Dress up Mania!

We’ve already written about our first steps in dress up games creation. In spite of the fact that most of developers aren’t willing to give this genre a computer game status, dress ups become more and more popular nowadays.

 Being well experienced in flash games development our team at first didn’t take it for serious … I mean we didn’t believe that a common dress up game can be in such great request. However, thanks to our talented artists we’ve managed to create excellent products.  Our latest dress up games can be found on the top sites for girls!

We’ve already worked out our own original style and continue improving it! Get acquainted with our dress up games, do like them and start making money using our company’s services! 

http://girlieroom.com

Dress up games: a story of success

 A lot of games which developers played in their childhood to pass their free time have been transformed into easier computer versions. Among modern computer games we can find analogs of favorite boys’ Battles, girls’ Daughters and Mothers, Rubik’s Cube and many other games.

Computerization has influenced paper dolls, too. Years ago girls used to play dolls neatly cut out of children magazines. Ideally those dolls were cardboard, otherwise – simply paper. This also concerned their clothes. Of course, at that time we couldn’t talk about wide variety of choice. Girls couldn’t change doll’s skin color, put on make-up, choose backgrounds or make it smile. But now this became possible thanks to flash dress up games!

In spite of the fact that most of developers aren’t willing to give this genre a computer game status, dress ups are very popular among five-year-old girls and older ones… Even grown-up women adore playing these games trying not to be caught by their colleagues. They dream about stylish clothes and opportunity of endless shopping.

One American psychologist is convinced that dress up games help children development, especially imagination and fantasy. They give a good opportunity to take part in role games and experiment without restrictions. It is very important for kids that it is impossible to lose in these games. Here we can talk about an old truth: “Every man to his taste”. Thus nobody criticizes combination of sneakers with an evening dress. For a grown-up woman this is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy trying on charming dresses having not spent a lot of money.

We must mention that despite a huge number of dress up games they are not high quality. Sometimes it is difficult to superpose the clothes upon the doll, sometimes chord of colors is poor, and what is the most important - usability of many of them could be much better. All dress up games can be divided into three kinds depending on the way of model dressing up:

- the clicking ones (Here you have to click on a thing to put it on the model. Clothes move automatically. If you choose another garment it replaces the previous one. An example of such dress up game you can find on our site: http://girlieroom.com/Emilys-Diary/Season/1 );

- the moving ones (This is the most popular kind of dress up games. Here you have to click on the garment and to move it to the model. Usually this causes problems because you have to guess where the developer planned to place it and accurately combine it with a model. Thus you have to move the garment till it coincides with the model in the way it was intended by the developer. To change the garment you need to take away the previous one);

- with clothes sections (Here you can see signed buttons which answer for different garments. For example: a dress, trousers, a blouse, a hat, a bag, other accessories etc. It gives a good opportunity to use a beautiful background without any clothes. However, from the other side a lot of players like to see all the clothes at once. An example of such dress up game you can find on our site:  http://girlieroom.com).

Dress up games can be characterized according to their themes, too. There are dress ups of celebrities, animals, top-models, dolls, Barbie etc.

Considering the fact that demand causes supply we can claim that very soon this genre of games will develop into something bigger and of course more qualitative.

http://girlieroom.com

by Eugena Slobodyanyuk

Animators want to create UPA - Ukrainian Portal of Animators

Thus caricature and animation festival “Kaverza” took place. We were happy to welcome animators from Kyiv, Odesa and Donets'k. For guests from all over Ukraine it was a good opportunity to get acquainted with each other and to share their experience. Our studio entered into friendly relations with Lisenbart Animation Studio and Film-Plus Production Studio from Kyiv, Odesa Animation Studio and Toongu.Ru from Donets'k. Now we hope for collaboration and have a lot of plans for future teamwork.
The participants of the festival decided to create Ukrainian Portal of Animators. At present it's the only opportunity to unite all the professionals in this sphere. The Portal will give a good chance to advertise animation works at a new, higher level. Thanks to Portal's optimisation all the studios will be able to come into Ukrainian animation market and to form it on footing of salubrious and free competition.
funbungames.com

“Kaverza” for Animators

“Kaverza” for Animators
Caricature and animation festival “Kaverza” will take place in Lviv on the 14-15 of December. “Garbuz Studio” joined the process of its organization. At the same time a famous artist and a participant of international exhibitions Mihay Tymoshenko is an inspirer and a guardian of “Kaverza”.
At the moment you have a good opportunity to take part in caricature contest “Euro-2012”. Your works are being waited for till 12 of December at artistic gallery “Dzyga”.
A special attention must be paid to a round table which will take place on the 14-th of December and will unite animators from all over Ukraine. The questions discussed will concern the tendencies of Ukrainian animation development, author and commercial films, commercial animation, copyright in animation and others. Professionals will reveal some of their secrets and tell about their last most successful projects.
Guests and citizens of L’viv will be able to visit Dzyga exhibition hall and look at the best festival caricatures. The same day the winners rewarding will take place in “Picasso” club. Animation films showing, “A Life Symphony” cartoon presentation, performance of “Klitka” theatre called “Amore” and break-dancing of “Tyron City” band will make this festive party more interesting.
“The main aim of this year festival, which is directed to comic culture development, is to excite the curiosity in the first place of Lvivers. People mustn’t lose sense of humor. At the same time it would be a pity to stop such a good tradition of animation festival. Its history is a continual transformation. Thus, in Ukraine it was held in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Last year it was on purpose that I didn’t organize the festival. Nobody occupied this niche. One more year is coming to an end while no events like this took place, - accentuated Mihay Timoshenko, - Animation and comics must be developed. We have so many talented people”.
According to the words of Garbuz Studio director Nazar Rubashny this festival is to get animation in Ukraine and Lviv moving. “We need surroundings where communication succeeds even more in connection with artistic decisions and commerce. The development of animation can be seen in Kiev. However there are talented people in Lviv, too. They need only professional education to give good results”, - told Nazar Rubashny.
From the history of the festival
Lviv is open to animation. This year caricature and animation festival “Kaverza” confirms this. It is said that good traditions are worth of continuing. In 1999 artist and sculptor Oleg Dergachov organized International caricature symposium “Dyvakuvate Tysyacholittya”. In 2002 animation “Silver Fly” flied out. This festival travelled to Florence. Italians liked the idea to be united by animation films…
In 2003 artists Volodymyr Dergachov and Mihay Tymoshenko brought back this animation festival. Thus, Ukrainian audience became acquainted with animation products of Serbia, Russia, China and Canada. Research of animation development tendencies in different countries showed us the necessity of festival continuation and development.

