iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

This exact thing has basically stopped me posting altogether.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Characters that hold heavy weapons with zero posture adjustment.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Been making games professionally for 20 years today. 🥳👴🏻

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Wrapped up Assassin's Creed: Shadows over the weekend. Really enjoyed it! Has been my favorite AC in a long time (up there with AC2 and Black Flag for sure). Well done to the dev team!

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Looks great Jim! Can’t wait!

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Reposted by Dan Lowe

Simon Unger @simonunger.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Hoping I can crowd-source some data: How long does it take for you to export animation from your DCC program? Additional info that would also help: - frame number - character count - joint count - # of props, cameras, extras - cines and/or gameplay

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Dan Floyd @danfloydplus.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

There was a lot of good game animation in 2024, and I found ALL OF IT. #animation youtu.be/eD_dYrVFTEY

youtu.be

The Best Game Animation of 2024

YouTube video by New Frame Plus

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

This thread is what half our phone calls are like.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

…target for all other enemies or weapon types. The push to “make a game” of things is pushing back on people making individual features that might be interesting in isolation, but don’t contribute to the gameplay loop.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

…or made prototypes that were interesting in isolation but didn’t make sense within an actually game loop. The other thing that in my experience hasn’t worked well is “templating”: Basically saying let’s make one weapon, or one enemy type, and we’ll take that to final, and then that will be the…

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

I don’t think we fundamentally disagree. I’m definitely not suggesting taking uninformed shots in the dark, just as you’re not suggesting to design exclusively on paper for months on end. I guess my perspective comes from having worked on projects that either restricted early development to paper…

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Also can’t stress enough: Make a game out of your prototypes. It’s one thing to use a feature in its own test level, just to nail the realization, but to really see if it’s fun, create a challenge out of it. Playtest a full scenario. Create a tournament to see who on your team is best at it.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

100% agree with this. Games are a complex mix of interacting systems. It’s near impossible to predict how those individual systems will actually work out, until you can put them into context.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Oh wow, bit of a nostalgia overload here: That Captain was the first miniature I ever painted.

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Reposted by Dan Lowe

Mila Pavlin - Accessibility Game Dev @missfire.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

I was unfortunately impacted by the studio closure today. I appreciate any support or leads and am open to new work.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is great and super applicable.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

That’s awesome! Congrats Liz!

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

The publisher is between a rock and a hard place. They don’t want to negatively impact the pre-prod project, but there are so many dominoes lined up with the shipping project that they can’t delay. They just have to deal with the problem in front of them.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Absolutely. Or a common one is you get important projects nearing shipping, and you need all hands on deck, so you have to pull people from your projects in pre-production to get the near-shipping project out the door. But then those pre-prod projects are now no longer establishing their direction.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

You could maybe argue that they should take those people and spin-up something new, and sometimes they do, or sometimes it’s a mix. It’s just not an easy situation. Anything new is also going to be in pre-pro and not ready for 200 people.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Is the publisher at fault? Well no, they shouldn’t be rolling people on to a sequel that no-one wants, and they were trying to do the right thing saving people’s jobs. Sometimes this is just one of those things.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

…But maybe those teams are still in early pre-production and aren’t ready to have 200 people dropped on them. Suddenly the burn rate of that team goes through the roof and the cost of those early months/years where you’re supposed to be taking your time to find the right idea, becomes astronomical.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

…But then then the game comes out, doesn’t sell well, and the publisher decides not to go ahead with a sequel. The publisher doesn’t want to fire people, so they see what else they have in development, and shifts those people to other teams…

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

One thing that doesn’t get talked about much is the impact that cancelling projects has on other projects. For example, say a team just released a game that was expected to do well, and that team was expected to go directly on to working on a sequel…

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

If I can give any advice on finding direction, just make sure everyone on your team is building things during pre-pro that you can actually play. Too many developers get paralyzed waiting for direction, or get stuck on paper designs. Build it, play it, if you need to throw it out, then throw it out.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

What Jason is saying here is right, but should stress that when people say making games is hard, they’re not kidding. Some of these management challenges aren’t necessarily because the managers are bad, but because finding a clear direction that works, is really, really difficult.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Probably not as neat as getting them done professionally, but good enough for me.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

I used Frame It Easy to get frames to exact size, and then made the mat boards myself (with the right tools it’s not too difficult).

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

We occasionally had guest speakers at the uni I went to and most would come, do their talk, then leave. When Martyn Brown was done, he asked who wanted to go to the pub, then spent the next few hours chatting, telling stories and offering advice. It meant the world to all of us.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

My favorite bit on this topic: www.youtube.com/watch?si=0nI...

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Yeah, I agree. Definitely prefer the vibes over here but Discover just isn’t as good at consistently delivering posts that I’m interested in.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

For your Idle pose, consider making it slightly asymmetrical. Perfectly symmetrical poses tend to look unnatural, and the silhouette doesn’t read well from the side. Consider twisting the hips and bit and having one foot slightly more forward, and the other foot slightly more back.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Once you’ve adjusted the spine, consider adding more flow to the limb movement. It’s quite exaggerated in this image but the same concept applies to more realistic movement.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

The spine is very static. Would recommend adding more twist. The image just shows up and down but the spine should also corkscrew forward and backward to follow the motion of the arms and legs as they move forward and backward.

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Reposted by Dan Lowe

David Gaider @davidgaider.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

It occurs to me, after reading posts getting it spectacularly wrong, that there are a lot of misconceptions over how game studios organize and, in particular, who makes the actual decisions about what ends up in your game. Much of it is by folks who don't *try* to get it... but not all, surely. 1/🧵

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

That little camera pan to the right saved someone a whole lot of work.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

I see you Naughty Dog, just casually dropping a little jacket put-on in there like it's no big deal.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Super exciting to see new stuff from CDPR and Naughty Dog! Have so much respect and admiration for those teams. Really curious to see how CDPR handles the switch to Unreal.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Had this exact conversation with my wife.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

No it’s the Visceral Games/Amy Hennig Star Wars project.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Sorry for your loss Alanah and sorry to see you go. Appreciate your work, and all the kind things you said about the studio. Was great having you on the team and wish you all the best for the future.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Congrats Jon! Excited to see what you do next.

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Dan Lowe @danlowlows.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Depends what you’re trying to make I guess.

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