If you've ever wanted to design the characters and world for a platformer game, here's your chance! We have been researching ways for interested artists to design the environments, the enemies, and the heroes in a new exhibition that will explode everyone's faces with awesomeness! During the month of September we'll transform the gallery into an actual arcade, and the walls will be lined with YOUR GAMES. All of which will be tied together by a dimension-hopping storyline!
You could make an all-slime universe, a kitten-filled candy paradise, a hamburger land with mustard waterfalls, or a barbarian's loin-cloth dream! If you've ever said "I'd love to see a game where..." now's your chance!
The end result will be a playable game, and an epic journey that pays homage to the classic games of the 8 and 16 bit generations!
CLICK HERE TO PLAY A MINI SAMPLE GAME SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT WE MEAN!
See all of those little assets? The objects, danger zones, characters, background? Each artist will create a set of graphics used to populate their unique world! Then we'll take that art and turn it into the playable game!
We'll design a big, winding level -- filled with items, barriers, puzzles, and story! Each artist also get a chance to make a piece of lush artwork (think - crazy splash page!) inspired by your game that will be available to purchase. This piece will be the "cover art" for your game as well as being the piece hung next to the games in the gallery. Your artwork will be archived permanently on our online gallery as well as displayed for the month of September in our brick-and-mortar gallery in Minneapolis!
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Example of raw game assets!
In order to make something crazy-huge like this happen, Light Grey Art Lab is working with
David Washington from Microsoft, a great friend and awesome guy, to help release each of your mini games for free on the Microsoft App Store, so you can share them with friends, family and everyone else :).
David is helping us code each game individually, and helping us create ONE BIG STORY-FILLED platformer that spans all mini-games -- where you'll see the story unfold with tons of extra secrets! We're excited to create this huge universe of games, and even more excited for you to see your characters come to life.
The Development Team:
The coding will be done by David Washington and the level design and art layout by Chris Hajny. Graphic design, story and extra in-game assets will be handled by Lindsay Nohl and editing and project management by Jenny Bookler and Francesca Buchko.
How is it possible that we can do things like this?
All of our Light Grey Art Lab projects are built with the blood, sweat and tears from volunteer hours from the four of us at Light Grey Art Lab in coordination with art makers and art lovers like you! As always, we're all in it for the love of the game! :) We spend our nights and weekends developing programming like our diverse calls for art,
the LGAL podcast, the free events, and our meet & greets! If you like seeing projects and calls for art like this, or games like
Great Personality, our series of dating sims,
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING A COUPLE BUCKS to support Light Grey, and ALL of the creative folks involved! The
best way to help is to head over to
our shop and consider purchasing a piece of art! Everyone wins! You get something awesome, the artists who make the work earn some money, and we get to keep making crazy things for you guys!
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The Exhibition!
During the exhibition, we'll have 30 game stations to line the walls with your games! Of course, we'll also be releasing the games online so you can have access to all of these awesome worlds from the comfort of your own computer!
So put on your bounty-hunting, treasure-hungry, adventurer hats and join us for one of our craziest exhibitions yet!
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TO BE INVOLVED
Put your name, email and links in the
comments below by APRIL 23 to be considered! Your comment should looks something like this:
Lindsay Nohl
hello@lightgreyartlab.com
lindsaynohl.com
Space is limited and we have two deadlines! We'll be looking for a couple super ambitious people that want to be part of the promotional games / press kits to be able to turn in art by May 15th,
and everyone else's artwork will be due by mid-late June(exact date TBD!) so we can program everything before the exhibition! -- so if you think you're up for it, let us know!
And that's it!
Again, due to VERY limited space in this show, please check the dates and specifics above and ask any questions to make sure you can make the deadlines & dates! THIS IS A SHOW THAT NEEDS 100% FOLLOW-THROUGH BECAUSE OF THE NATURE OF THE PROJECT, so please do not apply unless you are able to meet one of the two possible deadlines, and parameters above! Let us know if you need any more details and thanks for helping us spread the word!!!
We'll be jurying the show after APRIL 23!
Questions? Send us a note! hello@lightgreyartlab.com
