Game Art: obx Labs' "Skahion:ati: Rise of the Kanien'kehá:ka Legends" (2011-2012)
Skins is an ambitious game project developed by Jason Lewis' obx Studios, which has been documented through a series of articles and essays. The computer game can be downloaded from this URL but the project has transmedia ambitions as it includes, among other things, a series of machinima. As the developers explain on the official website, "AbTeC is a network of academics, artists and technologists whose goal is to define and share conceptual and practical tools that will allow us to create new, Aboriginally-determined territories within the web-pages, online games, and virtual environments that we call cyberspace. Our multi-faceted effort will include a storytelling series, an ongoing gamesnight, a modding workshop, Machinima, and performance art." (AbTeC). The full description of Skins is below:
"Skins is a series of digital-media workshops for Aboriginal youth offered by an Aboriginally determined team of game designers, artists and educators known as Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace. The unique curriculum begins with traditional storytelling and proceeds to teach participants how to tell a story in a very new way--as a video game. With that foundation in place, the students then learn important skills for the production of video games and machinima, such as game design, art direction, 3D modeling and animation, sound, and computer programming. Lessons are taught by faculty, students and graduates of the Computation Arts programme at Concordia University. They are joined by Aboriginal mentors who lend their considerable expertise as cultural consultants, as well as moral support to the young producers. Skins aims to empower Native youth to be producers of new technologies, not just consumers of them." (obx Labs, 2012)Here is another example, from a 2011 iteration, The Adventure of Skahion:ati: Legend of the Stone Giants:Submitted by Matteo Bittanti