Organized in accordance with the Many-Boxes Theory of Content Containment, an organizing principle I just made up, each box is an infinitely expandable narrative concept, as defined by its snappy title and brief description. Simultaneously both old and new, many of the entries are legacy projects that have been reworked in order to tell a story of lasting value beyond the oft-forgotten game/exhibit/project itself.
Good ideas never die, they just evolve.
PROJECT
A brief introduction to The Alphazett Project, an online portal to the multiverse, featuring original art, design and writing by Mike Barrette.
PROJECT
A catalog of events, memories, landmarks-- a periodically renewed city of ideas built on the discarded ideas from different (game) universes. A birthing ground for story ideas and building concepts developed elsewhere.
DESIGN - Website
The site design for Alphazett was a slow, iterative process that reflected the ongoing machinations behind the evolution of the Alphazett project itself.
CONCEPT
End of the world art from a post-Reagan world. I was living in Boston, hating my job, and over-indulging. Then I moved to Los Angeles and it really got dark.
DESIGN - Catalog
The Grainger Catalog of city-building-- a riff on the "Acme catalog" of everything, and a "brick-and-mortar" companion of sorts to Alphazett Cities.
DESIGN - Story and World
Early World and Story design from the "Shadow of Mordor" adventure-fantasy RPG. A rare example of a consistent visualization process from concept through (pre)-production.
DESIGN - Functional City
Ambitions were high to create an immersive, inhabitable Las Vegas in which to do unspeakable things with an XBox. Four and a half years later, we had a city, but the dream had died and the project was cancelled
CONCEPT
A "photo" essay featuring locations described in the journals of Syd Arthur, the Worlds Fastest Librarian. (File under Alphazett.)
CONCEPT
Early concept drawings were always done in pencil before being run through the Photoshop gauntlet of magical effects and endless typographic possibilities. These were all produced during a particularly fertile period in the early days of XBox.
NEW!
GAME
A fun little pandemic project-- A Jeopardy-style game that I created in Powerpoint.
ART
Experiments in perspective depicting simultaneous events in parallel worlds. Perhaps abstract dissertations on living in Los Angeles, or simply fractured fairy tales.
ART - Drawings
Los Angeles was a dark time, but also a deep source of inspiration in unexpected ways. Riots, earthquakes, and a recession all featured heavily in my general outlook.
CONCEPT
Curated collections from actual sketchbooks. While neatly compacted for presentation, minimal digital shenanigans has otherwise occurred.
CONCEPT
A loose exploration of spiderweb-like transportation networks enveloping a city. An early sketch series with continued relevance.
CONCEPT
A space elevator is a theoretical construct-- a cable stretching from earth to an orbiting space station. I took that a bit further and conceived of a 60,000 mile continually inhabited structure.