Creature Cards:All artworks are done by Hatchlings Games' Artist

Name your own card, upload your art or use others in the community, give your card abilities and stats. If it is about creation, it is Quasr. Card creation is not a feature of this game but part of the game itself.

You don't need to be an artist, Quasr Trading Cards can fit anything and everything! Digital Art, Traditional Art, Digital Photography, you name it!

We work in a creative industry so the more often you get into a creative state, the faster you produce good inspired work. In the commercial world, like the Games / Entertainment industry, you need to be creative to be competitive. Innovation, thinking-out-side-the-box, thinking-inside-and-outside-of-the-box, and other related buzz words means that you have to be in your creative state when you want it.

Many times we find it frustrated that we cannot get into that state. You want to start coding a game but you do not know where to start. You have to create a 100 pieces of detailed visual illustrations by a weekend but don't even know to start on the first one. You have to find a new game idea but the only thing that come out of your head is how WOW will kick your game's ass when it comes out. It had happened to me and you. It sucks. In this article, I will attempt to share my experience of entering a state of creative flow consciously, when you want it.

A Clear Intent

Know what you REALLY WANT and then WHY you want it. Repeat until you really know (the ZEN meaning) your intent. Remember not to limit yourself with negative thoughts. Also, remember that now is not the time to care about what your family, girlfriend, friends, colleagues, professional body will think about you if you do what you intent to do. Having a clear intent will help you get into a state of flow. To be in a state of flow, you need to link your conscious and subconscious mind together. They need to be in harmony.

Your clear intent can be anything you want to accomplish. After all, this is all about you. It can be "How do I beat my opponent in WarCraft III?", "What do I want to do with my life?" and yes even "How do I get my small team to create 100 pieces of detailed visual illustration by a week?".

Motivation

After having a clear intent you need motivation. You must have that burning desire. Answer the questions, what is it in it for me? Or what is it in it for someone you care? Or even what is it in it for my country? Or my personal favorite, what is it in it for mankind?

It is natural for you to do what you like to do. In many cases, people in situations where they have "no choice" trick their mind to like what they have to do. People choose to work in jobs that they can have maximum creative output. Sometimes that means being your own boss. Besides the love of games, this is a primary motivation for Hatchlings Games co-founders, no.wing and Jarod and I to venture into game development.

How do you get that burning desire? Through your imagination. Imagine yourself to be in the position to do what you want to do. Imagine that you have X amount of money (if you intent to make X amount of money), if you are the director of X movie, if you are the game designer / producer of X game.

Basically, imagine that you are truly responsible for that thing thing you intended. No one is your supervisor, boss or lead. You are the only person who is responsible for what you intent to do. It could be something big or small, it doesn't really matter. What matters is you must have motivation.

If the only thing that you can imagine are naked bodies of the opposite sex, then draw/write it out (on a computer or paper or wherever you feel comfortable with).

Just Do It

After you have a clear intent and motivation, let it sink in for a while and then start doing whatever you want to do. Action begets motivation. Just doing it (Sorry Nike for using your decades-old motto) starts up your subconscious brain. Often you will get into the state of flow soon after doing it.

If you follow the first step (have a clear intent), your heart will be true (I know it is new-agey). When your heart is true, you will do the true task that your heart desires. Doing that true task is fundamental to creativity. As someone or some civilization I can't remember said, know thy self. That consciousness and self-awareness is truly important for creative work.

The more self-aware you are, the easier for you to enter the state of self-unawareness, the state of creative flow. Recommended:

Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World by Donald Katz

Play

You must not be afraid to play. To play with your ideas. Life is a game. Hmm, I just mentioned a life metaphor. How you look at life (your life metaphor) is very important for setting directions and having a life vision. For anybody who wants to be in a creative state frequently, the best metaphor you can have is: Life is a Game - you are its main character and its Director. The Director in you will want the main character to win. Winning is a strong motivation, only if you know how to Play.