http://garbuzgames.com/

by Oksana Nychyporuk

Flash GAMM

On the 25-26 of October we visited Kyiv to participate in a Flash GAMM conference. It was organized for the first time. However it tends to be the annual one.
As it was announced earlier the meeting was organized for flash game developers. Now it is obvious that Flash GAMM was rather successful and became quite an event for game creators. We must notice that this conference took place right after the close of Casual Connect. Thus we had also a good opportunity to welcome some guests from abroad. As a result a great number of Ukrainian and foreign professionals made this meeting very interesting and constructive. All the participants could:
· get acquainted with colleagues from game industry;
· make first steps towards collaboration (freelancers + company);
· share priceless experience;
· sell their products or get an impartial feedback;
· exchange knowledge and important information which can’t be found in books as it was personally gained and is invaluable.
The lectures from this conference are available for free download on ://flashgamm.com/

http://funbungames.com/

Casual Connect and Its Sponsors

A long hoped- for conference Kyiv Casual Сonnect will take place in Kyiv on the 22-24 of October. According to the words of its organizer (Casual Games Association) this event will bring together more than 3000 talented professionals in the casual gaming industry. The aim of this meeting is raising the level of casual game world industry bymeans of developers experience interchange. (http://kyiv.casualconnect.org)

Casual Connect is an annual conference. Luckily for us this year it will take place in our capital. Here young developers will have good opportunities to meet real Whales and Titans of the world game industry. Thus the platinum sponsors are: Big Fish Games, RealGames, Alawar Entertainment and ZapakWorld. Their history and experience are worth of our attention. That’s why making use of World Wide Web omniscience we’ve made a small selection which we’d like to present.

Big Fish Games is a global leader and innovator in the casual games industry. It produces and delivers the world's best games and game experiences. Judging from facts we can see that its daring marketing slogan “A New Game Every Day!” is rather justifiable. Big Fish Games works with more than 500 game developers all over the world and its portal is visited by more than 25 million unique visitors per month. It distributes over 1 million games a day and continues to grow more than 100 percent a year. At present casual games developer Big Fish Games is worth $83.3 million and its average site visitor buys 25 games a year. (http://www.bigfishgames.com)

In one of the interviews a Big Fish Games founder Paul Thelen opened a secret of his company. He told that when he was the only worker in his company a friend called him the Big Fish in the pond named Earth. The Big Fish managed to cope with all the difficulties and 5 years later beginners all over the world consider his success formula. Here are some of Paul Thelen’s useful advices and thoughts:

- Picking out a game to launch on a portal you have to take into account age audience interested in it. Paul Thelen told that when a company was purely a game developer it was a very frustrating process to get games distributed on large portals. The problem was that the consumers were 45 year old gamers, largely women, and the folks deciding what games to launch were mostly men in their twenties.

- If you don’t take into account the age of the audience your work will be good, but you’ll never be better than those who direct their attention to concrete consumers.

- Only users can decide whether a game is good or not. If it resonates with the audience in the first few days, it will bubble up the rankings and sell very well. If the game does not do well, it drifts in the rankings and is eventually removed from the site.

- Some developers think their games will get ‘lost’ with so many games, but if the game is good, it will get the top of the genre and maybe even the top of the entire site and generate significant sales.

RealGames is one more platinum sponsor of Casual Connect. This company declares that its only passion is casual games. As a developer, publisher and distributor it is the global leader in casual games industry. In the past years RealGames family has grown to include RealArcade.com, GameHouse.com, Zylom.com, MrGoodLiving.com, Atrativa.com.br and GameTrust.com. Worldwide RealGames network reaches more than 40 million unique players each month.

Besides developing and publishing hit title games this company delivers the whole package. That means very game is translated into different languages. In particular company’s catalogue includes 500 games which can be loaded in eight languages. (http://realgames.real.com/

Alawar Entertainment is also a platinum sponsor of Casual Connect. This Titan of the casual games industry covers more than 85% of game market in Eastern Europe.

During its 9-year history Alawar Entertainment develops and distributes casual games and works with 50 teams of developers. Every year CD-publishers in 25 countries all over the world produce more than half a million CDs with Alawar Entertainment games. Last year in collaboration with Java-games publisher New Edge it began production and distribution of games for mobile phones. (http://www.alawar.ru/

ZapakWorld is the world of free games. This is a casual games site where you can find 12236 casual games. The company claims to be the largest gaming destination in the world. Its leaders are convinced that 10 thousand games will never be better than a thousand. And what is more definition “the largest game destination in the world” makes the site more popular as a variety of games helps a consumer to find his so longed-for game. (http://www.zapakworld.com//)

by Eugena Slobodyanyuk

http://funbungames.com/

Frames of "A Life Symphony"