Physical Discomfort

My experience tells me that physical discomfort prevents me from entering into a creative state often enough. You have to be in optimal physical condition for creativity. When you enter that state of creative flow, you often lose yourself. That is you do not remember how you are feeling. That makes you sit with a bad posture, smoke more ciggies, skip food, skip sleep and do other health degenerating things.

All this will makes it harder for you to enter to the state of creative flow the next time you want it. You will find that it gets harder each time.

What I suggest is that every time you are not in the creative state and you do not need to accomplish anything creative urgently, just take a break - go for a meal, a jog, a gym session, a swim, a date or just sleep.

Keep Practicing

The act of consciously entering a state of creative flow is a skill. It is not a blessing or a fluke. Like all skill it require practices. Adapt the above guidelines to your situation. Constantly intent to be flow, practice it, you will realize that your conscious mind can switch your subconscious mind on and off, at your will. When you are able to harness that power, then life is truly your game.

This article is originally written by John

Just Imagine you can create your own artworks...

...and let others to use them to play the best online trading card game.

If there is one reason why I'm so excited about Quasr, it would be the community that we are building. For instance, the art community. The freedom of being able to express my creative views while developing this game is well, freeing. In this article, I present some of sample concepts that we drew that might actually end up in the game. The fact is, any art can end up in the game on the cards if the community likes it and votes for it.

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Often an artwork will go through a lot of changes during its stage of development. Most of the time, the cause for these changes are good. For example during the drawing progress, the artist would want to change the subject in his work so it becomes better, he might find his work more suitable for some other purpose, or both. It is an artist's responsibility to decide on how to reflect written concept on canvas.

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I wasn't drunk, I was just half conscious (you got it right, I just woke up).

There's still half peeled off skin hanging and I can't find a scissors anywhere in the office (a knife? yea right). I didn't shout out of pain, I spread them instead.

There is bread and butter in the office. I ate them.

Just before I go to bed, I finished the mobile game Crazy Campus. In the beginning, I thought wow, this game is not bad, there's a story, fun groups of people (nerds, hippies, sororities, frats, hip-hoppers, goth) and just when I thought the story is the winning feature of the game, the ending is disappointing. I don't recommend anyone to finish this game. Just play for the first 30 minutes then put it away. I'll share the summary of the story a bit:

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A fan is someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking of a sporting club, person, group of persons, company, product, work of art, idea, or trend. I am a fan of the game Hitman and I want to let the world to know that: I WILL NOT WATCH THE HITMAN MOVIE UNTIL 100 PEOPLE CONVINCE ME THAT IT IS GREAT.

At first I was shocked by this:

Hitman The Movie Logo

Hitman The Original Game Logo

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I usually get really excited when Ubuntu has a new release. In the past always, I always had problems with the update-manager GUI while upgrading to the newest version. Usually, I choose to do a clean install over an upgrade. This is also partly due to the fact that servers hosting the ISOs are relatively faster to access from during the first few week of a launch.

With Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbons) released yesterday, most foreign servers are being heavily used making it very slow for poor Malaysian Ubuntu lovers on TMNet. Luckily, open source (and Ubuntu) is alive in Malaysia and the folks at Inigo has hosted a local mirror at http://mirror.inigo-tech.com/ubuntu, the server is using a Jaring backbone.

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I gave a small talk to a bunch of diploma students in LimKokWing University some time in mid-September. It was quite a rushed one, I spent the whole night preparing the talk and had a fatal shot of espresso before going into the lecture hall. Here's the speech I wrote for myself. While having no industry credentials, I thought it's best to share with them what we as a company went through during the startup phase. Here's the full text of the talk. Hope it's not too boring! Read the rest of this entry

The bricks are laid and the walls are painted. Now it's just a matter of time before all of us move in!

If you happen to stumble upon here, let us welcome you to Hatchlings Games' new site. We could have gotten hatchlingsgames.com... but that's another story. We'll be adding more exciting content here. Stay tuned!